Solano Grown debut

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Here we are in our spiffy new shirts standing in front of Chief Solano after the Board of Supervisors meeting in which we presented Solano Grown. If you really want to see Chief Solano you need to see this photo.

Although the presentation was only about 5 minutes we were in Fairfield from 9:30 to about 1:30. We had to wait a few hours until it was our turn and then we worked on a few more things to be ironed out as far as logo use and membership guidelines.

Finally back home, I worked on untangling the gold thread for the project on the loom now.

I have added the gold thread as a supplemental warp in part of the black border, but it doesn’t show up very well.

Lamb Festival

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The Lamb Festival (used to be Lambtown) was last weekend. I was so busy that I didn’t get very many photos of the event. I have been on the Board and organized the classes for 3 of the last 4 years, but I have already given notice for next year. Someone else can have a turn…maybe someone that doesn’t have quite as many things going on as me.  I had a vendor booth, taught, a class, managed the registration table, and showed sheep all at the same time. How? Thanks to my good Farm Club friends and others. Jacki, Shelby, Kathy, Tina, and Anna all helped. Shelby showed the sheep with the help of my husband. Too bad we don’t have photos of that. Granite, the ram lamb that won Reserve Champion at Black Sheep Gathering received a Champion ribbon although I’m not quite sure how the divisions were set up.  Here are a few photos.

This knitted vest was awarded “Best Item of 100% Jacob wool”, sponsored by meridian Jacobs. Isn’t that gorgeous?

And here is some beautiful Jacob novelty yarn.

My friend, Nancy Jane Campbell, did a fantastic job of organizing the Sheep to Shawl contest and the Spinning Contests. One of those was a spinning triathlon which included blind-folded spinning as well as spinning with rubber gloves.

The Lamb Festival was on Saturday but we had addional classes on Sunday, three of which were held at my place. While I taught a weaving class and Nancy Campbell taught knitting at the shop, Rebecca Burgess set up in the barn and  taught Natural Dyeing. Here are some photos of the class samples.

These are yarns that Rebecca brought with her. Rebecca has a fascinating message and you’ll hear about it in future posts. It’s too late now to explain more but if you google Fibershed you’ll find out about it.

And what was happening at home? I put these 4 ewes in with Savor before leaving for the Lamb Festival and when I came home they were all marked. I think my sheep are ready.

What do I do all day?

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What have I been doing all week? Way too much to write down and maybe not all that interesting. But I’m so busy that although I’m always taking photos and thinking of good blog posts I just haven’t had time.

Here are bits and pieces of this week.

I finally wove some more baby blankets. I have customers waiting.  After I took the blankets off the loom I realized that I had a lot of skipped threads along the left side of many blankets. I know why–has to do with combining 7 threads as one in the warp and trying to use 2 threads wound together on the pirn with a fly-shuttle. Just enough drag on the shuttle to cause it to catch the warp threads. AHHHH. That means a lot of fixing. My $/hour just went WAY down. Here are some of the 17 blankets.

These blankets will be on my website after I get better photos. That’s another thing I spent time on. I tried in the sun and in the shade and none of the photos were very good. Back to the drawing board.

I have projects on three looms right now. Two are for the November show at the Artery. One is for my friend, Irene, owner of  Cotton Clouds. That project will be a surprise, but here is a preview:


14 carat gold thread–use sparingly!

This is more of the project. All of these yarns are going into the warp!

In the meantime there are sheep things going on. Savor, one of the yearling rams, had been with a group of ewes and I needed to put him somewhere temporarily. I didn’t want to put him back with his buddy, Tioga, because I figured that they’d have to fight it out first and I can’t deal with that right now. So I gathered up the ram lambs that are left and put them all together. Usually the lambs bow down to the older and stronger ram and leave him alone. There is posturing, but if they know what’s good for them they won’t antagonize the big guy.

At first I thought it would be OK.

They look friendly enough, but finally Savor started threatening one of them more seriously. It happened to be a ram lamb who is already sold for breeding but hasn’t gone to his new home yet. I needed to separate them because I didn’t want to take a chance.

The ewes were all looking hopeful that they would get a chance to mingle with the rams. “We’re ready! Come hither!” Notice the double fence.

Last but not least–someone in this house has no problem taking naps:

Moving hay

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I went to a Sheep Field Day at UC Davis yesterday. Good program, but that’s not what this blog is about. Look what I found when I got home…

It may not look like it, but this is a good thing. This is what is left from 3 stacks of hay.  My husband had started to move it into the barn.

We have to stack all this hay by hand. Notice I say “we”. That’s used loosely. I helped after I got home, but I had gravity on my side for a lot of it. I am good at knocking the hay off the stack. Then I used the hand-truck to move the bales into the barn. Dan did all the stacking. I’m lucky that Dan likes to have a good work-out now and then.

Here is Dan dropping hay off the 4th stack. In 4 stacks of hay there are 320 bales. I bought 20 tons of alfalfa so each bale  is about 125 pounds.

All the hay is in the north end of the barn. (The hay in the stall is left over from last year.)

Its good to know that we can stack that much in one end of the barn.

It seemed that a Sunday morning newspaper was a privilege well deserved. Note cat position. It’s hard to get good photos of a black cat.

A welcome sight

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For the last several years I have been getting hay from a grower north of here. This year I ordered 4 blocks of hay and called several times to make sure that it would get here in time to get it in the barn before it rained. I was wondering if I needed to call again. Then I walked into the north end of the barn and out the south end and was face to face with a stack of hay! The first block was delivered while I was hauling sheep to butcher.

