I love California quail and we have hundreds of them. They live in the blackberry bushes and the quailbush, both of which have grown completely out of control. When I went out to do chores I saw the quail on this fence rail and went back to the house for my camera. It didn’t take long before all the quail headed for the blackberries where they spend the night.
I had plans to do all kinds of stuff at my computer last night. Update my blog, make website changes, Facebook, update sheep lists after selling a lot of lambs, update photos of sheep, work on handouts for a weaving presentation, etc. Aren’t computers infuriating? It was soooo sloooooow. It took a half hour just to close the programs that were open. (I controlled myself and only clicked the red x or box once for each task.) It took another half hour to for the computer to turn off and restart. I ran a mal-ware program overnight. No malicious content. Maybe the computer just needed a rest. This morning it seems OK although all I have asked of it so far is to show me e-mail.
Sometimes I have another problem when I work at the computer. This I can identify:
I’m told that getting an Mac would solve all of my computer problems, but I don’t think it would take care of the one above.
While I’m showing Ozzie photos, here is Ozzie with a mouse that friend, Jackie, knit and felted and filled with catnip. Isn’t it cute?
Remember this photo? Here are the results of my weaving:
I made a warp long enough for two throws. (They were going to be shawls but because I wanted to keep all 16 colors the warp was too wide to turn into shawls.) This photo is a throw woven with a fine cotton weft so which you see the warp stripes, although it’s hard to really see all the colors.
I wove the second blanket with chenille yarns in the same colors and order as in the warp. If you could see the whole blanket you’d see that it starts with green on this end and finishes with blue on the other.
Julia, who is the felting half of the November Artery show, and I got together a couple of weeks ago to get a photo to be used for publicity.
Julia brought Lisa, her neighbor’s daughter visiting from New York, who graciously agreed to be our model.
Isn’t she great?
I could weave O’Keefe inspired fabrics forever, but it’s on to Mondrian.
We had an unscheduled Farm Day yesterday.First order of business was chores.
Stephanie greets the Farm Club. She seems to enjoy pestering Kathy. I think she must smell Kathy’s goats. Everyone had a chance to milk a little.
We’re only milking one side because the kid is nursing from the other. This is Tina milking.
Here is Shelby. I haven’t been putting Stephanie on the stand because she is easy to milk and I’m only milking one side once per day.
We were going to start trimming feet, but got side-tracked when Rusty decided to roll in the leftovers from yesterday’s butchering. The guys that butcher clean up well, but there is always something smelly left. I think he found the rumen contents. I had just made Rusty an appointment at the vet to remove a foxtail that he’d picked up that morning. I didn’t think that my husband or the vet would be too crazy about holding a really stinky dog. So dog-washing was in order.
We don’t get too fancy with this. A hose and some soap.
Usually I wear my rubber boots or flip-flops. We were trying to keep our feet dry but get all the soap off of Rusty.
Tina and Kathy are trying to get the dogs to pose. Rusty is back from the vet already (foxtail in right ear) and Mobi (Jackie’s dog) wants to play.
We moved on to trimming feet, putting my squeeze chute/flip table into service again.
To get more work done we also tied some of the sheep to trim feet. This is a lamb that needs to be halter broke anyway because she is one I’ve chosen to keep.
The dogs keep watch. Note the trimmed feet. I have trimmed his feet three times this year to avoid foxtails in the toes.
“Well, if you’re not going to let me work, I’ll just lie here.”
We quit trimming about noon. I forgot to take photos of the chute being used for sheep with varying horn types. I think I need some modifications to use it more effectively. Shelby offered to be a sheep. I’m not sure these are the photos I need to work on the modifications, but laughter is always a good thing.
Somehow the Farm Club is starting to remind me of the YaYa Sisterhood. We’re accepting more members!
I had two visitors the other day. Both are weavers. I didn’t realize until they got here that I knew one of the women…well, sort of. I hadn’t met her, but I had sold her some yarn a few years ago. Later my friends and I had driven about an hour to see a show in which her piece was entered only to find that the gallery was closed that day. (No problem because with these friends I could probably have a good time even waiting for a dentist appointment.) What does this have to do with anything?
Lea brought the piece that had been entered in the show so that I could see it up close. This is an over-sized clothing tag woven that Lea wove.
Lea can explain her mission much better than I can. Here is a link to a presentation she made a few months ago. It’s worth the 16 minutes of watching. This is only one of Lea’s fascinating ideas. I have just spent the last hour on her website looking at all of her creative and unusual projects and items for sale. Take a special look at the Worlds Smallest Post Office!
Lea’s friend, Robin, was the person who made the appointment to visit. She is exploring ideas for combining fiber farming with weaving and creating a business and that is why she wanted to talk with me. So I spent a lot of time talking about what I do. I wish that I hadn’t talked so much but had spent more time listening to these two fascinating women. Maybe they’ll visit again!
I showed photos of my daughter’s graduation in my last post. We had quite a full 2 1/2 days visiting in Texas. I must say that when we left the airport building to find the truck I understood what is meant by the phrase “suffocating heat”. Our 100+ days don’t come with the humidity. That sure makes a difference.
