I left the fog in the Sacramento Valley on Monday and spent a few days in Arizona. I worked with my friend Irene, from Cotton Clouds, on business and with Greg, who designed my website (look for upgrades to that soon). Irene lives in the desert with a fabulous view of Mt. Graham.
We took a couple of hours to drive part way up Mt. Graham and go on a hike. I held the camera out to get our photo.
Here is a Mexican Jay.
I’m back home and inspired to get working.
What’s better for cold feet than sheepskin slippers with wool socks? Well, I won’t be short of wool socks any time soon. I just got the wool socks that I had made. Unfortunately they weren’t here in time for Christmas, but I think I’ll still have some for next Christmas. There are over 400 pairs!
These are the Jacob wool socks. From left to right: 1/4 sock size 9-11, crew size 9-11, crew size 11-13, crew size 13-15.
These are Rambouillet wool socks in the same sizes. I’ll be putting these on my website next week after I figure out labeling, etc.
If you start humming a Fleetwood Mac tune and visualize the album cover when you see this blog title then you are dating yourself. But it doesn’t really have anything to do with that. It’s just what I see on my dog-walks across the road.
See all those clumps of mistletoe in the bare black walnut tree?
I found this interesting because in this tree the mistletoe is dying. There are mistletoe skeletons in the tree skeleton. I didn’t pay attention to whether or not the tree is actually dead too. However, the mistletoe at the bottom of the tree is alive.
Do you see all that gray sky? I am so tired of dreary, drippy, cold, sunless days. It seems as though the fog will never leave. I hope that the next song title I am reminded of is by the Beatles: Here Comes the Sun.
I plan to get back to work tomorrow but I’ve been completely focused on other things, including major cleaning and reorganizing the house with the help of my daughter who is here from Texas and doing other family things. (We saw Riverdance in San Francisco last night–what a fabulous show!) Christmas gifts to my kids and other family members included flash drives with labeled and organized photos. I have been busy scanning photos and then trying to keep them organized. I sometimes wonder if it’s only me (as a mom) who loves these photos so much. I don’t know if anyone else can really appreciate them. I had to include a few of my favorites the 1992 photos that I scanned.
Chris, now 18, taking his first steps.
My mom, who died a year ago, helping Chris with his 1st birthday celebration.
Katie, now age 21, when she was about 4.
Katie with one of Matt’s (older son) cows at the fair.
My mom with Chris and Katie.
Milking.
Chris & tractor.
Katie is lining up dirt clods on the disc.
I just finished two twin size blankets using a customer’s natural colored yarn and her yarn that I dyed. This will be shipped tomorrow along with the king-size blanket. I’ve had the heater on in my shop all day so that I can get these dry. I also finished a couple of v-shawls.
The blankets have the same warp. This one is woven with 2-ply light brown weft.
I didn’t have enough of the customer’s yarn for weft in the second blanket so I used some of mine. I took a chance on using 2 strands of singles yarn wound together on the pirn. Normally I wouldn’t try to wind 2 together using an end-feed shuttle, but in this case the yarns wound around each other and I didn’t have any trouble at all. So this weft is one strand of light gray and one strand of dark gray yarn together. I think it gives a nice depth to the blanket.
I have one more custom order, a king size blanket in several colors, but it will wait until after Christmas. The last time I did that (last year) I broke my arm before I got the left-over weaving finished.
I’m making progress on the weaving orders but I’m not finished yet. I need to get these in the mail by the middle of the week.
This is a king-sized blanket for a customer in Oregon. I don’t know what kind of sheep she raises, but the yarn is beautiful and the blanket is very soft. It measures 90 x 100″. The only place I can spread a blanket this size to dry is the floor of the shop, so I have to plan my finishing around classes, open hours, etc. The shop is too cold right now and after leaving the blanket spread out overnight I needed to get it off the floor (partly because I’m teaching a chenille scarf class tomorrow).
The blanket is folded in half and hanging over the loom on which I’m weaving a v-shawl for a customer in Nevada. This customer has Jacob sheep and I’m using her mill-spun yarn and handspun yarn. The blanket below is for the same customer. The stripes are handspun.
Here is a detail from the king-sized blanket at the top of this post. This customer also wants two twin blankets and she wants some of the yarn dyed. Here is the yarn for the next warp.
The next two blankets are woven with singles Jacob yarn. These were in a previous post while still on the loom. They are for sale at the Artery right now and will be on my site shortly.
Many of you will probably be able to tell what this is since it is so large in the photo. But when I first found it on my sheep’s foot I wasn’t sure (need new glasses). Diamond, my oldest ewe, was walking slowly and not looking quite right. When I took a good look at her I found this stuck on her foot just above her hoof. It was so tight that it was starting to dig into her skin and I had to break it to get it off. Diamond is fine now.
We are in a record-setting cold spell. It’s predicted to be in the low 20’s tonight. As I was wrapping pipes and my husband was fixing the pipes that broke I caught this photo of Molly.
What is she watching?
OK, did you guess what the mystery item is? It’s the trimming from a donkey hoof. I don’t know when it got caught on Diamond’s foot but as it dried it shrunk and hardened.
Wednesday was Display Day at the Artery, the artists’ coop where I sell my handwoven pieces. We expand into the Gallery area for the month of December so all of us get a little more space for our items. Here is my area:
Those are all chenille scarves on the left, v-shawls in the middle and a couple of Jacob blankets on the wall.
This is my newest idea–pet leashes. Here is a close-up:
Now I’m working on custom weaving orders.
This blanket is for a customer in Nevada. The gray yarn is her Jacob spun at Yolo Wool Mill and the stripes is her handspun. This blanket will be finished tomorrow and next on the loom is a king size blanket for another customer.
I have weaving orders to finish in time for Christmas. I thought I would have plenty of time after the Crocker Show. Now I’m feeling a bit panicky. Before starting other people’s blankets I had to get my own blankets off the loom. Here are 2 of the 3 blankets as they were being woven.
This warp is Jacob singles at 12 epi. I have learned that if I’m using a relatively loosely spun singles for warp to wind 4-6 extra threads at the edges so that there will be extras when those edge warp threads break. Those extra threads hang off the sides and I pick up one of them when one of the threads at the selvedge weakens and breaks. This was more of a problem in the first blanket and I was ready to cut the warp off. I changed shuttles and the next two blankets went better. I love these 16-H twills. Here are close-ups:
There will be lots of fringe-twisting before I can wash these. That may have to wait, although I’d like to be able to get these blankets ready for sale this season.
The title implies that I dealt with the high winds that we had this weekend. I didn’t really spend much time in the wind. I was inside at the Art & Craft Holiday Fair sponsored by the Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento. I was surprised at the number of people that came through. Not as many sales as I’d hoped for, but it will be worth going back next year.
These are some of the v-shawls I had for sale.
You may recognize some of these scarves from previous blog entries. I meant to count the scarves. I think I ended up with over 50.
These are 3-D wire pieces that I liked.
And this is an example of another artist’s work that I liked. All his pictures have a time theme and are made from watch parts.
A friend visited me at the show on Saturday and look what she brought. This is a sheep from the WoolPets felt kit that I sell and she knit a scarf to go with it. I wonder if she used toothpicks for knitting needles!
So what was with the wind? It howled all weekend. We hadn’t had any significant damage from the other winds that we’ve had this fall. This wind took the top of the big tree in front of the house. Fortunately all that is damaged is a fence board.
This is upside-down and used to be…
…up there.
The tree is lopsided now–used to have 2 tops that looked like one.
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