I gathered an ice cream tub full of fallen walnuts in St Nicolas' churchyard, covered them with water in a pan, simmered them for nearly three hours (I needed to top up with boiling water half way through or the pan would have boiled dry), strained the liquid off, and then simmered again for another hour. I ended up with half a jam jar of brown ink, from which I lettered this quotation. However poor the standard of my calligraphy, I'm inordinately pleased to have something sourced solely from one of our churchyards, and I'm grateful to my wife's interest in dyeing for sourcing the recipe from Alice Fox and for having a solid dyeing pan so that our cooking utensils did not get irredeemably stained.
1 comment:
My Father used to do this Peter and Mother used to pickle the Walnuts.....thank you for the memories.
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