Yesterday’s post was all about vibrant orange of Cosmos! Today it’s Hollyhocks. Guess what color the deep purple, almost black hollyhocks give to yarn!
This is the traditional hollyhock I have grown for a long time.
This year two friends gave me a few hollyhocks that look like this. Even the leaves are different. I’ve been calling these “frilly” to differentiate the two batches. These were started later so didn’t flower until later in the season. I’ll get back to this.
Before the frilly flowers were blooming I was paying attention to the hollyhocks growing in the front dye garden. These hollyhocks had come back from last year’s plants or had grown from seed dropped from the previous year. I didn’t pay much attention at first, but it became obvious that the flowers were not all the same color. It’s known that its the dark purple, almost black flowers that dye yarn. But I thought I’d experiment with the others.
I worked methodically to keep the dried flowers separate as they were ready to pick or had already fallen.
I dyed in four separate pots and got these colors.
Then I dyed another four pots. This photo shows yarn from the first batch and the second. The shades are close, but not exactly the same.
Now to the frilly flowers. Would there be a difference? As I did with the Cosmos I figured out weight in grams to use to dye 4 ounces of yarn. I based this calculation on the recipe in Harvesting Color by Rebecca Burgess. She suggests 20 flowers for 2-1/2 ounces of yarn and that recipe has worked well for me. I get a strong dye and there is enough color left to dye another yarn in the same pot. I calculated how many flowers I would need for four ounces and the weight of the flowers when dry. Yes, I counted flowers as I harvested and then weighed them after they were dry.
These are handy pots for small batches of dye. Notice the one on the left says R. Pratt 308. That was my dad and his lab was room 308 at UCSF Medical Center back in the 50’s and 60s. These are stainless steel and I use them all the time for my fiber activities.
Here are the results. I used these dye pots four times. The color lessened each time, but there was plenty of dye left until I got to the fourth time. The first three times I put four ounces in each pot. It was only at the last one that I put in just one ounce. There is a bit of difference in the regular and frilly flowers, but I don’t know that it would be repeatable. I think there is enough variation among different batches that I wouldn’t say it’s due to the frilly versus regular flowers.
Before I dyed the frilly/regular samples I had run a similar test with successive batches of yarn. The first pair here was putting a gray skein and a white skein in the same pot.
No matter how many times I have dyed with plant material I feel as though it is always an experiment. There are a lot of variables. After I decided to sell dye material I wanted to be able to almost guarantee an outcome. So I experimented.
Isn’t Cosmos a cheery plant?
Earlier in the year I saw a lot of swallowtail butterflies on the flowers. Now they are full of bees.
These plants have grown as tall as me. I pick the flowers every three days and there are always more. It’s amazing.
Here is one day’s crop drying in the sun.
Every time I picked flowers I weighed the fresh flowers and the dried flowers. I calculated that the dried flowers weighed 19% the weight of the fresh flowers. I found my gram scale so I could be more accurate than trying to work in fractions of ounces.
I did some calculations based on a 1:1 weight ratio of fresh flowers to fiber. I could use 4 ounces (112 gms) of fresh flowers or 21 gms of dried flowers to dye 4 ounces of yarn. I wanted to find out if there was a difference in the yarn color if I used fresh or dried flowers. The first step is to heat the flowers. I heat to 160 degrees, trying to not go over 175 degrees.
After 30 to 60 minutes I add yarn that has been mordanted with alum. I keep the dye pot at about the same temperature for another hour. I find the easiest way to do that is to put a lid on the pot and turn it off. I check the temperature in about 20 minutes and if it is going under 160 degrees I turn the stove on for 5 minutes, bring the temperature up, and then turn it off again. Using this method I don’t have to worry about it getting too hot and boiling. I let the yarn cool in the pot overnight before removing it. Then I can the next batch in the pot. I used these two dye pots three times before discarding the liquid in the garden.
This shows the results of those dye pots. In each pair, the yarn dyed with fresh flowers is on the left and yarn dyed with dried flowers is on the right. There is not a significant difference.
Here is an earlier experiment using the same dye three times. In the first pot one skein was gray yarn and the other white.
