The Second Week Ends with Fiber Fusion

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Robin

I ended the last post with double doses of tylenol with codeine. I decided that I should treat myself this week the way I should have last week–relax, sleep, sleep some more. It didn’t work quite like that because it was Spinzilla week, but it was much better than the previous week. People came here and I didn’t have to do much else. I’ll write another post about Spinzilla and Team Meridian Jacobs later. However, there was another fiber event on the weekend following Lambtown–Fiber Fusion in Chico. spinzilla spinners I had not planned to be a vendor here. Instead I was scheduled for a talk about the fiber business. I brought a couple of sheep and fiber, yarn, buttons, and lambskins. Some of Team Meridian Jacobs made the two hour drive here to spin together.One very dedicated Team member, who lives in Illinois, scheduled a California visit to coincide with Spinzilla week so we were able to visit with her in person, all the while keeping those wheels going.Spinning side-by-side Jacob roving. Shaul's Our neighbors on one side were Shaul’s, who make all the panels and feeders that I use in the barn. I brought a few more pieces home with me.On the other side was Elvis, the yak. Jackie had a booth inside where it got hot and stuffy. We had the more pleasant conditions with a nice breeze. Although I always enjoy hanging out with my friends and I was thrilled to meet our distant team member, I was still not back to normal and this felt like a really long day. I didn’t look forward to the two hour drive home, but then I saw the most beautiful sky and hundreds of geese flying in from the south. I had to stop. I pulled off the freeway at an exit that I recognized as one where I had slept for an hour or so on my way back from Oregon in June. This is the view to the northwest. sunset, Colusa Co? You can’t make out the geese in these but here is the view with my other camera:These don’t do the scene justice.

This stop along the freeway was a big boost in a long day. I need to go back up there this fall or winter and spend some time in the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge.

Weaving and Other Woolly Things

Posted on September 26, 2015 by Robin

I’ve been checking things off my endless list.

Make buttons. There are over 150 buttons here.Weave more products to take to Fibershed’s Grow Your Jeans event on October 3. This are four shawls using very soft wool from Anderson Ranch.

Deal with sheepskins. I got one batch in and one batch out. At first I got four boxes with 29 sheepskins that were not mine. Those went back to the tannery. Yesterday I got the boxes with my 30 sheepskins and I photographed them for my website (although they aren’t there yet). Not artsy photos, but I need to show the size and the color and this is how it has worked best for me. In addition I shipped off 42 more sheepskins and am keeping my fingers crossed that I get them back before December. That’s a pretty big investment and I need to be able to sell them before Christmas.

Weave a blanket for a customer using her handspun yarn that she sent me last year. I hate having things hanging over my head. When I was finally ready to get to it I opened the box that I though held her wool. Nope–there was something else in that box. Then I almost panicked wondering if it was possible that her yarn had ended up out in the big yard/estate sale that I had over Labor Day. Fortunately that was not the case.

I had spent a lot of time thinking about how best to use this yarn. One worry was that using yarns that are very different is likely to result in tension issues and different elasticity in the finished piece (showing up as ruffly places where it should be smooth and flat). I’m glad that I waited to plan this blanket because one of the last emails that I had from the spinner had the word “gradient” in it. That gave me the inspiration for how to wind the warp and weave it.

I made a gradient from the darkest brown all the way to white in the warp and then I wove with the same pattern. This is double width so this photo shows only the half that goes from dark to mid-brown. The lighter half is underneath. After weaving and unfolding the blanket…

…this is what you get. This is not a very good photo but I just don’t have a good place to take a photo of a full size blanket spread out. I am really pleased with this piece and am inspired to do some more like it.

One last thing. At Spinners Night Out one of the spinners said that her husband had made a discovery in his bowl of popcorn:

Mothers & Daughters

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Robin

I was trying to get photos of ewe lambs that I want to register. The sheep had come in from the pasture so it was more difficult. In addition the lambs (who don’t look much like lambs anymore) are still sticking close to their mothers.Alexandria and her lamb, above and below.

Ginseng and her lamb (who is sold but still here). Foxglove and lamb, Foxy. She will be at the Lambtown Sheep Show in a couple of weeks. Foxy and Foxglove.

Donkey break.Hot Lips and her lamb, Honey.

Ginny’s First Lessons

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Robin

Ginny is 11 months old and a few weeks ago I took her for “instinct testing” at Herding-4-Ewe, a training facility just a mile from my house.This is a photo that Dona took on that day. Clearly Ginny is interested. Debbie, the owner of Herding-4-Ewe, makes a determination if she thinks a dog is ready to begin training. Ginny had her first lesson last week and today was the second. Ginny before 2nd lesson Here Ginny is waiting outside the arena while Debbie gets the dog-broke sheep out.Pretty soon I’ll be the one in the arena with Ginny and we’ll both be getting a lesson (and I won’t be taking photos), but for now Debbie is the one working with Ginny. Look at how controlled Ginny is. This is the look of a dog that is thinking and can learn something new.

