Road Trip – Day 1

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Robin

Since last year I had decided that I would take a real vacation with my husband and, being jealous after seeing photos on a friend’s blog (Claire, that’s you!), I made Yellowstone the destination. I kept two weeks open in my schedule. I did everything I could to make it easier to take care of animals and I got my kids to farm-sit. I had events or people here up to the time we were to leave. We didn’t make a plan other than to visit Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, and the Pendleton Woolen Mill. (I had lots of other destinations marked on the map, but when you’re in the West an inch on the map is many hours of driving so there will have to be another trip.)

We left about 4:30 on Monday afternoon. That was only 2 1/2 hours behind my announced time of departure, although 4 1/2 hours behind the time I’d thought about trying to leave. We drove west on I-80 over the Sierras and into Nevada. I didn’t take many photos the first day driving although now I wish I had. By the time we were finished with this trip I knew that the theme was the grandeur and beauty of this country, and even though NV gets a lot of flack (especially from my fire-fighter sons who spend a lot of time there), it can’t be beat for it’s share of wide-open spaces. Making trail mix before leaving.Packing books and projects for traveling and sitting around camp.The Nevada desert from the truck window.We drove until after dark and spent the first night at a rest stop in Valmy, NV. Dan had made a plywood platform in the truck so that we could stash our stuff beneath and sleep on top. He has an old foam mattress and I slept on a couple of yoga mats topped with one of the new large sheepskins I just got back. Not to make this a sales pitch, but you can’t beat a nice thick sheepskin for making a soft, warm, cozy bed for camping. We will remember this night as the MOTH STOP. I don’t have any photos but the bathrooms and eventually the truck were filled with big moths. In fact the next night we had to take everything out of the back to rid ourselves of the moths. We talked to someone at a coffee shop the next morning and she said that there were enough moths in the area for it to be newsworthy so I looked it up. These are miller moths, the adults of the army cutworm and are thought to be more abundant this year due to the mild winter.

Since we had no time-line we could stop at all the roadside markers that we wanted to. We discovered that we were following the California Trail on our outward bound journey (although in reverse direction of the pioneers) and the Oregon Trail on the way back. My kids have always teased me for pointing out “what it would be like if you were a pioneer” when we have traveled through the deserts and mountains, but Dan and I continue to be in awe of these stories. It made the trip interesting to follow along with some of the history using pamphlets we picked up on the way and what I found on my iPhone. Lunch break near the Nevada/Idaho border.My friends who just came back from France posted photos of their meals along the way so I guess that’s what you do when you’re on a trip. What do you think? Horse mural in Shoshone, ID, taken quickly from the truck window. Near the entrance to Craters of the Moon National Monument. Stay tuned….

Around the Farm in May

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Robin

I went back through my i-phone shots during May, most of which I deleted. But here is a collection of what I thought was photo-worthy at the time.Sheep on new pasture lining up at the blackberry buffet.Goose on the roof. There was another just out of site on the high part of the barn. Note ongoing wool washing activity. Also blooming bottle brush in the background… Rusty in bottlebrush …which makes it clear where Rusty was hiding out. Felt flower done by someone who came to my weaving class. Baby wrap brought by another weaving student. I had no idea that baby wraps were in such huge demand and people will pay huge prices for them. I’d love to weave some but my shoulders start hurting just thinking of weaving yards and yards of relatively fine threads, even on my AVL. What I wouldn’t give to have joints that were 20 years younger. Playing with the iPad when I should have been sleeping I found this cool app that turns your photos into paintings. Mom’s and babies. This is Laura and twins.Jazz and triplets.