Lots of Cosmos dyed yarn.
The result of all this is not only yarn that I can use in weaving but dye products for sale. These are on my website.
I should be weaving. I planned to listen to a new book and weave today. This is what I did instead.
Anytime you have a sheep in for medical care it takes a little more time. Hazel spent Thursday night at UCD VMTH (Should I to spell it out? U.C. Davis, Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital). I took her in because the night before and Thursday morning she looked like the photo below.
I had texted the veterinarian I usually use and she thought that Hazel should go in. She never acted sick other than not wanting to eat because her mouth was so sore. We still don’t have a diagnosis because we’re waiting on blood tests. No matter which, if any, come back positive, the care would be the same. Isolation and TLC. Hazel is not happy about being locked in. I put a couple of sheep across the aisle from her so that she’s not totally alone. She is getting meloxicam and a slurry of something that includes lidocaine to coat her mouth to reduce the pain so she’ll eat.
After cleaning the barn and dealing with other sheep I faced the two skirting tables holding skulls in various states of cleaning. I am not very good at this but there is a value to the skulls and I need to make it work.
I had planned to boil some of them and see if I could get them cleaner that way. I brought two up to the garage and started a pot.
After I got that started (and started the timer on my phone so I wouldn’t forget) I dumped the wheelbarrow load in the dye garden where I had cut out the old dead hollyhock stalks.
This is a different view of the cosmos that you can see in the photo where the hollyhocks were. I took this after I picked cosmos today…or maybe while I was in the middle of it. It still seems like there are a lot, but not as many as earlier. Notice the sunflower that came up from last year’s seeds. It’s hard to tell in this photo but it is massive. There are two branches at the bottom. One is leaning left and the top is bent over. You can barely make out the head of the sunflower just above where you see the gravel driveway in the photo. The other fell over very early in the season and that is what looks like a big branch coming toward me in the lower half of the photo. If you look to the right of that between the close cosmos and the big stand of cosmos you can pick out smaller sunflower heads. Those are growing off that big branch that goes all the way to the right side of the photo. I took this photo to show the hollyhock that was planted just behind the row of cosmos. It is now flowering but you can only see if if you know where to look right at the base of that leaning sunflower. This was a lot of writing to explain a not very interesting photo. This is one of my dye garden plots.
One of my goals today was to photograph more products for my website and for the website that will be for Fibershed producers nationwide. (!!) I’ve been weighing fresh cosmos as I pick the flowers and after they are dried so I can sell dried flowers with a recommendation of how much you need to dye a give amount of yarn. I have dyed enough yarn with these flowers now to know that you can start with a 1:1 ratio (weight of fresh flowers to yarn) and have plenty of color left in the dye pot for more. I wanted to do another batch after I found my gram scale. I don’t want to try and measure smaller quantities in tenths of ounces. At that 1:1 ratio this should dye 4 ounces of yarn (oops, I just recalculated and it should be 113.4 gm.
I have been keeping a spread sheet and have seen that the weight of dry cosmos is .19 that of fresh cosmos. So here is enough dried flowers to dye 4 ounces of yarn. I need to continue to take photos of the process to add these to the two websites.
I set up two dye pots and turned them on low figuring that I could keep track of those while I took more photos.
In the meantime I got distracted by this interesting leaf! Great weaving pattern and colors!
Moving on to buttons. I need to update what I have on my website and add them to the new website.
The template for the sale products on my website uses horizontal photos. If I use a square photo it is cropped. That is why some of the weaving tools, looms, etc are not the way they should be –I used photos provided by Schacht and Ashford. But the new website, as well as that of the Artery, which I’m helping with, needs square photos. So I am taking two sets of photos or taking the horizontal photos with enough room around them that I can also crop to square. Very annoying. I know I could change the template I use on the Squarespace platform but do I have the energy to figure it out without having to change all the other stuff I have on there? Not right now. Maybe never.
My goal is to get these listed on my website before I send this blog post so that I can include a link, but that may not happen tonight. [I am proof-reading now and know that I won’t get to that. If you’re interested in some check back or see me at Lambtown next month.]