She starts off with her favorite direction, “come-by”, or clockwise. Her tail is down and she is focused. Dogs have a direction that feels better to them (similar to people being right- or left-handed). They avoid going the other way. One goal of training is to eventually get the dog willing and confidant in going in the less comfortable direction. (By the way, Rusty’s best direction is “away”, the opposite of Ginny’s.

In this photo Ginny is heading “away” in the less comfortable (for her) direction. Notice her tail up. That’s a sign of a dog that is not thinking. She’s in “play” or “chase” mode like in the first photo.

This is a calm dog.

This looks good for Day 2.

Splash Dog!

Posted on September 6, 2015 by Robin

This is the favorite Jump for the Toy spot. I took these photos with the iPhone.

Farm Club Appreciation Day

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Robin

I love my Farm Club, so I hosted a day just for them when there was no work (although Stephany came early just to help me stack hay in the barn), just food and visiting…oh, and party games. Thanks to Dona for all these photos. There is always good food when Farm Club does a potluck. No skimping on desserts. Kathleen shared her treasures from a recent trip to Russia that included seeing sheep and visiting with the shepherd in Gotland. Stephany charted an old Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern and is knitting it up in Imperial Yarn Company’s Columbia. Prizes were awarded to the winners of the party games. How many sheep pellets in the container? 660. Stephany seems stumped (or frightened) by the contents of the bag–things gathered from the barn. I had told everyone that there was nothing disgusting or dangerous.Mary shared the warp just off the loom. This is four towels from the Friendship Towel Kit supporting the Natural Dye Project in Guatemala. In the background is the preview of my big Estate Sale that will be over Labor Day weekend.

Beating the Commute

Posted on August 29, 2015 by Robin

For the last couple of weeks I’ve seen helicopters transporting equipment and parts for work on the high voltage power lines that are about a mile from here. I get a good view from the haystack, but even with my 300 mm lens I have to do a lot of cropping to bring in the image and then it’s not sharp. Today it wasn’t just equipment. They were transporting people from one tower to the next. There were two helicopters going back and forth. The yellow one has equipment in this photo. This was fascinating to watch. Here is a very grainy close-up. That looks like a giant picnic basket. Do you suppose it’s lunch time? Off to the next job.

Views from the Pasture

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Robin

This morning in the pasture.

White-tailed kite.

Road Trip to TX – Day 10 (Part 2)

Posted on August 11, 2015 by Robin

When I left off the last Road Trip post we had just entered New Mexico on the evening of the tenth day of our adventure.

When we drive I have a mapbook open on my lap–not because we don’t know where to go, but because it is more interesting to see the names of geographic features and points of interest that me might not otherwise know as well as figure out which are public lands where we can camp. I supplement that with looking things up on the iPhone.It was late and we needed to stay somewhere. I saw that if we veered off Highway 10 a bit we could camp in the Organ Mountains. The mountains lit by the setting sun, taken while driving up Highway 70.Water tank outside of the Space Mural Museum at the town of Organ (population about 300 in 2010). Organ Mountains, NM (1) This is a photo of the east side of the Organ Mountains, taken as we drove past the entry sign. That is because I was actually looking for something a little different. I don’t remember what I googled but what I found on the iPhone was Organ Pipe National Monument which, yes, does have camping, and where we figured there would still be space on a weekday night in the middle of the summer. We had to drive a few miles down the road before we could turn back to the road to the campgrounds. A view of White Sands at the base of these mountains. White Sands Missile Range is almost 3200 square miles and the town of White Sands is at the southern end. We had considered going to the White Sands National Monument before going to Texas but it was one of those times where even though we drove “right by it” according to the map we weren’t really that close. We chose to go to Carlsbad Caverns instead. Here was White Sands again. The map shows that there is a visitor center and a museum in the town that is separate from the National Monument, which is 40 miles or so further north. But this was late in the day and at this point we were on a schedule to get home.

We found the campgrounds which were at the base of the Organ Mountains. What I didn’t figure out until I was looking at my iPhone later that night was that the reason the road didn’t look right and the other descriptions were a bit off was that we were at BLM’s Organ Mountains National Recreation Area, not Organ Pipe National Monument which is in southern Arizona. OOPS! Good thing it all worked out or we might have found ourselves trying to find a motel back in Las Cruces.

Ginny and the Drone

Posted on August 9, 2015 by Robin

We had an interesting day here yesterday. Sarah and Bruce Barker of RightAfterThis.com were here to film an episode of a documentary series called Farm to Table and focused, at least for the first episodes, on women in farming. Farm Club members were here to weigh and sort the older lambs and Sarah and Bruce flimed us as well as other aspects of the farm.

The only chance I had to take photos was when I heard Ginny barking at Bruce’s drone. Backgrounds aren’t great and I didn’t have a very long lens so I cropped a lot, but here are the photos I got of Ginny.