Last week we spent a few days in Napa as the guests of Dan’s former co-workers. On Tuesday we went on a hike northeast of Calistoga. It was a rainy Wednesday and we spent part of the afternoon on a tour of the Castello di Amorosa Winery.
The Castle was designed by Dario Sattui who modeled it after European 13th Century castles that fascinated him.
His blog tells about the evolution of his plan and the construction. The original plan in 1993 was for 8500 square feet, but by the time the Castle was complete in 2007, it was 136,000 square feet with 107 rooms and eight levels, four of which are below ground.
Sattui brought builders, brick-workers, and others from Europe and shipped containers full of old bricks, doors, hardware, and all kinds of other building materials that had been sourced from old castles in Europe. 
Although my first thought when I heard about this place was that I would the resent pretentiousness of spending this much money and “showing off”, but this is a fascinating place and it is very cool to visit it. 
The Great Hall.
There is an authentic 13th century fireplace at the end of the Great Hall. The guide told us that those two chairs are “authentic replicas”–they were left behind by a movie company who used this setting.
Dan noticed all of the iron work. All of it, including the bolts and nails was hand made. 
Stone is all hand-chiseled.
After walking through some of those ground-level rooms we saw the equipment that is used in modern wine-making.
But then we went downstairs into the lower levels.
There are 900 feet of caves in four levels.
This barrel room is constructed with impressive brick Roman cross-vaulted ceilings.
Barrel tasting in the barrel room.
I will admit here that I am not a wine drinker. Dan and I were both more interested in the tour than the wine tasting but we stayed for that too. There were only about a dozen of us and the guide-turned-wine-expert poured about 8 or 9 different wines to sample.
I finally found a wine that I liked…
… and I’ll admit that it’s sweet and a little fizzy so I might as well just buy fizzy juice at Safeway, right? 
Leaving the castle. This door reminds me of the one in the Wizard of Oz moviewhere the wizard opens the little panel to look through at Dorothy.
View from the Castle to the hills where we hiked the day before.
After leaving we headed back down the valley. Someone had suggested a tour or a stop at the CIA. My first thought was that would be interesting since I read a lot of suspense/intrigue books, but a CIA headquarters in Napa? It didn’t take me too long to get the context–Culinary Institute of America. I had driven by this for years, first as the Christian Brothers Winery, but had never gone in.
I took one photo and then my phone died. So this is it–one of hundreds of odd corkscrews and other wine related gadgets. You know, the feet are some of the few parts of the butcher lambs that aren’t used at this time. Could this be in my future?
My regular vet was out of town and I called U.C. Davis. The equine vets came out and evaluated her. This radiograph shows that there is slight rotation of the bone, which should be parallel to the hoof wall, but the coffin bone has not dropped down to the sole, which can happen in severe cases. 
Temporary pain relief was provided by some cushy pads that were measured and then cut to fit.
A paste of betadyne and sugar was applied to help the foot dry out…
…and then the pads were taped in place. 
This was just to help cushion her feet until the farrier could get here for the next trim.
She was also prescribed a variety of medications to help with pain and weight loss, some of which I had used before.
The instructions said to wrap the foot with plastic wrap when you first try the orthotics so that you can send them back if they don’t fit. 
That is easier said than done. I got the plastic on the foot OK but by the time I had her standing on the orthotics they weren’t in exactly pristine condition anymore. 
I decided that I’d just have to go for it and put the boots on.
What an amazing difference they made. This is the first time I’ve seen Amaryllis walk without obvious pain in weeks if not months. I don’t know if this is a permanent fix, but at least she is more comfortable now and will maybe be able to get a little exercise–even if that is just me leading her around the corral every day.
This local church was booked for any of the Fibershed group who wanted to spend the night after the long day at the Symposium.
It is a great place to stay for anyone traveling in that area. 
This was originally a house that was purchased from the Frick family in 1950 and turned into a church. There is a fascinating multi-level maze of rooms and halls and stairways. This view looks down from the third floor on what was originally the family’s living room.
I love this dining area, partly because the table is of the same era (at least from looking at some of it’s features) as the table that my mom bought and we still use, although this one is in much better shape than ours.
I stayed in this bedroom with five other women. There are several bedrooms with different numbers of beds. I think the place can accommodate 36 people.
When I got up on Sunday morning I decided to take a walk before our meeting and headed up a road I found behind the church.
This is my kind of Sunday morning.
The road I found led me back down to the main road and Tomales Bay.
It is great when you find open space accessible to the public.
Rebecca pointed out huckleberries which were still on the bushes, although the normal harvest season was over. I wouldn’t have known and would have avoided these unknown berries.
Stephanie (wearing her handknit Jacob sweater) ate her share as did the rest of us.
This is a much wetter area than where I usually find myself and there were still signs of the previous night’s rain.