I spent a huge amount of time this month sorting fleeces that were beautiful except that they were filled with obnoxious burr clover. A lot had to be thrown out. This wool is finally in route to the mill. I found this tom cat with a foxtail in his eye, huge ticks on his neck, and very weak and skinny. Through the wonders of Facebook within 24 hours he was on his way to a new home where I hear that a vet has ruled out any severe problems other than starving and he is eating up all the food and TLC he can handle. My latest attempt at gardening in my raised beds that have been gopher-ravaged is to try straw bale gardening. I am in the phase of watering the bale to start it decomposing. Then you add fertilizer, keep watering, and then plant. My hope is that a gopher will not tunnel all the way up through the bale.

Big & Soft & Wooly

Posted on May 24, 2014 by Robin

That title could describe a lot of things around here but this is what it refers to right now: Gorgeous lambskins just back. The spotted pelts are Jacob (of course) but the larger ones are lambskins that I got from the packing plant last time that I sold lambs there. Those lambs must have weighed 140 pounds or more. You can see all of them listed for sale here.

Only a Mother Could Love…

Posted on May 19, 2014 by Robin

There are dozens of baby birds in the barn. This nest is at the top of a bunch of rain gutters and downspouts that I (with great intentions during a severe storm) bought a couple of years ago and are obviously not yet in their proper place. Note raw material easily found in around the barn. They remind me of Dr. Seuss characters. “MOM!” Or maybe more something from Jurassic Park. I think you have to be a mother bird to love this face.

Weaving More Blankets

Posted on May 14, 2014 by Robin

This was the last order of blankets from BC (Before Christmas). Now there is only one more thing that I have committed to weave for someone else (that’s you, I.S.). Then I can focus on my LVIP (Looming Very Important Project)…pun there, but not intended.

This is six throws on the same warp. I don’t remember what the wool is, but there are some longwools (or maybe it’s mohair) in here as you will see in the detail. They add luster as well as weight to the blankets. They also act very differently when fulled. Some of that has to do with the extra twist in the yarn. The top two blankets in the first photo are in plain weave, but at a glance they may not look like plain weave, in which every other thread is over and under. There are diagonals in here that are not characteristic of plain weave. This is called tracking and is not uncommon when weaving plain weave with yarns that are over-twisted and woven at a relatively loose sett. Detail of a plain weave blanket. You can see that the weave structure is plain weave, but the over-twist of the threads is causing them to migrate and twist after wet finishing.More detail because with this lens I can. Do you see the “hairiness” of those fibers? That is more characteristic of a “long wool” breed. More blankets and details.

Did a box of yarn explode in here?

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Robin

You may have seen this photo on Facebook (by the way if you didn’t see it on FB you can “like” Meridian Jacobs), but you didn’t see the rest.This is a stack of 19 blankets that I just finished. There is still warp on the loom, but I needed to get these off the loom (and I needed to give my shoulder a break–now it’s the right one giving me trouble). My daughter will choose one when she is here this week and the rest will go to The Artery for sale. They are also on my website.

So here is what some of them look like: Camo anyone?

This is what the cloth beam looks like while I’m weaving. Baby blanket yarn And here is the floor behind the loom.

Things I see on the way to the barn

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Robin

Pink bottlebrush Look at how tiny this new leaf is. One of my special iris plants that I got from Pleasants Valley Iris Farm. Another one of the special irises. This rose looks fairly common but the fragrance is spectacular.Same for this one. These roses were on this property when we moved here in 1999. We moved them to their current locations. They don’t get much TLC, but hang in there. Several of the roses also have branches from rootstock growing up around them. I can easily identify those branches when they are flowering, but I hate to cut them off when they are so pretty.Yarrow.Amaryllis (not a flower).

