Week in Review – SF, Sheep, Weaving

Posted on December 6, 2023 by Robin

So much for my one blog post every day routine. It’s been a week. I think I had a set back last weekend. I often work on the computer in the late evening. Last Friday I went to bed earlier than normal because I had to get up early for the next day’s event. That backfired. I woke up at 3 a.m. and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Charlene (Integrity Alpacas, creator of Gardener’s Gold, and my down-the-road neighbor) and I left at 5 a.m. for San Francisco to be part of the Fibershed booth at the Ferry Building Farmers’ Market.

We arrived at dawn and some people were already setting up. It had been raining and continued to rain and drizzle off and on all day.

This is the opposite view from our location.

A few Fibershed producers arrived, and we finished setting up in time for the market to open. There were twelve producers represented at the booth.

Do you recognize any fabric here? Gynna (creator of Soil to Soil Market is using some of my woven pieces to create earrings! (FYI – Soil to Soil Market is open, there are still only two of us listed while there is more behind-the-scenes work.)

This was a cold, wet day. Thankfully we were able to pack up when the market was over at 2. When Charlene went to the parking garage to get her truck she found it, along with six other vehicles, had been broken into. Her rear passenger side window was shattered and the truck had been searched. The next day after, a night of freezing temperature, the front passenger window had shattered and you could tell where it had been hit first but hadn’t yet broken.

I didn’t feel warm until that night in bed (early). I’m ready to stay home.

Back to farm life.

This is SilverSun, one of the March 2023 lambs. I changed coats a couple of weeks ago. Its always a gamble to figure out which coat is big enough to give room for more wool to grow but fits well enough to stay in place. I had bought some new coats last summer and I they fit a little differently. She had probably got a back leg out of the strap and then the front was loose enough to get a front leg through. Eventually the neck opening was around her middle and she was trapped with the coat dragging underneath. The other sheep were harassing her and she couldn’t do anything about it.

Here she is in one of the old style coats that has been patched. That’s a better fit.

Ewes (and a goat) in the small field behind the shop.

I’ve been focused on weaving…all the weaving that I wish I had done earlier in the year to be ready for the holidays. These are three wool shawls now at The Artery in Davis.

I’m also creating other pieces using odd bits of handwoven fabric. These pillows are at The Artery.

At Spinners Day Out on Friday a friend who had harvested our pomegranates brought me a treat of pomegranate soda!

Also at Spinners Day Out, our youngest friend, daughter of one of the original Farm Club members, went to the barn to visit with Jade. (That’s a stuffed kitty snuggled in her clothes.)

Back to normal work–weaving, website, sheep, etc.

At the Loom

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Robin

It hasn’t been all hiking and lambing. I’ve been at the loom too. This is a king-size blanket I wove for a customer who had their llama/wool yarn spun at Yolo Wool Mill. I also wove 2 throws for this person. These are two lap blankets woven of wool from sheep at the Barinaga Ranch, a sheep dairy in Marin County.This is a close up of all four blankets on that warp. The brown weft is Jacob wool dyed with black walnut. I’m always trying to get better photos. The photo above is shot on AWB (auto white balance). The one below, shot on the cloudy setting, isn’t that much different, although on my computer the AWB photo has more of a bluish cast.

But look at the next one. The white balance was set to “shade” which is where I took the photo. What is reality? I think it’s closer to the top two. I just finished a warp for three shawls. This is CVM yarn in the warp with different locally produced weft yarns. Same shawls with white balance set to “shade”. Detail of shawl on the left.

This is on the loom now. An experiment. Hopefully all those holes will fill in when it is finished.

The pieces above will be for sale on my website and at the Fibershed Marketplace after our photoshoot that is in a few weeks.

Fibershed Photoshoot

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Robin

How does the Fibershed Marketplace get all those great photos? It takes a lot of work from everyone who is involved in the photoshoot but the photos are a credit to the skill of our wonderful photographer, Paige Green. I hosted the spring photoshoot and my friend, Jackie, organized everything. Here are some of my photos from the day.We arranged items that were to be photographed. These are my Jacob shawls and scarves. Jackie‘s hot pads and bangles.Katharine Jolda‘s felted jacketWe turned one of my stalls into a dressing room. Shelby is a Farm Club member who consented to be one of our models. First photos of the day were Sally Fox’s sheepskins. There is a lot going on behind the scenes to create these photos. Alisa is Jackie’s daughter and she became one of the models. Her boyfriend, Mark, was indispensable in assisting Paige with her equipment all day.

This is Brooklyn, our youngest model. She wore a hooded jacket and wool socks. Meryl is being fitted by Marlie. Paige used a variety of settings during the day. In this scene Allie modes her rabbit-skin vest.
Rusty was involved in the activity all day. He will write his own blog post about his involvement. We used the sheep in the photos of my handwoven pieces. Meryl and Shelby modeled four shawls. Give us a few weeks and you’ll see all of these items and more available on the Fibershed Marketplace website.