We’re trying to have a consistent background for photos and I’m using this manila paper. (Want to know about Manila paper? Read this blog post.)
More distractions. These sheep were looking through the fence near where I’m taking photos. I really need to figure out the breeding line-up. This is a topic for another post (as are most of the topics in this one). But this introduces one of the contenders for breeding in two weeks. This should be another post because I’ll explain why I don’t have any adult 4-horn rams to use now and have only a couple of choices here and it’s really too early to know for sure. Back to photos.
At the State Fair I had a display of natural dyeing. (See how it looked in this blog post.) It’s time to do something with those yarns. I may weave with some but I wanted photos for yet another blog post and I may try to sell them online. These yarns are the base yarns I used for the display. That is gray Jacob yarn spun spun at Valley Oak Mill, Jacob britch yarn that I don’t have listed on the website, 4 ounce skeins of TR yarn spun at the Mendocino Mill, and 1 ounce skeins of TR yarn spun in Wyoming. I’d better update those listings before I post this. They all went in a variety of natural dyes. I’m only showing a little of that here.
This is the oxalis dye pot. I decided that if I want to sell these as groups it makes more sense to sell the same yarn together instead of the same color. If you try to use all those yarns in one project you’ll have challenges. The britch wool has little elasticity and the Timm Ranch wool has lots. It’s better to use like yarns together and mix up the colors.
So this is the batch of gray yarns that went in all the dye pots. I’ll put these online but it won’t be tonight.
Back to what was going on in the kitchen. This is the previous batch of yarn from dyeing 4 ounces of fresh cosmos flowers–a gray skein and a white skein were the first 4 ounces in the dye pot. I used 4 ounces more the next day. I dyed a two ounce skein after that in the same pot.
This seems like a random change. There are two freezers in the garage and last week we found them leaking. The power strip they were using failed. Needless to say that was a mess and that’s why we cooked a turkey 3 days ago and are still eating it. Fortunately there was a lot of random stuff in the freezers–yarn that had been there for years to kill any potential bugs, parts of butchered sheep that Dan hadn’t figured out how to cook and that had been there a long time, etc. So most was thrown away. I salvaged my pomegranate juice and the turkey which had not completely thawed. Today I cleaned the freezer while keeping an eye on the pot with the skulls. I put some containers of water in there to use for indigo dyeing tomorrow.
At this point, about 12:30, I came to the house for breakfast. I added yarn to those cosmos dyepots and worked on the computer while paying attention to them.
This afternoon I took the skulls out of the pot to see how well they were cleaned. I spent a lot of time picking pieces off. It is interesting to see what a fused horn ram skull is like. You can see the fusing of the outer part of the horn on this side.
There are three horns on this side.
I’ve been reading up on how to do a better job with the skulls. The next step after cleaning off the stuff that isn’t bone is to degrease. This is how I left the skulls–in Dawn liquid.
I consider that botanical printing (or ecoprinting as it is better known lately) is always an experiment. There are lots of variables beyond the obvious of the use of tannins and/or iron to bring out color or an imprint. Does the stage of growth of the plant make a difference? Is there a difference if the front or the back of the leave or the flower is against the cloth? How fresh is the plant? How about dried plants?
Here is what it looks like while I’m working. These are two different scarves, but I’ll end up with four because I put a second one on top of the first. These were soaked in a tannin solution before adding the plants. The second scarf is soaked in an iron solution. As I put the iron soaked scarf on the tannin soaked scarf a chemical reaction occurs that turns the tannin soaked scarf gray. Wow! Why didn’t we do this in high school chemistry? Maybe some of the rest of chemistry would have stuck.
The pair of scarves sandwiching the leaves and flowers is rolled on a PVC pipe, tied tightly, and then steamed for an hour or more. The rolls cool overnight and then I get to open them. These two scarves are the pair from the left. The one on the left is the iron soaked scarf that was put on top of the flowers and leaves before rolling. Those are cosmos flowers from my dye garden and wild grape leaves from the front fence. I find it interesting that the top scarf has the imprints of veins from the leaves and the leaves act as a resist for the bottom scarf. (That green leaf is the actual leaf I haven’t pulled off yet.) The flowers print on both, but differently.
