Category Archives: Fiber

Fleeces Revisited

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I haven’t finished getting the wool ready to send to the mill. Holidays get in the way. Now it’s COLD. Farm Club members have been helping and I think one more afternoon of skirting and sorting will do it. Sending wool off in January means I’m way ahead of my usual schedule.

If you are not excited about wool these photos won’t be very interesting. But to me they are a precursor of beautiful yarn and blankets.DSC_7777Alison’s fleece. The 3 x 5 cards provide scale (as well as remind me of whose wool is whose).DSC_7782 Eliza’s fleece

 

AthenaAthena’s fleece is a little shorter than the others, but very soft.  DSC_7798  Miller is a ram lamb born last March. This fleece is only 9 months growth. I can’t wait for next year’s.DSC_7816Hattie’s fleeceDSC_7793Did I say it was cold while we were working? Mary and Dona helped one day and Linda on another. DSC_7811Here was the best place to stand–a south-facing wall in the sun. We already finished with your fleece, Jazz.

Fondling Fleeces

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On Shearing Day I sold over 20 fleeces but I was so busy that I didn’t get a change to really look at them.  Today some Farm Club members came to help skirt and sort fleeces.

DSC_6650Most of the fleeces that are left will be sorted into white, black, and gray. That’s what those barrels in the background are for. However, I’m keeping my eyes open for a couple of fleeces for some special projects that I have in mind. The wool on the table is Donna’s fleece.

DSC_6655 This is what Donna’s fleece looks like from the cut side. Isn’t that a beautiful shade of gray?

Donna 937Here is Donna.

DSC_6671Here is a sample of Ventura’s fleece. This is another that I may spin myself.

Here are some more pretty fleeces.

DSC_6658

 

DSC_6663 Ginseng is a lilac lamb. Notice the change in color in the length of the staple–lightest color near the skin. It will be interesting to see what this fleece is like next year.

GinsengThis is Ginseng and her spots don’t appear light.

DSC_6640

 

Onyx’s fleece. I’m keeping this one also.

 

Color Everywhere I Look

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It’s been awhile since I wrote a blog post–at least on paper…well, on on the computer. But you know what I mean. I write a lot of them in my head but they don’t always make it here. So I was looking at my latest photos to see which in-my-head blog post to put here and these are the things that caught my eye.

 The dye class that I taught last week.

The v-shawl class that I taught last week.

Socks that Jackie made for me but it hasn’t been the season to wear them.

The color wheel class that I taught at Lambtown on Sunday.

Georgia O’Keefe’s Purple Petunia which is now on the loom.

But when you think you’ve found the most fabulous colors of yarn, fiber, and dye, you walk outside  and see this:

 

A sunset from last week.

 

I think I need to find yarn in these colors.

 

 

Where will you be Feb. 21?

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I know where I will be. I just transferred the breeding notes from my clipboard to my 2012 calendar (while learning to use the calendar in my Mac) and look what I discovered. I knew that a lot of sheep were bred all at once, but it’s more striking when I see it in this format.

That’s 23 ewes due in a 5 day span. I usually aim for March 1 lambs, but I got antsy and thought I’d start breeding a week earlier. After all, my friends will all be lambing and I’ll want to have a few of my own before the rush starts in March.  I thought wrong. There are about 30 more in addition to those first 23. I guess I’ll be warmed up by the time they lamb.

I’ve been finishing up registration applications for this year’s lambs. It’s interesting to look at baby photos of sheep.

This is 11038, now known as Rosie. Notice how her pink nose develops pigment as she gets older.

Rosie was developing very nice horns and I had my eye on her from the start as one I wanted to keep. She got in the ram pen when she was a few months old and, in trying to get back with the ewes, she broke off both horns. They are still stubby, but stout.

Here is another. This is ram lamb 11094, the last ram of 2011, and sired by Sweetgrass Clint.

He is named Clapton and will be the sire of several lambs in 2012.

Clapton doesn’t look quite so nice after shearing…

…but his fleece is sure pretty.

A sheep adventure with 2 friends and a dog

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I heard via e-mail that there were a couple of sheep in need of rescue. The owners had lost their property and had moved out of state. They needed someone to pick up the sheep. I don’t normally take in unwanted sheep, but these were two that had been purchased from me as lambs and had never been around other sheep or goats. So I rounded up my friends (Chris and Colleen) with the enticement (bribe) that there was another fiber event going on in the area and my dog and we drove to Placerville. The first hard part was finding the place. We had very detailed instructions, but I’m glad that there was someone to read them as I was driving.

I knew that Rusty couldn’t effectively herd these sheep with a cone on his head so I found a rib band from our collection of arm/foot/shoulder injury paraphernalia and put that around his middle so that the drain tube wouldn’t get hung up on a bush.  The sheep gathering itself went surprisingly well (you can read about that on Rusty’s blog as he described it fairly well, if you can get over his know-it-all attitude). What Rusty didn’t say is that, even with his skill and expertise, we never would have got those sheep in without the extra friends and the panels.

