There have ben 14 lambs born since yesterday morning. What fun! There will be photos and videos when I have time. I’m having a little contest over on the Meridian Jacobs Facebook page. Guess when Summer is going to have her lambs. Tell me day/hour on Facebook and you’ll be entered.
This is a photo of Summer taken today.
This is what Summer thinks of the contest.
I taught a drum carder class today. Here are some results.
Dona added neon green to white Jacob.
Ania blended blue and gray.
Paula went wild with color mixes.
These are some of Ania’s blends drafted into roving.
Lambing is starting out more slowly than I thought it would. According to my calendar there are over 20 ewes who will lamb in the next 4 days, but I think that some of these may have been marked, but not bred when I first put the rams out. They may be a couple of weeks later.
However I am not disappointed in the lambs. I experimented with breeding to Faulkner, the Blue Faced Leicester ram, to find out if I could produce larger market lambs without having deleterious effects on the ewes. Rusty wrote about the first set of BFL/Jacob lambs in his blog. (By the way, the lambs he wrote about were born to Athena, the ewe standing in the photo in my last post. I called her Summer by mistake, but Summer is the huge one in the photo below.) Another lamb was born last night.
This is a 12.2 pound lamb!
Sparkle doesn’t seem to care that her lamb is so big or that she is not spotted.
When doing chores this morning I saw these ewes that I assumed would lamb during the day.
Summer didn’t show much interest in breakfast.
Laura looked uncomfortable.
This is Summer again, looking even bigger. No lambs yet, but I’m going to the barn now for the last check before bed.
The rams are jealous of the ewes that got to go out in the pasture. That is Hudson, Clapton , and Clint.
I spent the day in Sacramento at the annual Open House. I took my new extra wide Ashford drum carder. Wow, is it a workhorse!
I washed two fleeces last night so that I’d have something to work on and I carded half of each.
I love this new carder and I can’t wait until I have time to spin this wool.
Summer is waiting, but that’s not the season. It’s Summer, the sheep.
This is Summer on January 5.
January 17.
This is today, February 5. I don’t have a breeding date for Summer but I don’t think she lost any time after I put Clint in with her group. About a week ago I started giving her a little grain at feeding time, along with Paulette, who I know is pregnant with triplets after an ultrasound.
They both have to share their grain with the chicken who now comes running when she sees me get the grain bowls out.
I took these photos a couple of weeks ago after our one and only January storm.
Dina
Lola
Hot Lips
Stephanie
Faulkner
Amaryllis
TNNA is The National Needle Arts Association. I have just been at the winter trade show in Phoenix. This is where wholesalers show their newest lines of yarns, accessories, and gadgets and retailers make selections while trying not to max out their credit cards.
Sunrise over Phoenix from the 6th floor of the Hilton. I stayed with my good friend, Irene, owner of Cotton Clouds.
This is the inside of the Hilton looking down from the 6th floor. I reminded me of the space-age Jetson’s. (I know this dates me.) The Hilton was a nice hotel, but the internet was down for the last night we were there. That was frustrating as I wanted to work on my new newsletter (stay tuned) and the blog. But there were other things to keep us entertained.
Inside the Phoenix Convention Center.
I took a class on Thursday afternoon and in the evening went to Sample It where retailers can purchase selected items from the vendors so that they have something to take home. Look at what I got!
The show opened on Friday with an Apache blessing.
This is the first show since the Spinning & Weaving Group became a part of TNNA. Their debut was marked by some fun garments in the fashion show…
…and a beautiful blanket.
Irene and I spent time discussing new weaving projects and choosing items for both of our stores.
Someone who will remain nameless pretending that she is not in a booth full of wool.
Irene and I have been friends for 31 years. We had a great time together and I am grateful to her for helping me with things relating to my business. (I’m also grateful that she had a car in Phoenix and is willing to ship all my clothes home to me because I couldn’t take them and my new books and fun samples home on the plane.)
There is a photoshoot next week for the Fibershed Marketplace and I have wanted to get some new items ready for it. I have boxes of yarn that I have intended to use and have just never got to. Now is the time. In fact, my goal is to use up all of these boxes by the end of the year.
First box–Single ply Jacob yarn spun years ago at Yolo Wool Mill.
Three scarves in a plaited twill. They feel nice, but have a few issues. They curl at the edges because this is an unbalanced twill–warp emphasis on one side and weft emphasis on the other. Besides that the center stripe turned out to be something else. It probably has some llama fiber in it–it has less elasticity than the rest so it puckers. Are these design features? It serves me right for keeping yarn for so long that I don’t remember what it is.
Second box. Full of funky, slubby, heavy handspun yarn, mostly spun by my mom–that means it was many years ago. It will make wonderful throws.
Here it is going on to the loom.
I wove two blankets using the handspun as warp and the finer singles yarn from the first box for weft. Handspun yarn has such a nice feel to it–I don’t think you can duplicate that with millspun yarn.
Third box–heavy 2-ply mill-spun Jacob yarn.
On the loom.
I was going to make ponchos, but I took this off the loom and decided that it was a great shawl (and if it was a shawl it was finished–no cutting and sewing). It is very soft with wonderful drape.
Three boxes started. I haven’t counted how many more to go.
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