Odds & Ends…or what do I do all day?

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Robin

I am always behind, but this year I feel more behind than ever in the weaving department. I read the blog of a production weaver I know and she commented that any weaving she does now through the end of the year is “extra”. Everything for this season’s sales is finished. What? I should have woven my scarves and blankets LAST January? I thought about it. I also thought about it in March and July and August and September. I knew that I’d get to it in October. What have I been doing when I should be weaving? Here are a few examples beside the obvious sheep farming, Lambtown, etc.

Last week I hosted a field trip of middle school home-schooled kids and their families. We spent a couple of hours in the barn and at the shop. After lunch I guided them through a needlefelting project. They all made up their own designs. This is one student’s work. Cute, huh?

I taught a Learn to Weave class a couple of weeks ago.

Here is the scarf woven by a brand new weaver. She used Zephyr Jaggerspun yarn and doubled it in warp and weft. It turned out great!One of the students couldn’t come back on the second day of the class and she finished her scarf today. This is a close-up. She used Jaggerspun Maine-Line yarn. I taught three students in a Rigid Heddle Scarf class, which, by the way, I will offer again once in December. No more other classes until January. This is the blackberry jungle growing (for those of you who know the farm) just north of Faulkner’s pen–in fact part of this IS the fence-line for Faulkner’s pen. There is an engineered septic system under those shorter blackberries that is supposed to be maintained and inspected every year. This is what I did on Sunday after working another several hours on the final Lambtown reports and finances. There is still a lot of blackberry work to do but at least the septic guys can get to the valve covers. Farm Club was here all day on Saturday and helped with the list of chores on the clipboard. We didn’t get to all the barn cleaning, but did a lot of other stuff. Maybe I’ll ask Rusty to write a post about that since he hasn’t done much writing lately.It’s the time of year that the pomegranates need to be picked or they will split (if we ever get any rain that is).

When I take the dogs for a run across the road I see all the black walnuts going to waste. Here is what to do with them. Boiling black walnuts.

Add white yarn.End up with brown yarn.

Maybe I’ll get to the loom tomorrow…after I take my kids to the airport.

Fall Grazing

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Robin

Hendrix and his group of ewes have been in the back pasture since breeding season started and they have been at the north end of that pasture for a couple of weeks. Since hardly anything is growing (start the rain dance please) I figured that they couldn’t do too much damage leaving them that long. I thought that maybe that could take down the dallisgrass and they actually did a pretty good job of it in most of the pasture. It is still a challenge however along the ditch and the fence-line. (If you search dallis in the blog search you’ll see several posts about my attempts to conquer it.)

This is the north end of the property. Notice the blackberries on the north fence. I cut these away in the spring to uncover the electric fence wire on the inside of the field fence. The sheep could help in that job except that this time of year the dallis grass growing in and around the ditch keeps them from going over there. It may seem hard to believe that a grass keeps sheep from something, but this stuff is so coarse and strong it’s like hacking your way through a jungle. And it’s very sticky now from a fungus that grows on the seed head. Several years ago I found a ewe whose horns were so tangled in it that she was stuck upside down in this ditch. The only reason that I knew she was there was that she was baaing. The sheep in the photo above are in the ditch because I trampled some of the grass and put alfalfa there. This photo shows that they are making progress. Now I can actually see a ditch and the sheep can get through it to the side with the blackberries. They are finding the hay in the blackberries and it makes it worth their while to work their way through the grass.

After about a week we have worked our way through the ditch and I’m putting the hay near the fence. Then I moved beyond the blackberries and had them trample the dallisgrass along the rest of the fenceline.This is the east fence and it looked almost as full of grass before I started this project. It is more overrun with blackberries. The sheep have eaten some of the leaves off. I think I have to get in there with clippers now though. There is an electric fence hiding in there somewhere.

Molly – 19 years

Posted on October 19, 2013 by Robin

Molly was the garage cat. Many of you who come to work in the barn or to see the sheep never saw her because the dogs are usually with me and Molly avoided the dogs. Molly’s hangout was the garage. She was Dan’s cat.

Dan rescued Molly in 1994 when she was a tiny kitten and we had a dairy. He found Molly trying to lap up milk leaking out of the dairy cows who were waiting to be milked. A baby kitty wasn’t going to last long while standing under the cows so Dan brought her to the house. I’ve been looking for photos of her and this was the only one that I found. This was an attempt at a family photo for our Christmas card. Molly is the little kitty in the middle. Katie and I are holding Stripes and Myrtle, two cats rescued from the Barn Cat life. The calf was one that lived on the back porch for a couple of months after being born as a premie. I named her Sequoia to give her a name to live up to. We had dogs, but I guess we thought it would be a bit tough to get this photo with dogs too.