Here is another pair. That’s indigo leaves on the left and dahlia flowers on the right, along with something I can’t remember although I think I wrote it somewhere.
Here is the big reveal of the dahlia scarf.
The indigo scarf. In these two pairs, the leaves printed on both scarves instead of acting as a resist.
I have used a canning kettle in the past, but I just found this tamale steamer and bought it. The advantage is that a steamer tray comes with it. However I didn’t know if I could put enough water in to last over an hour, and I recently ran my old pot dry which ruined the scarves. So I wired the steamer rack high enough to put plenty of water in the bottom. Now I can fit many more at a time.
I’m experimenting with square scarves. I haven’t figured out the best way to display them at the Artery yet. This is maple, grape, and indigo leaves.
Here is the finished pair. Notice that the indigo dyes green on both scarves but the maple and grape leaves act as a resist on the gray scarf.
I worked on three at a time here. Maple and grape leaves on the left, indigo leaves and flowers and cosmos flowers in the middle, and cosmos leaves and flowers on the right.
These are the two scarves from the middle after unrolling.
These are the scarves from the left in that photo of three, after washing and ironing. I have four scarves listed on the Artery website right now–working on more listings but need photos. A lot more are in the store in Davis.
Here is a detail.
I printed more scarves the next day. All the scarves have been silk, but I tried a new batch that are 63% silk and 37% silk (right).
Here is that wool/silk scarf after finishing. These are the only ones on my website right now. Hopefully I’ll get more listed soon. I’ll tell you more about that other scarf in another post.
How much time and energy do you spend making decision? Sometimes it seems overwhelming and it’s often about something trivial.
I’m helping with a new website. I’m not really helping, but being a guinea pig about how it all works for a non-tech person to enter things and helping to find glitches and things that are confusing. Is that a beta-tester? Or do you have to know more to have that title?
There is a place that asks for a banner across the part that will have Meridian Jacobs info. How to decide what photo? Sheep? Weaving? Yarn? The point of the website is to sell things. How do I choose one? The photo needs to fit the banner space. The software will supposedly take the appropriate size piece out of whatever photo you send, but I thought I should start with something the right size. I started with these below. Some were just experimental to see how they would fit the space.
A sheep photo? This is an older photo but I suppose that doesn’t matter as long as the quality of the photo is good enough.
I wanted to try something with more sheep and a background. This is not a good background.
This photo looks a bit washed out–maybe I can adjust that but at this point I was looking for any photo that fit the sheep into the landscape with a bit of horizon.
What about yarn or weaving? I’d sure like to sell blankets. Version 1.
Version 2.
Version 3.
I have a series of these photos that I have always liked.
I have used this photo (full size) a lot because it shows the difference between black and white sheep and lilac sheep. Townes, the lilac on the right, got the tips of the top horns caught in a fence two days ago and I found him dead.
Back to landscape photos. Here is one with a horizon and a lot of sheep and lush grass. The sheep are pregnant and recently shorn.
I walked across the road this morning and had just changed the fences so the sheep have this field near the road. That’s the view I was after. It is a narrow band but it shows sheep and the horizon. I like that this one shows our position in the Sacramento Valley. That notch you see in the hills is where the road goes to Lake Berryessa. Its a landmark for me.
This is a little different cropping of this morning’s photo.
A closer up view makes the sheep and the barn more prominent and removes the white fence on the right but cuts off the trees and my notch on the hills.
Back to yarn. This is what I did the last few days. Indigo on the left and Cosmos and Dahlia on the right.
But maybe I need black and white.
No decision made yet. Any suggestions are welcome…
I needed to update ram photos on the website. This is the adult ram page and the ram lamb page. I need to make decisions about which rams to keep and which to sell and how many ram lambs to continue to evaluate.
Right now there are five mature Jacob rams here and several ram lambs.