Next stop was the Yarnival, a celebration of the opening of the PluckyFluff workshop at a winery in Placerville. It seems like I usually recognize everyone at out local fiber events, but the PluckyFluff following includes a different group of people. There were vendors, live music, and pizza on the winery grounds. I don’t usually take my dog to events like this, but I couldn’t leave him in the hot car (the sheep were OK in the back with the shade) so he came along.

The yarns are wild and crazy. I’m not sure how you actually use most of them, but they are certainly fun to look at.

This is a collection of handspun yarns from around the world made into the “world’s largest skein”.

Here is a detail of that yarn.

There were a few sheep and goats around. Isn’t this a beautiful colored Wensleydale? Do you notice the color of the dirt? Dirt in the Placerville area is red. That sure makes for a beautiful sheep, but I’m told that under that red color this sheep is really a brilliant white.

A huge Angora rabbit.

The little girl at the end of the bunny’ leash was walking it right towards Rusty. I told Rusty to lie down and cautioned the girl to avoid the dog.

An amusing sign.

Ideas for my husband since we have at least 3 places that need handrails.

 

Carding in Color

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I taught a carding class this morning. The participants created  roving by combining 3 multi-colored batts and also carded blends of wool and alpaca and silk.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of the finished products, but I did photograph the small balls that I carded after everyone left. This is from the waste that was left on and under the tables.

Community Cloth Celebration

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I have posted before about Rebecca Burgess’s Fibershed project. Rebecca made a personal commitment that for a year she would wear only clothes that originated within 150 miles of her front door. Think about it. That’s not an easy task. This project is still ongoing, but yesterday there was a celebration of the project and of  Community Cloth , an effort to build the first farm-based cotton mill in the U.S. To have a viable “Fibershed” there must be a source of fine threads so that we can create cloth for t-shirts, jeans, and “regular” clothes, not just the kind of garments that most of us think of when we knit or weave. It is exciting that it is happening right here in northern California on Sally Fox’s organic cotton farm.

I drove over to Point Reyes Station with 3 friends. Here are some photos of our evening.

The event was held at Toby’s Feed Barn, originally a feed store and still a feed store, but also an event center and gift shop. Chris and Diane and I wandered around town for a little while before the event officially started.

There was great music all evening.

I provided a blanket and a lambskin for the silent auction.

Diane, Chris, and Shelby enjoying before-dinner beverages.

When it was announced that those people wearing their own hand-made garments would be first in line at the food table we all put our outerwear back on.

Check out this bicycle-powered drum carder. The power-source for the new mill will be the sun, not bicycles!

The highlight of the evening was the fashion show. Models wore clothing created by local designers from local fibers for Rebecca’s Fibershed project as well as many natural-colored cotton garments sewn from Sally’s cotton fabric stash. This is the sweater knit from Meridian Jacobs 2-ply yarn. Note the straw-bale runway!

This model is wearing natural-colored cotton garments. The slide show in the background was going on throughout the event. Paige Greene is a fabulous photographer and she, being the daughter-in-law of a fiber grower, has documented the project from it’s inception.

Those are my rams looking on as another model passes by.

Great event, great friends, and you know what is really great? There is so much enthusiasm, especially from people younger than me. I want to keep producing fiber, teaching about fiber, weaving, but not only do I not have time to adequately market my products, I don’t have the energy  to think about it or the expertise to do it successfully.  There are people out there who appreciate what people like me are doing and want to help!

A Fiber Weekend

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I spent the weekend at the Sacramento Weavers and Spinners Open House. When I wasn’t helping in the Sales Area I demonstrated carding with my Ashford drum carder.  I chose a fleece from the November shearing and washed it in two batches. I also wanted to experiment with my new Power Scour to find out how much I needed to get the wool clean.  The first 2 pounds of greasy wool weighed about 1 1/2 pounds when cleaned. I don’t think I got all of the lanolin out so I’ll probably increase the amount of Scour for the next batch. Even if there was still a bit of lanolin in the fiber it carded beautifully. I took this batch to the Open House on Saturday and here is what it looks like after carding.

That will provide a lot of spinning time. I was sure impressed with the drum carder. It breezed through that fiber.

These are a couple of skeins spun by a friend of mine using fleeces she bought from me. Aren’t they lovely? The wool in the lower skein is blended with carded sari silk which adds beautiful flecks of color.

This is a close-up of one of the pieces I had at the show. It is a tencel scarf woven in undulating twill.

There are some very talented weavers in SWSG. Here are a couple of stunning pieces woven by members.

The warp for this screen is silk covered wire and it is woven with rice paper “yarn” if I remember correctly. (I thought that I’d remember from yesterday to today without taking a close up photo of the tag.)