Fast forward to 2012 or so when these photos were taken.When we first moved here in 1999 Molly went missing. I was driving the kids to school and saw her up the road running between haystacks. I brought her home and we made sure that she had a safe place in the garage. Dan uses the upstairs of the garage as his office/man-cave and that became Molly’s home base. I probably had the dogs with me when I took this photo because that is how Molly stared at them while holding her ground. Molly lived a good life for 19 years, but a couple of weeks ago it was time to say that final goodbye.

Red & Green in October

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Robin

I put the rams in with the ewes on October 1. This is Day 16 so it’s time to change the marker. The ewe’s heat cycle averages 17 days. If one of the previously marked ewes is remarked then I know that she wasn’t bred in the first cycle. If multiple ewes are remarked I may have a ram fertility problem. I changed the markers for all four rams from red to green. Hendrix was not very happy about being tied up.

All he wanted was to get back to the ewe in heat. The young ram, now named Santana, (second from right) wasn’t put in with the ewes until October 7 but several ewes have been marked. As I was working with the sheep I heard geese honking. It’s that time of year.And here is the gorgeous evening sky.

Breeding Season

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Robin

It’s time to think ahead five months to lambs. But that won’t happen if I don’t do something about it now. What with events and classes the last few weeks it was hard to get all the rams and ewes sorted into the right places but they are there now. Faulkner’s ewes were first to sort because at least I knew where I would put them. They are staying in Faulkner’s pen. He has 7 ewes. Hendrix, with 18 ewes, tried to get started right away. He didn’t choose the right ewe. Miller, with 9 ewes, had no problem figuring it out. Each ram wears a marking harness so that I know when each ewe is bred. I will change the markers to another color after two weeks. If the ewes are marked again then there may be a problem with ram fertility. Presley is another adult ram but I don’t plan to use him because he is closely related to the others. (He is for sale.) He was hopeful when I moved him to another pen, but he gave up after finding that there were only ram lambs. I wanted to use one of this year’s ram lambs for the fourth group of ewes. I had a hard time choosing among the rams I have saved. My first choice was a four-horn ram lamb who I think has promise and also placed well at the summer shows. Unfortunately, he was very sick with bluetongue (insect transmitted virus common in the fall) a few weeks ago. He pulled through (I lost two others) but with the 106+ temperature I can not be sure that he is fertile. He may have his chance next year, but this year I needed to find another ram. I chose a two-horn ram whose wool I like. He wasn’t happy about the whole thing. The ewes were a little rough on him the first day. I could just hear the comments under their breaths “little pipsqueak”, “a lot of gall thinking he can handle us”, “take that” (rib-bashing)There were times when I thought that this ram would do OK, but most of the time I found him lying down away from the ewes. I started to wonder if he also had bluetongue because he acted so depressed and showed no interest in food or the ewes. I finally removed him and chose a second ram. Now I think that he just wasn’t ready to breed and the ewes knew that and beat him up. Most Jacob rams are ready to breed at six months, but not always. This guy seems to be interested and ready to go. 13022 He weighs less than all these ewes but that doesn’t seem to bother him (or the ewes). Hendrix has been with his ewes for a week and seven are marked.Miller has five marked.Poor Amaryllis is exiled for the moment. I don’t want the rams fighting through the fence so they are all in areas with no fence-line contact. Besides the four ram groups there are the non-breeding ewes (spring lambs, summer-lambing ewes, cull lambs) and non-breeding rams. That doesn’t leave much space for Amaryllis since she has to be on a grass hay diet without pasture (she broke the grazing muzzle) or alfalfa. So she has her own corral for the moment.

Multiple Warp Twills-class with Sheila O’Hara

Posted on September 26, 2013 by Robin

The sub-title of this workshop could be “I think my brain is about to explode”. At least that is how I felt at the end of the second day after I had woven only this much: My friends consider me a prolific weaver, but this was a humbling experience. In my defense, I had a lot of distractions because the workshop was at my place. So I was looking for the right height benches, setting up lights, finding an umbrella (for the journey to the porta-potty in our first storm of the year), and I did my share of chatting with the other weavers.

It has been years since I have taken a workshop and I jumped at the chance to take this one from Sheila O’Hara, whose work I have long admired. I was glad to host the workshop because it meant that I could stay home and not drive to Sacramento three days in a row. In addition, Sheila stayed here so I had the chance to get to know her a little better. On the fourth day I did go to Sacramento where Sheila presented a great program to the Sacramento Weavers and Spinners Guild.

Our pre-class instructions were to wind two warps of different colors, using multiple colors in each warp and we were given the threading draft (order to thread the loom). We had seen photos of some of Sheila’s work using this method.These are Sheila’s scarves. Each scarf has two completely different sides but in some the yarns from one side show through to the other. Using a 16-shaft loom you can have 4 layers of color and the compu-dobby (computer interface that I have on my big loom) can aid in keeping track of where you are in the weaving. We used 8-shaft table looms for the class because a floor loom doesn’t have enough treadles to accommodate the treadling required for this.

