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Moving On

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Lambing season is over (except for one sheep that I bought and is due much later). For people who like numbers the stats are on my website in the Farm Talk column–things like how many ewe lambs and number of twin births, etc. It’s actually interesting to me to see the tallies. Here is one of the last ewes to lamb. This is a yearling, Eliza, with a pretty ewe lamb.

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The weather was gorgeous this weekend and I got serious about sorting wool. Here is a sample from a particularly nice fleece.  This is a yearling out of Meridian Diamond and bide a wee Yuri–the crimp in this fleece looks like Yuri’s did. Maybe you have to be a spinner to appreciate this.

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I have a lot of wool to sort and I find myself getting distracted. I sat in the barn and took photos. This is Stephanie below.

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And Amaryllis.

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This banty hen sets on a nest of eggs all summer even though there has been no rooster since I’ve lived here.

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Once she settles on a nesting place I transfer her to this rubber feeder so that I can move it if necessary to get to a bale of hay. I started marking the eggs so that I could take the freshest, but then I lost track. Now I just let her have all she wants.

I got distracted by poppies too, but that will be another post.

Mother-of-the-groom dress

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My son is getting married May 2. I can’t wear my jeans and t-shirt. I hate to shop, but I do own a dress that I like and I think won’t make me feel too dumpy. But it is white…was white. For months my Wednesday afternoon weaving group (WeeklyWeavingWorkshop) has been helping with the planning of this project. Last night I finally dyed the dress. The dye job turned out well, but it wasn’t the color that was in the little box in the catalog. It was supposed to be sort of tan with a gold tone. This is more to the peachy side. dress-1

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I had planned to weave a v-shawl to go with this dress and had some of the yarns picked out. This color shift (you can’t really tell the true color in this photo–at least not on my computer) necessitated a change of plan.  The WWW group had planned a field trip to a huge yarn shop in Sacramento, so I took the sash of the dress and some cones of yarn from my stash. Here is the combination of my yarns and the ones I bought:

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You can’t tell but the balls in the upper left have green and a silver sparkle in them. We picked the other colors based on those. (By the way, the brides’ attendants will be wearing celudon green.)

I guess I’d better start weaving. This will be my first weaving project since I broke my arm in January. I am just assuming that I can work my way through this.  Hopefully I’ll be posting a photo in a week or so.

FOTF

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FOTF = Fiber Off The Floor. I taught two spinning classes yesterday at our Fiber Fun Retreat. The first was Blending Fiber & Color on the Drum Carder. The second was Spinning in Color. The drum carding was such fun, but I didn’t get to do it because they were using the drum carders, not me. As I was cleaning up I found the little bits of fiber under the chairs and that had been discarded from the drum carders.   fotf-1

Hmmm. I carded the fiber.

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I spun it and plied it with a dark gray singles.

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I wish that I’d had mosre students so that I’d have more waste fiber! I’m going to post a photo of this on Ravelry. I now have a Meridian Jacobs group there. Anyone can join! http://www.ravelry.com

Loose ends

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I’m trying to finish up all kinds of things that have been put off or just didn’t get started. Part of this is in anticipation of Meet the Sheep, our Open House that is this weekend. So there is clean up to do, class prep, etc. Also, I think I can start getting back to weaving soon and I’d better get caught up on some other stuff too. So here’s some of what I did yesterday:

1. I spent a lot of time on Jacob Sheep registrations. I am behind there because of my one-handed typing. I just started typing 2-handed again–I consider it therapy because the left hand doesn’t really bend the way I need it to.

2. Dealt with the ram that was butchered last week. Good thing it isn’t summer or I couldn’t have waited this long.

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3. Lolita finally lambed. Two weeks ago I treated her for hypocalcemia and other metabolic problems. She recovered and I’ve been waiting for these lambs–2 girls and a boy.

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By the way this ewe lambed at State Fair last year (August). That’s 6 lambs in a year. No wonder she had some problems. She seems fine now. I’m keeping plenty of food in front of her.

4. Taking photos of new lambs and here is who is in the way.

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5. Speaking of goats we are feeding 9 kids. It seems never ending although its better now that they’re on 3 x’s/day instead of 4. I do a lot of the kid feeding but Chris has been milking. He’ll be gone this weekend though and I told him that he has to get the milking machine cleaned up.

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6. I picked up butchered lambs and had no room left in the freezers. I had to take a turkey out to make room for the lamb, so I cooked a turkey last night. Can’t cook a turkey without the stuffing and mashed potatoes! At least we’ll have leftovers for quite awhile.

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I taught a dye class today.  In my dye classes I warn everyone that what we are doing is not repeatable but it’s always fun and so far I haven’t dyed a batch I didn’t like (or couldn’t overdye).

Here is the yarn and fiber that I dyed as a demo.

Here is the yarn and fiber that I dyed as a demo.

The 3 skeins were in balls when I put them in the dyepot. The fiber was on top. I added 4 colors of dye and steamed the whole thing.

The other method is to apply the dye to the fiber with a little more control and then steam.

The other method is to apply the dye to the fiber with a little more control and then steam.

This batch is ready for the pot.

This batch is ready for the pot.

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Time for kids

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Now that most of the lambs are here the goats are kidding. These are my sons’ Toggenburg dairy goats–there are 4 to kid this year.

This is Chris with the little doe kid born last week.

This is Chris with the little doe kid born last week.

Today's triplet bucks.

Today's triplet bucks.

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Its playtime in the pasture!

Its playtime in the pasture!

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Light My Fire

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If you are a faithful Meridian Jacobs blog reader you may remember my attempts last fall to get the sheep to eat and/or trample the shoulder high dallas grass. Dallas grass is a late summer perennial that takes over the pasture. There is so much thick dead grass that nothing grows under it.In this photo see the little bit of green with all that dead grass that takes over the field. (That’s a hay field in the background.)

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My oldest son is a firefighter for the U.S. Forst Service and I talked him into burning the fields for me.

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These are my two sons. Chris is lighting the fire here–he will be working on a hotshot crew this summer after graduation.

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This is oldest son, Matt, and his friend, David. Matt is lighting the fire and David is hosing down the fiberglass posts to keep them from melting.

As the fire crew (also included my brother and a friend of Chris) was working I was working with a previously scheduled class. Talk about double-booking. In the shop we were  winding warp, warping looms, etc and I made a couple of quick trips out with the camera. Some of the class participants enjoyed the time spent in the barn watching lambs. The last 3  people here were treated to watching a lamb being born. However this was more interactive than observation as the lamb turned out to be a huge ram–over 12 lbs! Thanks to Chris for helping and  getting her  hands slimey (but not spotting her white shirt!).

Chris also stayed to help me get the electric fence back up so I could put the sheep out on the pasture. Unfortunately some of the insulators at the south end of the pasture were melted by the fire and the wire broke (burned?) So I need to do some fence repair in the morning.

More photos tomorrow to show the results of the burn.

They’re still coming

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It has finally stopped raining for awhile.  So I was after some action shots.

Wheee!

Wheee!

Triplets and three sets of twins today. That makes 48 lambs since last Tuesday!
Meridian Suzanne and her twins

Meridian Suzanne and her twins

Meridian Doris and triplets--up and nursing when I went back to the barn.

Meridian Doris and triplets--up and nursing when I went back to the barn.

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Broken arm update–The cast is replaced with a removeable brace, but the doctor says it will take 3 months for the bone to heal. Right now its held together by the screws. He gave me permission to pick up something the weight of a kleenex. Good thing my flock is easy to handle one-handed.