I drove to Petaluma yesterday to deliver yarn, fiber, and buttons for a photo session with my favorite photographer, Paige Green. She is photographing items for use on the Fibershed Market place website to be announced shortly. I was amazed at the difference that reflector made for the photos. I want one of those. It was a pleasant afternoon with some of the other people involved in the Fibershed.
I thought the dog was a nice touch.
We had such a good time at Black Sheep Gathering this year.
I never thought that I’d have fun “camping” in a parking lot but when it’s with the right people at the right event it’s a great time!
I’m used to seeing the Jacob horns, but I sure noticed when I saw this Angora goat’s horns.
Sunday evening I left for Bend to pick up a Blue Face Leicester (BFL) ram.
Here is the reception I had at Tumble Creek Farm.
Robina’s BFL ewes come when called.
We set up a pen outside so that my sheep could get out of the truck overnight. This morning we loaded Faulkner in the front of the truck bed with the Jacobs behind.
As much fun as I had this weekend I’m always glad to get back to California.
Here are a few scenes from today’s events.
All the champion ewes and rams return to the show ring for selection of Supreme Champion. Theron and I represented the Jacob breed.
The winner was Terry Mendenhal’s beaufiful Merino ram, the third white sheep from the left in this photo.
The Spinner’s Lead competition was held in the evening after a huge potluck dinner. We were last of 18 entries and had the biggest applause of all (thanks, all you CA friends). Chris, Jackie and I all wove v-shawls from Jacob fiber and had a good story to explain all the details. It’s too late for me to explain more, so here is another photo.
We are having a great time! More tomorrow.
Farm Club members, Kathy, Dona, Tina, and Jackie are ready to leave with me and the sheep for Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, Oregon. Friend, Chris was already in Oregon waiting for us.
Synchronizing phones.
UhOh!
The Shasta County Deputy calling in the suspicious livestock. It turns out that I am the legal owner. What if I hadn’t had the health certificate? The only reason I had paperwork was because I was on my way to an out-of-state show.
Hot Lips thought it was no-big-deal.
Gas stop in Oregon. That’s Jackie’s van behind the truck.
Unloading the van. We had all the gear for 5 of us, dozens of fleeces, spinning wheels, etc packed in the van and the back seat of my truck.
Shaul’s Manufacturing is one of our favorite vendors.
Although I come to BSG primarily for recreation, the purported purpose is showing sheep. I did not bring a yearling ram to the show because I don’t have room to transport one and take all the other sheep in the back of the pick-up. I brought 2 ram lambs to show and, being born in March, they don’t show as well as they might if they were a month or so older. The Jacob breeders are all pretty good friends and we were all happy to find out who won Champion Jacob Ram:
This is Theron with his ram lamb.
Part of the ewe lamb class. Jackie showed her lamb, Nellie (who was a bottle baby from me), Tina showed Venus, and I showed Ventura. We placed 3rd and 5th in this class. I have heard that Nellie will be writing her own version of the show later on (and may have quite a different perspective) and will publish that on Jackie’s blog (Wooly Adventures).
Here is the high point for me. Meridian Hot Lips won Champion Jacob Ewe. She will show again against all the other winners for Supreme Champion Ewe.
…or why I don’t get everything done that I have planned for a day.
First up is morning chores and spend some time admiring Hudson, my new ram from Mud Ranch Jacobs. Joan brought him yesterday and took home a couple of ewe lambs. Hudson warrants a blog post all by himself, but he’ll have to wait for that. Hudson is a lilac ram and by breeding him to my lilac and lilac-carrier ewes I’ll have lilac lambs next spring. (Lilac is a Jacob color different than the more common black and white.)
One of the risers in my pasture water line pulled out a couple of days ago and I had to wait for the water to subside to be able to fix it. I left the hole open awhile to make sure that there are no more leaks.
Here is the result of a repaired pipe line–drinking water in the pasture so the sheep don’t have to come into the barn for water.
I will have irrigation water tomorrow so I needed to set up tarps in the ditch. The water is provided by the Solano Irrigation District, not my well. The tarps allow the water to back up and fill the ditch and then flow out into the pasture.