Fair Adventure Horatio is the most recent ram. I brought him home from Colorado where I sold Turbo (blog post from Estes Park). He is not with the other rams because I didn’t want to disrupt the pecking order. He has had a ram lamb or two with him for company, but after breeding season he will go with the other rams.
Here is what I wanted to avoid with introducing Horatio to this mix. These four have been together for several months but they were fighting a couple of days ago. I don’t know if it was because I was in the ram pen and they decided to get feisty. Or was it that the ewes are starting to cycle and there seemed to be some interest across the fence? Silverado, the 4-horn ram on the right, hasn’t been feeling well–spending a lot of time in the ram shed lying down. I think he may have had bluetongue which causes sore feet. Now he is doing better and is out with the others–so maybe that was reason to reestablish pecking order…and he is not on top anymore.
The lilac 4-horn ram, Patchwork Townes, is the oldest at 3 years. Hillside Barrett is the 2-horn ram on the left. He and Silverado (middle) are the same age, born in 2021.
After Townes and Barrett both bashed Silverado, then they went at each other. The ram on the right is Thorn–that is my granddaughter’s ram that we showed at State Fair. He is a yearling.
All four of them are facing off here.
Thorn didn’t seem to be as aggressive as Barrett and Townes, but this photo shows he took his turn.
Townes and Silverado.
Townes seemed to be the aggressor again…
…but Barrett was still involved.
You might ask why I let this happen. This was relatively mild as ram fighting goes. After breeding season I go through a protocol to keep the damage to a minimum. I put the rams in a very small pen. They fight but they can’t back up and put the power into the hits. After a few days they have figured out who is on top and if the others remain subservient they all get along. ..usually.
The reason I was in the ram pen was to get photos. Here are the photos I got.
Hillside Gabby’s Barrett. Don’t you love those horns? He is only two this year.
Patchwork Townes, 3 years old.
I need a better photo of Silverado.
Thorn is Silverado’s son from 2022.
Blizzard is one of Silverado’s sons from this year.
Cyclone is Blizzard’s twin. I’m not sure if he lower horns will point away from his neck–I hope so because I’d like to keep him as a replacement for Silverado.
I shared a lot of photos in one of the latest blog posts of my trial and error to get good product photos with consistent backgrounds. I got some suggestions from a few of you and I welcome comments again. I worked on this again today.
I bought a roll of sturdy Manila paper. Do you know why it’s called Manila? I looked it up. Merriam-Webster: “a strong and durable paper of a brownish or buff color and smooth finish made originally from Manila hemp”. Wikipedia: “Manila paper was originally made out of old Manila hemp ropes which were extensively used on ships, having replaced true hemp. The ropes were made from abaca or Musa textilis, which is grown in the Phillipines; hence the association with Manila, its capital city. Abacá is an exceptionally strong fibre, nowadays used for special papers like tea bag tissue. It is also very expensive, being several times more expensive than woodpulp, hence the change to that fiber for what is still called Manilla—usually with two L’s. More recently new woodpulp has often been replaced with a high proportion of recycled fibers. True Manila hemp folders would have been much tougher and longer lasting than modern folders.” See what you learn by reading this blog?
I also have a piece of linen that is a nice color with an interesting texture. I thought I’d try both of those as background. The linen fabric is too small, but I can get more if it works. I just made a curtain for my office and that’s why I still have a piece here.
So I experimented with my phone and my camera with these different backgrounds. My goal is to take photos that don’t need much editing to make the products look like they do in real life.
This is the linen on top of the manila taken with my camera. I am not sure if the yellow/rose cast of the manila comes through the linen. Also, light is so important. I took all photos in the shade, but not all shade is the same. The place where I’m hanging the roll of paper is a different shade than if I drag the table over to the middle of the deck area and the roll of manila may affect the outcome as well.
This is that manila paper taken with my phone.
Linen on top of manila taken with phone.
The photos I used here have been minimally edited–mostly to crop to square. This time I shot the photos with my camera on manual and adjusted shutter speed one or two stops. Most of the time the slower shutter speed (more light) gave a better exposure. I don’t think I’m having such an issue with white balance as in the last batch of photos.