Another testament to the dampness were the large slugs that we saw.
The view overlooking Tomales Bay. What a beautiful day we had!
As we were coming back down from the ridge that has a view of the ocean, another hiker coming up the hill saw our silhouettes and offered to take our photo. This is the view that she saw.
Sheepdog Debbie sent her out to gather up the sheep.
Debbie’s sheep are pretty dog-broke because they are used to being moved by dogs.
So for a Border Collie like Ginny (or me) it’s not very hard to get them to move.
There were a couple who didn’t want to play the game though.
Ginny moved the sheep toward the gate…
…and held them there while Sheepdog Debbie sorted a few out into the other field.
This is a pet sheep who is one of the ones who was standing near Debbie.
Ginny looks pretty good here.
I think that I should go back to Sheepdog Debbie’s place and get to work with her sheep. They don’t have those nasty horns like ours do.
As I said in one of the previous posts this theme started with the idea of using the old windows that were around here. As you enter the gallery you see the title and the Artist’s Statement. If you want to read that click here.
This is the wall to the right…
…and these are some of the sheep.
More sheep.
Continuing around the gallery there is this collection of photos. I used two of these six-pane windows to display photos and give a feel for the farm. These are not for sale because they are too rotten (people have asked) but some of the photos have been matted or framed and are for sale.
This is the Solano Colors wall and the yarns are the 
If you look at the previous photo again you’ll see that the shawls and the yarn are hanging on what looks like bamboo. I decided to use the Arundo (an invasive species that grows on our north border and had big hollow stalks like bamboo) for hanging the pieces in the show. It was in keeping with the rest of the props (stuff found on the farm), I have an infinite supply of it, I could cut it to any size, and it is free. The perfect solution! Originally I had planned to use the Arundo for weaving, but I just didn’t get to it. On the morning I was to set up the show I got up early with a lot on my mind. I got out the loom that I had already warped for this and I wove this piece. It inspires me to do more because I think it is very cool.
Moving on around the room this is the next grouping. Those scarves were woven on a space-dyed warp that I dyed a few years ago and found in a box on the shelf. Do you see something hanging to the left?
I wanted to do something interesting with the weeping willow branches after stripping the leaves for the dye pots. I tried weaving with them but I think I like this mobile best.
The Sunflower wall is around the corner. These are rayon chenille scarves in the colors of the sunflower field that was Across the Road last summer. I didn’t just stick with the yellows and oranges of the flowers but included all the colors of the fields.
Here is a closer view of the flower scarves.
In addition to the window pane photo collage, I included this piece that is not for sale. I wove this years ago when we lived and worked on our family dairy.
This close-up includes my daughter carrying milk buckets, my sheep, and our pony.
Here is another farm photo collection.
These ponchos and ruanas use the same yarns as the Solano Colors wall, but mostly in natural sheep colors. There are also a couple of handspun Jacob pieces here.
Close up of a ruana.
The display in the center of the room is really panels out of my sheep trailer. I used them to hang my blankets and some scarves.
Here is an overall view of the room…
…and this is the table in the doorway when you come in. The notebook is for visitors’ comments. I’d love to see your comments as well.
Friends (Lisa and Dona?) said “you should use those old windows that are in back”. They were thinking that I could weave using the windows as weaving frames. They like that sort of thing. I like it too, but I haven’t actually done much of it. My weaving is more functional than decorative–like blankets, shawls, and scarves. I admire things to hang on the wall, but my house has hardly any wall space, and in my world things that hang on the wall just get covered with dust and cobwebs. Still, one point of doing a show is to move outside what is your same-old-stuff.
Wednesday, October 25, 2017. That date was stuck in my head. I had to be Ready. My friends showed up when the gallery opened at 9:30 and we unloaded the truck. All those white cubes were in the gallery from the previous show. The first decision to be made was which cubes to leave for my show. The Artery Display Committee needs to know how many they can use for the other store displays, but the person doing the gallery show gets first choice.
I wasn’t really sure but narrowed it down to Not Very Many, keeping some of the larger ones.
Organizing by color.
Half way through the day I needed to get my signs printed for the entry. My friends were going to go get lunch and I asked them to bring back a slice of pizza. They know me well. It was touching that they brought back my favorite beverage, but saved for special stress-invoking occasions like being at the fair all day.
Lunch break.
As Dona and Mary left at 5-ish I think they wondered if I’d spend the night there.
Keeping track of all the pieces in the show by my inventory number and the show number (not the same), entering pieces into the Artery computer, applying barcodes to the tags, applying bar codes to the sales list at the desk, applying sticky numbers to the wall for each piece. I could have used a chocolate milk. I finished up at about 1:30 on Friday.
This is the display in the front window.
Putting up the Solano Colors wall.
Working on the Sunflower Wall.
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