The green forage is the result of irrigating. Even with all the rain we had recently it wasn’t enough to keep the desirable pasture plants growing. Notice the brown part on the left. My 24-hour irrigation hasn’t been enough to get water to the all the pasture and that brown area is part that wasn’t irrigated when I had water on last month. I have asked for 36 hours for this irrigation and hopefully I can get water to the rest of the pasture. Otherwise I have lost about a fifth of my forage for the summer.
This small green area is a section in the eastern paddock that my son burned earlier in the spring. He didn’t think that the burn was successful because the medusahead was green and didn’t catch fire readily. However, the burning killed it allowing other plants to grow. I want to burn the rest of it but I’m a bit worried about burning now–even if the burning would be permitted now. Maybe next year.
Throw in a littel bird watching in the morning.
Spend some time petting Stephanie…
after trimming her feet which she considers to be an insult.
More bird-watching.
Scrounged and cut wood to fit inside the feeders so that hay won’t fall onto the backs of the sheep.
Jackie and Chris came out about 1 to help with halter breaking. (By the way, thanks to all the help, the lambs are showing remarkable improvement after only 3 days.) I thought a couple of them had rather droopy ears.
I pulled these out of one ear and found one other lamb with foxtails bothering her, although not lodged like these were. It makes me wonder how many I’m missing.
That’s about half the day, but a long enough post.
Black Sheep Gathering is coming up at the end of next week so it’s time to halter break lambs. A few friends came to help.
The lambs behaved fairly well for their first time on halters.
Bottle-baby Nellie had other ideas.
She was a true drama queen. Halter breaking-Day 2 is today.
I spent yesterday at Spinning on the Farm, an event hosted by the Sonoma County Fiber Trails. Beautiful location, great weather, fun people. It’s hard to know what to take to an event like this. It’s only one day and it takes a lot of time to take apart my whole shop, box it all up, load it, set up the booth, take it all down, load the trailer again, put it all back in the shop. Is it worth taking it all? I find that there is usually no one big seller and I usually sell a little of everything so that’s what I take.
Isn’t that a beautiful backdrop for a booth? I brought dyed Merino roving, silk/merino fiber and scarf kits, latchhook pillow kits, notecards, and books…
…WoolPets felt kits, Thomas Joseph notecards and buttons, and spinning tools…
…yarn…and much more.
Spinners get their gear to and from the parking lot by tractor hay-ride.
What group of spinners gets together without thinking of food? As always, the potluck was delicious.
Spinners spend the day spinning, knitting, eating, visiting, and shopping in this beautiful setting above the Russian River.
There are only two reasons that I know of that Rusty doesn’t want to go to the barn. One is THUNDER, which we don’t have very often. Here is the other:
Now that the rain has stopped (and, by the way, it is supposed to be in the mid-90’s next week) this is Balloon Season. I had another Border Collie who was also afraid of the balloons. I’m not afraid of them but I resent them. If some of you like the romantic idea of floating around in a balloon then stop reading this. I don’t want to tarnish your image of them and spoil your fantasies.
Ant Farm. That’s what I feel like when there are balloons overhead. Am I supposed to look up from what I’m doing in the yard or the pasture and wave and smile for a photo? Or do I go about my normal work so “they” in the balloon can observe what we do in our natural setting? I tend to go in the barn and stay there until the balloons are far away.
This morning’s balloons never made it that close, but for Rusty it’s enough to look to the west and see this huge floaty thing that hisses and doesn’t belong in the sky.
When I have new fibers or yarns and am trying to figure out how to use them my first step is to sample. Sometimes this is a full-sized sample. For instance I go ahead and weave a blanket or a scarf, etc and learn as I go how the yarns work together and decide if I like it or if I should change something next time.
The silk challenge poses a different problem for me. I don’t have any idea of how these yarns will work and I don’t really have an end project in mind although a scarf is one idea. By the way, the responses to the last blog were good ideas
These are strips of silk. You can see the iridescence in some of them.
Here is another set of silk strips.
And this is the challenge. Choose a yarn for warp (choices are thin bamboo or a heavier silk) and weave something from these strips. I’ll report back when I have something. Any ideas?
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