Linen on top of manila, taken with Nikon.
The same as above but taken with the phone. Colors are close but not the same.
I moved the table away from the wall so the linen is resting on the table. There will be no influence from the mainla paper underneath or on the wall. This photo is taken with the Nikon.
Same thing, but taken with the phone. I see a blue cast to the background linen.
These photos are also taken on the table, on the linen cloth alone. This one is with the Nikon.
Same thing but with the phone. There is that blue cast again. I could probably adjust that in the phone, but I haven’t done any adjustments on these photos other than exposure on some of the Nikon ones.
Same place, table with linen cloth, taken with Nikon.
Same photo taken with phone.
I moved the table back to the position with the manila paper. So this is linen cloth on the paper, taken with the Nikon.
Same thing but taken with phone.
This is the scarf on manila paper alone using the Nikon.
Cat basket on manila paper. Photo taken with Nikon.
Same thing but no cat.
Same thing taken with the phone.
Here is a blanket on manila paper taken with the Nikon. I think this one could benefit from exposure adjustment.
Same photo taken with the camera. Color of the blanket is more natural.
This is in the same place with the linen over the manila. Nikon photo.
Same photo taken with the phone. There is definitely a difference in the color in these photos.
I liked the photos in the last post that were taken with a wood background but I don’t like the spacing between the planks that creates a dark line. We have some leftover flooring that in the house I think of as gray, but I guess they have a brown cast. These planks were left over after we finished the floors and the “groove” edges of “tongue and groove” have been trimmed off. If I want to use these I will trim that edge so there are no big yellow gaps.
I think the colors of the yarn and products are true, but is the background distracting even if the gaps are gone?
UhOh. Why does the white fringe on the blanket look green? Compare it to the scarf at the bottom. In this last series of photos I didn’t compare Nikon to phone photos, and they are all phone photos. I just added the Nikon photo of the blanket below.
This is a post I debated not writing. But it is part of my life. These photos are mostly from Friday. which was a full day…as are most days.
One of my regular customers wanted 8 lambs for Friday. This is the rack that Dan built for drying salted hides. It’s far better than having 9 pallets spread out on the floor. And even better, that orange netting like they use for construction work was given to us by someone who was cleaning up a property and didn’t want it.
I took these three hides off the rack so that I could fill it up with new ones. That is two Jacob sheep and the neighbor’s goat. One of my customers wanted to add a goat to the order and there happened to be one next door.
I have learned to take photos of hides before I send them to the tannery so that I can keep track.
This is the previous batch of hides…
…and the reverse side. This is what you get when a professional does the work. There are no holes and no big chunks of fat left on these. I sent these and the three above to Driftless Tannery in Wisconsin.
This batch went to Vermont. The tannery is up and running again after being sold. Why send these so far away? Tanneries are few and far between and I like the natural mimosa tan that is offered. There was a tannery in Idaho that did a great job for a year, but they moved and didn’t start up again.
Warning: dead sheep parts in the next few photos.
If I’m going to sell sheep for butcher then I want to use as much of the other parts as possible. The hide is an obvious option, but there is also a market for skulls with horns and horns by themselves. With the sheepskins all I have to do is salt them and then ship them to a tannery where all the work is done. I have to deal with the other parts. I’ll write a button post one of these days to explain the process I use to make buttons from the horns.
I have a hard time getting the skulls in shape to sell. I used to put the skulls out in back, wiring them inside a fence so they couldn’t be dragged off. After I retrieve them from “outback” there is still a lot of work to do. They are not completely cleaned and definitely not ready to list on the website.
One year I bought a “starter kit” of the kind of beetles that will do the work for you. But that is a whole other story and it’s not that simple. Also that was the year of my accident and I wasn’t able to keep the beetle colony working.