Three more blocks. This is a total of 320 bales.

It is fine stemmed and perfect for sheep.

While in the barn I took sheep portraits.

IDEAL Sunny’s Summer

Kenleigh’s Terraza

Meridian Fanny

Fanny’s daughter, Fran

Meridian Bridget

Amaryllis

Quail at dusk

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I love California quail and we have hundreds of them. They live in the blackberry bushes and the quailbush, both of which have grown completely out of control. When I went out to do chores I saw the quail on this fence rail and went back to the house for my camera. It didn’t take long before all the quail headed for the blackberries where they spend the night.

Overworked Computer?

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I had plans to do all kinds of stuff at my computer last night. Update my blog, make website changes, Facebook, update sheep lists after selling a lot of lambs, update photos of sheep, work on handouts for a weaving presentation, etc. Aren’t computers infuriating? It was soooo sloooooow. It took a half hour just to close the programs that were open. (I controlled myself and only clicked the red x or box  once for each task.) It took another half hour to for the computer to turn off and restart. I ran a mal-ware program overnight. No malicious content. Maybe the computer just needed a rest. This morning it seems OK although all I have asked of it so far is to show me e-mail.

Sometimes I have another problem when I work at the computer. This I can identify:

I’m told that getting an Mac would solve all of my computer problems, but I don’t think it would take care of the one above.

While I’m showing Ozzie photos, here is Ozzie with a mouse that friend, Jackie, knit and felted and filled with catnip. Isn’t it cute?

Petunias off the loom

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Remember this photo? Here are the results of my weaving:

I made a warp long enough for two throws. (They were going to be shawls but because I wanted to keep all 16 colors the warp was too wide to turn into shawls.) This photo is a throw woven with a fine cotton weft so which you see the warp stripes, although it’s hard to really see all the colors.

I wove the second blanket with chenille yarns in the same colors and order as in the warp. If you could see the whole blanket you’d see that it starts with green on this end and finishes with blue on the other.

Julia, who is the felting half of the November Artery show, and I got together a couple of weeks ago to get a photo to be used for publicity.

Julia brought Lisa, her neighbor’s daughter  visiting from New York, who graciously agreed to be our model.

Isn’t she great?

I could weave O’Keefe inspired fabrics forever, but it’s on to Mondrian.

Farm Club Shenanigans

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We had an unscheduled Farm Day yesterday.First order of business was chores.

Stephanie greets the Farm Club. She seems to enjoy pestering Kathy. I think she must smell Kathy’s goats. Everyone had a chance to milk a little.

We’re only milking one side because the kid is nursing from the other. This is Tina milking.

Here is Shelby. I haven’t been putting Stephanie on the stand because she is easy to milk and I’m only milking one side once per day.

We were going to start trimming feet, but got side-tracked when Rusty decided to roll in the leftovers from yesterday’s butchering. The guys that butcher clean up well, but there is always something smelly left. I think he found the rumen contents.  I had just made Rusty an appointment at the vet to remove a foxtail that he’d picked up that morning. I didn’t think that my husband or the vet would be too crazy about holding a really stinky dog. So dog-washing was in order.

We don’t get too fancy with this. A hose and some soap.

Usually I wear my rubber boots or flip-flops. We were trying to keep our feet dry but get all the soap off of Rusty.

Tina and Kathy are trying to get the dogs to pose. Rusty is back from the vet already (foxtail in right ear) and Mobi (Jackie’s dog) wants to play.

We moved on to trimming feet, putting my squeeze chute/flip table into service again.

To get more work done we also tied some of the sheep to trim feet. This is a lamb that needs to be halter broke anyway because she is one I’ve chosen to keep.

The dogs keep watch. Note the trimmed feet. I have trimmed his feet three times this year to avoid foxtails in the toes.

“Well, if you’re not going to let me work, I’ll just lie here.”

We quit trimming about noon. I forgot to take photos of the chute being used for sheep with varying horn types. I think I need some modifications to use it more effectively. Shelby offered to be a sheep. I’m not sure these are the photos I need to work on the modifications, but laughter is always a good thing.

Somehow the Farm Club is starting to remind me of the YaYa Sisterhood. We’re accepting more members!

Visiting weavers

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I had two visitors the other day. Both are weavers. I didn’t realize until they got here that I knew one of the women…well, sort of. I hadn’t met her, but I had sold her some yarn a few years ago. Later my friends and I had driven about an hour to see a show in which her piece was entered only to find that the gallery was closed that day. (No problem because with these friends I could probably have a good time even waiting for a dentist appointment.) What does this have to do with anything?

Lea brought the piece that had been entered in the show so that I could see it up close. This is an over-sized clothing tag woven that Lea wove.

Lea can explain her mission much better than I can. Here is a link to a presentation she made a few months ago.    It’s worth the 16 minutes of watching. This is only one of Lea’s fascinating ideas. I have just spent the last hour on her website looking at all of her creative and unusual projects and items for sale. Take a special look at the Worlds Smallest Post Office!

Lea’s friend, Robin, was the person who made the appointment to visit. She is exploring ideas for combining fiber farming with weaving and creating a business and that is why she wanted to talk with me. So I spent a lot of time talking about what I do. I wish that I hadn’t talked so much but had spent more time listening to these two fascinating women. Maybe they’ll visit again!