Field Trip Season

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Robin

I found a new Season. Field Trip Season. I’ve had 4 field trips here in the last couple of weeks. I don’t get very good photos during field trips because I’m the one who is leading the field trip, but I’ll use a few. Today I’ll share yesterday’s field trip because I got to be a participant (as opposed to leader) of part of it.Fibershed sponsored a field trip for representatives of Smartwool, Northface, Lucy (and maybe others) to learn about our end of textile production. Many (most?) people who purchase and use fabric, individually or commercially, don’t necessarily have a sense of where it comes from. The goal of this trip was to expand the awareness of fiber production–the animals, the farmers, the soil and plants–and the importance of supporting sustainable local farms, and the idea that there is plenty of wool grown in N. CA but not the infrastructure to turn it into cloth. That is a primary goal of Fibershed–to set in motion the creation of that infrastructure and to create thriving businesses that support farmers, designers, fiber processers, and consumers. Whew! Pretty lofty goals? I am always amazed at what Rebecca (creator of Fibershed) has coming up next. I really hope that you’ll spend some time on the Fibershed website because I think it’s one of the most important non-profit groups you’ll find.

On to the field trip. I expected 5-6 people. There was a busload! First stop for us was the pasture. The sheep performed admirably. I had waited to move the fence for the day’s grazing until the field trip was here. The sheep rushed to the fresh pasture just like they always do. This is the group in the pasture. We spent a lot of time discussing pasture management, irrigation, choice of breed, wool types, etc. Friend, Dona, brought this board over, getting ready for Meet the Sheep on Saturday. Some of the braver visitors tried it out.

The second part of the tour was a trip to Mary Pettis-Sarley’s ranch in the hills west of Napa. Mary has a variety of sheep, cattle, and alpacas who live in a beautiful setting. She creates Twirl yarn using unique blends of the fibers she grows. The yarns are all natural colored or dyed with natural dyes from plants that grow on the ranch. The “I” in these labels indicates that the dyeplants are invasive species. A major challenge of raising livestock in the hills is the predator problem. Mary has 17 dogs, most of whom are various breeds of livestock guardian dogs (LGD). They can be intimidating when you drive onto the property, but aren’t so scary once they know you’re on the approved list (or maybe that you’re not a 4-legged hungry visitor). Mary let out the bottle babies… …and I think her part of the field trip won the Cuteness Factor award. We were accompanied by two of the pets on the way to Mary’s wool washing station.Now I’m jealous, not only of the property, but of this. Maybe I’d wash more of my own fleeces if I could figure out a set-up like this. Here is where the fleeces are dried. Mary had several fleeces spread out so that the visitors could handle them and feel the characteristics that we’d been talking about all day. A couple of scarves knit with Mary’s yarn. As I drove way I saw some of Mary’s cows. As it happens, these cows are the daughters and granddaughters of Jennie, a Brown Swiss cow that Mary got from us when we left our dairy life in 1998. Talk about happy CA cows. These truly have a happy life.Look at their view of the Napa Valley if they choose to look up from all that grass. (Alpacas in this photo–they were right next to the cows.)

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Robin

I finished 7 throws last week. Friends who saw them before washing tried to be polite but were un-impressed and maybe even shocked at how awful they looked. I used some yarn that had been spun several years ago at a mill that (I assume) uses a lot of spinning oil. The yarn on cones looks and feels like string that you would buy at the hardware store. The resulting blankets off the loom look and feel as though I wove them with string from the hardware store. Also, I wove them at a wide sett knowing that they would full.

See how open this is. You can easily stick a finger or a toe through this. And a cat would pull those threads and destroy it.

A trip through the washing machine to full (Not the way to wash a finished blanket–to do that see my instructions here)…

using Power Scour (normally for raw fleece, but this yarn was very greasy) changed that blanket into this:

Here is another before and after:

And another:

One of these blankets is a gift to the person from whom I got the wool several years ago. I’m sure she doesn’t see this blog so it will be a surprise until tomorrow when I take it to her. This blanket includes her dog hair that I washed and spun:

Here is one with Jacob weft:

All 7 blankets:

Fibershed photos

Posted on July 2, 2011 by Robin

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.

Community Cloth Celebration

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Robin

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!

Fibershed project

Posted on March 13, 2011 by Robin

Last year I met Rebecca Burgess when she taught a natural dye class at my place. She told me of her Fibershed project and she describes it much better than I can:

“The Fibershed Project is a challenge: To live for one year, in clothes made from fibers that are solely sourced within a geographical region no larger than 150 miles from my front door; this includes the natural dye colors as well!

Why? The textile industry is the number one polluter of fresh water resources on the planet, as well as having an immense carbon footprint. The average CO2 emitted for the production of one T-shirt is up to 40 times the weight of that shirt. The goal of this project is to both show and model that beauty and fashion can function hand-in-hand with sustainability, local economies, and regional agriculture.”

Rebecca visited today along with designer, Kacy, and photographer, Paige. I donated some yarn to the project last year and Kacy designed a sweater as part of the wardrobe.

This is Rebecca wearing her Jacob sweater and showing off her new book (with photos by Paige) which will be out in April. I will have some here.

The three creative women who were here this morning. You’ll be hearing much more from these three.

In the meantime while we were busy Dora lambed with twins:

Meridian Jacobs' Blog

Life on the farm and at the loom.

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