still blog doesn’t get labor day weekend off, so i spent a little time this afternoon vacillating between “i should” and “i want.” what i should be doing is gathering samples and arranging them on white paper. what i wanted to do was order some fries and a coke at sweeney’s, an old saint paul bar where my husband and i first met. in the end, sweeney’s won, as perhaps it should have, and instead of new samples, i went to my box of bird nests for inspiration.

a collection of nests

all from saint paul, minnesota, except one from autignac, france