This is my new method which is not yet perfected. Last fall I buried several heads and left them for the winter. There was so much rain for so long, that there was plenty of insect and/or microbial action. When I dug the skulls up I found that they were still not perfect, but much better than the “outback” method. They mainly need some work on whitening, after turning brown in the dirt, and there is a risk of the horns deteriorating faster than the bone. I don’t know how long these need to stay in the ground and I don’t know how much difference it makes if I add water occasionally. There are some heads under the dirt pile in the middle of the photo and there are some under the black tub. There are some IN the black tub as well. The last few that are buried have baling twine tied to the horns so I know where they are. The new ones in the foreground have baling wire around the horns that sticks up through the dirt when they were covered.
When I make buttons I need just the horns so I cut them off the skull. There is a bony core that is attached to the skull. You have to soak the horn or otherwise allow the tissue between the horn core and the outer part to deteriorate or be eaten by something so that you can get the outer part off.
This was a ewe lamb with horns that tipped forward. One was so wobbly that it didn’t seem attached to the skull. You can see here that it wasn’t. I think that would be an example of a scur.
Friday’s harvest was fast. The farm harvest guy dealt with all those sheep within two hours and did a great job with the pelts. After I finished salting hides I spent the rest of the morning sorting and organizing sheep coats. I don’t coat a lot of sheep, but usually have about five coated through the summer and up until shearing. These are usually the sheep that go to Black Sheep Gathering and/or State Fair. Right now there are only two with coats. I’d rather see my sheep without the coats and it adds work to keep up with changing coats as the fleeces grow out. You can see that there is also a lot of coat repair to keep up with.
The coats I have always used are those lined up in the middle and the left. I recently bought a new brand of coats that was recommended when I was at the Jacob show in Estes Park. My original coats are sized by number. The new ones have a color tab that indicates size. I matched them up to the old coats to figure out where they fit as far as size and I added the numbers to match the others. The coats on the right are the new ones. I guess I didn’t get the sizes I’ll need as the fleeces grow out.
As you know I like to take photos. I think that most of them (at least the ones I share) are decent. I know the basics of photography and am familiar with the importance of exposure, focal length, white balance, etc. But its one think to know ABOUT the concepts. It’s another to put them into practice.
When you base most of your business on online sales, obviously the photos are very important. I really need to update all the products on my website and there is soon to be a launch of a new website with some of my pieces. I NEED to have decent photos.
I am writing this post as a tool to analyze what I’m doing and share the info with some people who might have advice. Comments are welcome.
I have used that white (but not really white) board for a couple of years. Dan put wheels on the edge so I could store it upright and roll it around to where I need it. It is cut the dimension to match the photos when I use my Nikon. That was very helpful since the template for my current website uses horizontal photos for the product pages. However I have had to provide square photos for other websites and that is what the new one will use. So I have to keep that in mind when I’m photographing products. The request for the new website is that all the main product photos have a consistent look as far as color. White? Gray? Wood? Purple??? I have to choose one. I have to choose one that will help me take good photos.
The part I struggle with is white balance. That means that the backgrounds look like what I’m seeing in real life and the products are represented properly. I am not going to try and include all the photos I took here. I tried four backgrounds with each product–the white (not quite white) board, a gray piece of fabric to decide if I want to paint something gray, a piece of raw plywood, and the deck in front of my shop. I took photos of each product on each background with my Nikon and with the iPhone. I am disappointed that I have a harder time getting the color right, at least on the white background, with my real camera. Most of these are with the iPhone. My goal is to take photos that are correct and not have to spend time with post-processing on the computer.
It would be simpler if I could put all these photos side-by-side or at least in a block of four, but I can’t make that work. Besides maybe when you look on a phone that would make it more difficult.
This herringbone scarf looks most natural on the wood of my deck. At least the color I see on my computer looks like the scarf. The background isn’t a good choice for smaller projects however. It’t the spaces between the boards that are the problem.
My so-called white background. The whole thing looks dingy and the scarf is not the true color.
The color of the scarf is better here, but that gray looks darker than it should and there is a blue cast. (I know its wrinkled–it is a stand-in for a painted board.)
The color of the scarf on the natural light plywood is wrong.
The next two photos are taken with the Nikon.
This is without editing. The exposure is too dark. I lightened it on my computer and it was OK.
I lightened the exposure and shifted the white balance in the computer on this one, also taken with the Nikon.