Here are photos from the class:Thanks to my expanded space we were able to fit enough looms in the room. Gathering around a loom to talk about this sample. We wove a series of sample treadlings that showed varying amounts of each of the two warp layers and then we learned pick-up, changing sheds (opening between threads) three times in each pick (row of weaving)… …where the lower layer showed up as a distinct design in the upper layer.Evening walks helped clear my head. This first rain of the season cleared the air and washed the dust away from everything. I welcome fall. — Back to weaving. We spent some time with graph paper and colored pencils learning how to create other designs. This task was to draw a design and, using 4 differently colored warps (horizontal in this photo), fill in the shapes using threads from the different layers. Yes, these designs could be woven on the same warp…if the brain can handle it. We looked at everyone’s warps and discussed the weave structure and color interaction. Weaving paparazzi? More of Sheila’s weaving samples.She has recently woven images using photographs taken by Edward Curtis in the late 1800’s to easy 1900’s. These images are woven using a Jacquard loom in which each thread is individually controlled. Sheila used to rent time on one of these looms but now has her own. Autumn in St. Helena.

Sheila has a wonderful sense of humor and incorporates it into her presentations as well as her weavings. Make sure to look at her weavings on her website. You can contact Sheila or me to purchase them.

I am glad to say that I added to my Sheila O’Hara collection. I already had the Spring Flockettes.Now I have the Winter Flockettes as well.

Epilogue:Back home by myself I started weaving again. I think I have figured out how to do it right.

National Heirloom Exposition

Posted on September 14, 2013 by Robin

I forgot that Sonoma County could be drizzly and cool, even when northern Solano County is sweltering. I spent 3 1/2 days as a vendor at the Heirloom Festival in Santa Rosa. It was nice to be out of the heat, but I would have welcomed a little sun on Days 1 & 2. I brought sheep as well as the booth, so I used 2 canopies as well as the sheep pen area. Since we were outside we could spread out as much as we wanted to. Just beyond my booth was an area where other fiber vendors/artists, representing Fibershed, were stationed.Jackie demonstrated the peg loom and Colleen demonstrated needlefelting.Mary and Chris, the “zoomers”, wove on the Zoom Loom, as well as demonstrating other fibery skills throughout the show.

There was a lot to see at the Heirloom Expo and I took advantage of the hours in the morning before the gates opened to the public to look around. My sheep spent the night in the barn and were in the pen at the booth only during the hours of the show. There were a lot of bee and honey displays. Vertical gardens. A great use of old doors. Notice the screen to the right as well. Are Dona and Jackie solving the problems of the world? Or just satisfying their caffeine addictions?

Red and Purple Field Trip

Posted on September 7, 2013 by Robin

There was a fun field trip here today. About ten women from the Red Hat Society chapter in Sacramento came for the morning. We started out in the barn visiting the sheep and Amaryllis, but I didn’t get any photos. I did get photos of Rusty showing off sheep herding skills, but he will use those in his blog.

I had planned a simple needlefelting project in the shop. I provided felt and colorful fiber and, although, I had prepared some simple sheep and chicken outlines, most people created their own designs. This was a lively group of women who were very interested in the animals and the farm and who seemed to have a good time here.

Sheepy Morning

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Robin

The sheep follow me, always hopeful that I’ll switch them to a new paddock. They are in luck this morning. The young lambs don’t always figure out going around the post. Now they’re going the right way. Sheep aren’t the only thing in the pasture.Can you tell what I’m looking at?The mosquitoes haven’t been too bad this year, but that has changed now. The pasture mosquitoes are out in force. I don’t go out in the pasture without my long sleeved “mosquito shirt”.

What did I do to deserve such Good Friends?

Posted on August 31, 2013 by Robin

Farm Club (and others) came through again. Expanding the shop has been an ordeal that started five months ago. The last step was to paint. Farm Club friends volunteered to help so I set a date. If they hadn’t offered I’d probably still be procrastinating. I have been looking at these paint samples for months and finally chose one. But first everything needed to be primed. This is where the new section joins the old. This is part of the original building. It’s actually an old mobile home, which hasn’t been mobile in decades. I painted it about a dozen years ago after we first moved here. This is at the south end. The window trim on the south end and much of the east side was rotten. The wood beneath was also rotten in some places. It has been very discouraging and overwhelming–trying to figure out how to deal with it. (Don’t look up dry rot on Google unless you want to get depressed.) Some of this still has to be fixed before the whole project is completed, but we moved on with what we could do. It was extra nice that a couple of husbands also volunteered to help. The more the merrier! I don’t know if Mary overcame her dislike of ladders, but she persevered anyway to paint the eaves. We worked all day yesterday with brushes to get that primer into the wood. Today I got out the new paint sprayer.

I don’t have photos yet of the completed job. There are still windows to fix and more trim to paint, but I am so grateful to my friends for their help that I wanted to write this now. In addition to giving up their weekend days, most of them had to drive an hour to get here. I can’t thank them enough. There will be another post when the job is completely finished.

Meridian Jacobs' Blog

Life on the farm and at the loom.