We had a little time to kill between leaving the airport and going to Texas State where Katie had to take her last final (5 p.m. the day before graduation). Cabella’s was on the way and air conditioned. We wandered around Cabella’s looking at all the mounted animals and saw everything from elephants to muskox to prairie dogs…or should I say from Armadillos to Zebras?
Katie gave us a tour of Texas State. It is a beautiful campus.
On Friday Katie showed us the Blanco River where she and Kurtis go to cool off. The river is low now and full of algae. A few weeks ago there was water covering these tree roots and rocks.
I love how the cypress trees spread out at the base.
We climbed about a million stairs to the top of Mt. Baldy, the highest point in Wimberly, where you can some perspective of the country.
Here is another graduation photo in case you missed the last post (!) This is Katie with Kurtis, her boyfriend.
Saturday morning we went riding around the property where Katie has been living. The last time Dan was on a horse was when he was in seventh grade. Katie is riding Libby, her 12-year old mare that moved with her when she left California. Dan is on Slim, a 12-year old quarter horse who was a recent acquisition and a very good deal. He was given up by his previous owner because he was too arthritic for barrel racing. He seems fine for the light work he is getting now. He is also a lot happier than when he was kept in a stall almost 24 hours/day.
My turn. I’m on Libby. She is much calmer than when she was in CA. Is it her age or the fact that she and Slim roam around on 20 to 80 acres when they aren’t being ridden?
Isn’t Libby a pretty horse?
Slim looks forward to his bath after being ridden.
Libby, not so much.
Slim loves the water. Katie and Kurtis and the horses are moving to Vermont next month. These horses are going to have to start growing some hair.
We few home in the evening, chasing the setting sun. With the sun on the west I had views of reflected water and was fascinated by these patterns. But it couldn’t keep my mind off the quick trip to see my daughter. She’ll be moving even farther across the country now. I hope to get to Vermont in the fall.
We spent the weekend in Texas so that we could attend my daughter’s graduation from Texas State at San Marcos.
She graduated Magna Cum Laude with two degrees.
We couldn’t be more proud.
Alas, no photo. But maybe you wouldn’t want this photo. Ozzie, our kitten (who is featured in a few blogs not too long ago) killed his first mouse! I felt bad taking it from him, but I was not sure that he was even big enough to eat it. So this is great news! …but Ozzie lives in the house and doesn’t leave it (too close to a busy road)…that means he found the mouse in the house. Not such good news.
While Ozzie is hunting to protect our stores of food from ravenous rodents, Rusty earns his keep with sheep.
This is the group of ram lambs that are left here.
The other day I took Rusty over to work with Jackie’s sheep. She has four sheep and is anxious to start training her dog using her own sheep. We’re using Rusty to get her sheep accustomed to being worked by a dog.
Marley, the Wensleydale, wasn’t cooperating at first. Rusty is hesitant when a sheep looks like it is going to resist. He has been bashed by more than one ewe with horns and I am trying to help him become more forceful.
We’re getting movement.
Job well done.
This seemed to be the coolest place for Rusty. Or maybe he thought that it was the only place that the guinea hens weren’t going to bother him.
Several years ago after my second back surgery I bought a turning sheep squeeze chute. I used it for a few years and then stopped because I felt like I needed a second person to help with it. It seemed to work better if someone held the sheep’s head still. My theory is that sheep with horns struggle when their horns get stuck in the spaces between the expanded metal side (that’s what my husband says that mesh is called). The sheep with 4 horns that have stubby side horns don’t seem to have as much of a problem and I think it’s because they don’t panic as they would if they felt their heads trapped.
I’d been thinking of selling the chute, but then decided that maybe I could modify it. I started by securing cardboard over the side with the mesh. That will not be a long term solution because the cardboard is pretty much destroyed now. But its a start.
Shelby and Jackie were here to help take fleece samples from all the yearlings (19) and trim their feet.
After you squeeze the sides of the chute you can turn the whole thing on its side.
Then you drop the floor so that you can easily get to the feet.
There are a few bars on the side of the chute that you can release so that you can get to the side of the sheep. I take fleece samples of all the yearlings so that I have at least one micron measurement and it’s taken at a consistent age.
There are still some bugs to work out. I think that if I could make a space for the head that would accommodate the horns but that the sheep didn’t think it could climb through the whole thing might work better. We’ll have to work on it. I think the last time I used the chute it was with a couple of teenagers who were called in to help and argued until one or the other left the scene and then the other sulked. This was much different and vastly more pleasant. I must say that Jackie and Shelby got along just fine–no whining heard. Thanks!
Remember the O’Keefe painting that I used for inspiration for chenille shawls?
Here is one of the finished shawls.
The next one is Petunia #2:
The red canna shawl has 12 colors in the warp and I had a hard time fitting them all in. There are 15 colors on the table now and I don’t want to leave any out. Since I couldn’t decide what to do I decided to wind a warp with all 15 colors in a paddle and weave some scarves before I move to a large project of a shawl or throw. Here is what that looks like on the loom:
More to come later.
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