Light gray yarn on the wood deck. The lines are definitely distracting as are the speckles that weren’t as noticeable in the photo that wasn’t as close.
Even without the wrinkled cloth, this color doesn’t do much for me as a background.
It bothers me that the background looks dingy here. This is the same skein of yarn in all four photos. It sure looks darker here than in the first one, which is more correct.
The yarn color looks even darker here. I thought about having several skeins of yarn in one photo–I think that would help with the color. However, it has to be really clear that a purchase is for only one skein of yarn, unless the customer chooses more.
This is the iPhone photo from above with exposure adjusted in Lightroom.
I think the color of the blanket is the best on the wood background.
The color is a little darker here and the gray fabric is darker.
The blanket looks more black white or at least dark gray than it really is.
Here is that “white” background. The blanket still looks darker and the background has a blue cast.
This was taken with the camera. The exposure was wrong and the background looked dark gray. I lightened it and shifted the color temp from the blue side to the yellow side. But now this looks browner. The colors of the first photo in this series look more true, at least on my screen.
I have this set of grayscale cards, but just because I have it doesn’t mean that I can use it properly. That white one is true white, but I don’t think it looks true white in this photo. It does show how far off the board is. Some of that may be the photo though. If you look at the very first photo with the sheepskin you can see this set of cards on the board and it looks different there.
While mulling this over I saw my white truck right there. That is the truest white so far. This photo was taken in the sun and all the others were in shade.
So where does this leave me? I think that I should be able to use a white background but I’ve never felt successful with that. I think it’s easier to get true color on the wood deck. Is that because the camera is sensing more variety of color and contrast than when you use just a solid color? What if I stained a piece of plywood to have it lighter than the deck, but with some variation from grain?
Last night I experimented with ways to remove background from iPhone photos. I used one for which I didn’t have to use an app. Some look OK but it’s not foolproof.
The edges don’t look right here.
Definitely a problem here. It couldn’t distinguish the fringe yarns. I think that dark line is from the deck space.
As I type this my screen lags behind the keyboard. In addition to the photo issues my computer is full. Now what? I thought using iCloud would help but I don’t understand enough to set it up properly. As I’ve said before, where’s a millennial when you need one? Or even a 12 year old?
The day after I got back from Black Sheep Gathering in June my granddaughter started her visit with us. She had traveled to California from Texas with her other grandparents who live nearby and was with them for the first week. Since then she has mostly been here, but visited in town with the other grandparents and cousins periodically. Kirby was eight when she got here but had her ninth birthday last week during the fair.
It has been seven weeks that Kirby was here with us. I wrote about some of our adventures in previous posts, but most of the time was spent here at the farm.
Kirby had a birthday party with her cousins at the other grandparents’ house and got plenty of presents. But last week a birthday present came from Aunt Kaleena and Uncle Matt. It was a box of three Squishmallows. She had received one from her Great Grandmother a few days before. Kirby was thrilled. I was amused at how she used books and boxes and cloth napkins and towels to set up a dining table for the Squishmallows. She found small dishes in the kitchen and fed them all lettuce with ranch dressing. She spent quite a bit of time feeding them and the next couple of nights brought them to the dinner table to share her dinner.
It’s a good thing there is a queen size bed so they all could fit.
Matt told Kirby that if she left one here when she went back home he would take it on adventures for the rest of the summer and send her pictures. Matt supervises air attack watches over wildfires from the air so we will all look forward to hearing about these adventures.
The time came for Kirby to return home. It was a long wait while her dad was on the road.
We got in a couple more walks across the road.
She spent time with her favorite sheep. They are everyone’s favorites because they are so tame. That’s Jade in the middle. Her daughter, Hazel is near the gate and Hazel’s 2023 lamb, Harry, is in front. Harry was turned into such a pet by Farm Club members that I made him a wether. Kirby picked all the leaves she could reach to give them treats.
Even the goat, who can be somewhat intimidating, got goodbye scratches.
Hazel and Jade were joined by Lavender.
Now Harry is back in the mix.
A last hug for Jade.
Alice, one of the family dogs, made the trip from Texas.
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