Backpacking at the Lost Coast – Day 3 – and a surprise ending

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Robin

Matt woke me up about 6 and asked if I was OK. “Sure, except that you woke me up.” It seems that Kaleena had been very sick since about 1 a.m. and was not getting any better. We were about 9 miles from the truck, the last 4 of which were uphill the whole way. There is no cell service for a lot of this trek, but we happened to be in an area with Verizon service (though not AT&T). Matt talked to people in the closest emergency dispatch location about our options. Eventually the decision was made to fly Kaleena out via Coast Guard helicopter. Matt, Kaleena, and their two friends who were with us all work for the US Forest Service and Matt is has worked as a helispot manager so they were able to find a suitable landing spot and guide the helicopter in. As Kaleena wrote when she posted this photo, that blue lump in the foreground is her lying in the sand while waiting for the helicopter. Matt talked to the Coast Guard guys and sent me on the helicopter with Kaleena and both of our backpacks. That way he and his buddies and the dogs could make the 9 miles back to the truck more quickly. (Yeah, so I can’t keep up with a bunch of 30 year olds on a mission!) Kaleena and I ended up at a hospital in Eureka by 10:30 a.m. Matt made it back up the mountain in about 3 1/2 hours but still had a long drive to get to Eureka about 5 p.m.

This was an unfortunate ending to our trip, but it all ended up OK. Kaleena is fine now and I had a gorgeous view of the coastline and the mountains (and certainly less wear and tear on the body). We plan to do this again, but finish the trip differently!

Backpacking at the Lost Coast – Day 2

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Robin

The goal for this morning was to hike south to Miller Flat where we would spend the night. After we set up camp I did some more exploring. Walking another mile or so was no problem once I was able to ditch the pack. The scenery and flowers were spectacular.Wild iris.As I’ve said in other posts the poison oak can be very pretty although its definitely best to avoid it.

Back at camp there was no shortage of wildlife, although I wasn’t able to do much about photographing sea lions or a river otter with my 40mm lens. (I tried, but won’t bore you with those photos where you have to know which speck is the subject animal.) Kaleena was photographing one of her favorite flowers right next to camp and was about to step over a log when she saw this: It eventually slithered under the log. Maybe the beach is a safer trek.My kids could be active-wear models.This made me nervous. Matt wanted to get photos of the surf as it rolled in under his camera.Another great dinner. This time it was mac and cheese with fresh veggies followed by s’mores with your choice of graham crackers or fresh apple slices or both.Of course there was always trail mix for snacking.

Sunset on the beach. The colors of the sky and ocean changed to pinks and greens as the sun went down. My tent at dusk. (Rainfly necessary this night.)

Backpacking at the Lost Coast – Day 1

Posted on April 20, 2014 by Robin

My son and DIL invited me to join them and a couple of their friends on a backpacking trip to one of their favorite spots. According to Wikipedia, “the steepness and related geo-technical challenges of the coastal mountains made this stretch of coastline too costly for state highway or county road builders to establish routes through the area, leaving it the most undeveloped and remote portion of the California coast”. Since Matt and Kaleena did all the planning, food prep, etc all I had to do was gather up or borrow the right clothes and gear. We drove about 5 hours north to a campsite outside of the town of Honeydew in Humboldt County where we spent the night. The next morning we drove to the the Kinsey Ridge Trailhead to begin the hike. I borrowed backpack since I couldn’t find mine (and the last time I had used it was about 30 years ago so this one was probably a little better). There was a four mile trek down the mountain to get to the beach. After that the trail is along the beach or through meadows just above. Every mile or so there is another river running out of the mountains into the ocean. This was where we camped the first night.Time to unpack the dogs and relax a bit. First order of business was to secure our site by setting up the tents. There were not very many people hiking the area, but Matt and Kaleena have their favorite spots and you can’t exactly reserve a site. This is the view of the ocean from inside my tent. No rain fly needed the first night.Matt and Kaleena’s friends didn’t bring tents but constructed a temporary shelter from the wind with rocks and driftwood. Next it was time to explore the area and wash the poison oak off the dogs.

Matt was the chef. He and Kaleena had prepared enough veggies to last us for 3 dinners.After watching the sun set over the ocean……we enjoyed s’mores back at camp before turning in for the night.

Meridian Jacobs' Blog

Life on the farm and at the loom.