T Stands for Tuesday & Black Walnut Salve Made & Weaving Update

 T Stands for Tuesday is upon us, so we gather with friends over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's-to join us just post a drink related photo in your T post.

  Over the weekend we began to warm up a bit in the afternoon, the fall colors are really pretty in my area too. I need to grab my camera and take a few photos while taking a walk which I haven't done in awhile.

  Late Saturday I did make the black walnut salve, and I ended up making one and half of the recipe I shared a few posts back. I only had about a tablespoon left of the infused oil, so that worked out really nice. I still have a big bag of little jars and lids that I used to use for the butters and hand creams I would make, that felt so good on the skin, especially now as we get into dry skin weather. I need to make some of that next.  I got three little jars from the recipe-will be sharing one with a friend.

  This is the jar of the black walnut hulls infusing in olive oil and coconut oil for a week.

  She mentioned you could make the recipe right away or wait 6-7 days. The extra days helps to get more benefit from the black walnut hulls.

   Today I followed the recipe and heated up the strained oil with the beeswax pastilles til melted in the oil  and again just heat the water no bubbles or it will be too hot.

    Strained oil on the right these two canning jars will now be designated for craft only useage

Once the beeswax is all melted-take off the heat, and following recipe add in the clove essential oil and lavender essential oil. I also added a few drops of Vit E as well

Since I used mostly olive oil the slave is more green in color I used an extra virgin organic robust olive oil, along with coconut oil.

and since I will be sharing one, I stamped up an information card, and also labeled all three jars. very pleased with the results and these are fun to make

  Friday late I finished up with dressing the loom. It is all ready for weaving now. If I hadn't been so tired I would have started to weave as I am anxious to see the pattern.

   Starting to tie warp on to the front

Finished

One last thing needed to be done-change up these according to the pattern My loom has 4 shafts and each pedal is set up so I can change according to the pattern

Below is the pattern to the far right-where those little circles are-you can see how I have matched those up to above photo (the numbers to the left of this is the pattern for threading all those threads)  Below that box with the circles is the pattern for the pedals while weaving

  Sunday I did grab the camera and took a short walk around where I live-it warmed up to the low 70's f-that was awesome-same for Monday I only walked around half the circle as there is a very very steep hill to go down or up-with my knees decided not to do that.

    I also got one of my dye pans out and filled it up with walnut hulls, some whole nuts with the hulls dried on-and will let it soak 24 hours. Tomorrow I will set up one of the weber grills to simmer this down into ink. Need to take advantage of these few warm days. Still no hard freeze  here as of yet.

This last photo is our home Our little area of the lake is very pretty this time of year-and quiet-not many boats, as most have already winterized their boats by now.

   and Larry heard loons on the lake over the weekend-I was so excited to see them last winter.

  Those bare trees below are the black walnut trees-we have several small ones. The nut trees always lose their leaves first, and I think most of the nuts are down now

For my drink share I grabbed a pretty little handmade pottery cup, made by one our favorite potterers back before retirement

Happy T and New Week  

     and a quick little update-gorgeous day today (Monday) so I set up the large Weber to boil down the black walnuts that were soaking overnite. Around 3 in the afternoon, I took the pot off the Weber-since it's heavy, put the lid on and will let it sit overnite-needs to cool down. Tomorrow I can begin straining and see how it looks.

    I re read some more posts about making this ink-and so many similar but different methods. I will see what it looks like after strained to see if I should boil down anymore. In the mail today I did get the hide glue that is suppose to help thicken the ink it's what was done early on. I also read last night that a few drops of wintergreen essential oil will prevent molding or to add a clove to each bottle. I do have whole cloves, and I just ordered the wintergreen eo

   Or some say to refrigerate. Or some say vinegar and salt which I don't want to do, and some say they never had an issue with molding. 😀

Stay tuned for an update on the ink project.