Weave Like a Viking

Lambing is over as of two days ago. I will talk some more about lambs, but right now I want to share today’s class, Weave Like a Viking, taught by Farm Club member Siobhan…with a little about lambs.

Siobhan started figured out how to weave Vararfeldur, a pile weave using wool locks interspersed in plain weave or twill. Siobhan previously presented a class here in felting that results in a piece with a similar appearance at first glance, but is much different.

This is an example of the “sheepskin” from Create a Vegetarian Sheepskin.

These are the pieces of Vararfeldur that Siobhan brought to share. The pillow in the center is an example of the piece the students would weave today.

Siobhan started with a demonstration of the technique.

Six students brought rigid heddle or table looms already warped and ready to weave.

They weren’t expected to finish the weaving in this half day class but got well underway in the pile weaving.

The intent is to weave a pillow front with the wool locks and then finish the weaving in plain weave or twill to complete a pillow cover.

Half way through the weaving the class took a break to feed the bottle lambs.

We will offer this class again in May. You’ll be able to visit the lambs but by then none will need a bottle.

Weaving in 2023 – 2

Before the last couple of lamb posts I started to take a look back at weaving in 2023. Here is the next about weaving

Warp #1308 was baby blankets. I need to get another baby blanket warp on the loom because I’m almost out. Do you know that one of the first things I wove was a baby blanket for my son who is now 43? I have been weaving pretty much the same blankets all this time. If people still like them I guess that’s OK. I have a lot of other ideas though. Just no time.

Warp # 1311 was for samples using the yarn I got back from one of the mills. The samples are Jacob warp with Jacob and Timm Ranch weft at two different setts. The photo on the left is before washing and the right is after washing. That is where differences in take-up and draw-in really show up.

These samples were all from one warp but resleyed to weave at 15 epi, 18 epi, and 24 epi. I used these for a Yarn Lab article for the Jan/Feb 2024 Handwoven magazine.

This is one of several clasped warp scarves and shawls I wove. They will be in an upcoming issue of Handwoven.

Warp 1326 was Timm Ranch yarn and I wove two shawls, one with indigo-dyed weft, and one with 3 supplementary warps to create the design.

The next warp is Jacob wool. I really like how the two sides of this pattern are so different.

This is Warp 1328 with 14 blankets. I weave these on my 60″ wide AVL production loom.

They look a little better when finished. Some of these are on the website now (here is one). Some are Year to Remember blankets that were custom orders.

This is another clasped warp scarf using Timm Ranch wool that I dyed with homegrown indigo.

Warp 1337 on the loom. This is Timm Ranch warp and Jacob weft.

I wove enough for four pieces and made two into mobius shawls.

So many ideas and so little time. Back to the barn to feed lambs now.

Weaving in 2023 – 1

I saw a blog post the other day in which the writer had recorded everything she wove within that year. That gave me this idea. I’m taking photos and keeping notes all the time. I may as well use them. I won’t try to fit the whole year into one post however. Maybe I’ll post weaving, then I’ll post lambs, then weaving, then lambs. How’s that?

My warps are all numbered so I can find the info in my binder. This one is 1299 from January 2023, blankets on the AVL loom. My notebook shows that I wove 11 blankets on this warp, some of which were Year to Remember blankets. These three use temperature data from 2022 so the stripes are all the same, but the colors are very different. I weave custom Year to Remember blankets and use a sparkly yarn to distinguish the special date. I think I have enough warp still on the loom for one more of these this winter, so contact me if you want to know more.

This is 1301 a scarf using all these crazy yarns. I teach a class in weaving a scarf using a mixed warp wound with a paddle, “Mix it Up”. I haven’t taught that class in awhile and I probably need to change it from a 1-day class to maybe 1-1/2 days. I don’t know if people want to pay for an extra day, but I always forget that it takes longer in a class setting than I take if I’m just warping and weaving my own scarf.

Two more mixed warps on the loom. The one on the right is a shawl, now at the Artery I think. I wove 5 or 6 of these in different colors.

In February I demonstrated weaving at the Sacramento Weavers Open House. I missed it this year because lambs were coming earlier than the previous year. I wove a chenille warp on Saturday and a wool warp on Sunday.

This is the warp after I took it off the loom.

Warp 1317 was a handspun Jacob wool scarf. Two Farm Club members spun yarn from wool that was accumulated from years of samples sent in when registering rams. Each ram application requires a few locks of wool. We have been digitizing the papers and that means those baggies of wool are discarded. I decided to do a project like this and then donate the scarf to the Jacob Sheep Breeders raffle. I wove two scarves using wool two different people had spun.

Clasped Warp is a technique that I wrote about for Little Looms a few years ago. It has been used with rigid heddle looms to design warps that change color midway through the length. I decided to do the same thing on a floor loom, adding the woven in pattern to the elements of interest. This is a shawl woven on a 4-shaft loom using handspun yarn. I will have an article coming out in the next Handwoven on this technique.

I wove fabric for 4 bags to use in an article that was published in Little Looms last year. These are hemp and woven on a rigid heddle loom. The bag uses a length of fabric that is 8″ wide and 4 yards long. Folding it strategically gives a shoulder bag with and inside and outside pocket.

This was part of that last blanket warp. It used up odds and ends of the Ashford DK yarn that I use for the Year to Remember blankets. The shape isn’t exactly right because that warp is designed to weave throws that end up about 45-50″ wide. I wove random stripes and sewed two together for a bed-sized blanket. I should have woven them longer and then they’d fit the bed correctly, but I didn’t have a plan at the time.

More to come if I’m going to finish out the year.

Today on the Farm – February 16

Sunrise while I was in the pasture.

This is the opposite view. It looks as though there is a lot of grass but we have to be strategic about grazing right now. The ground is wet and I don’t want to cause compaction. And much of the pasture is not fresh grass, but still-dormant dallisgrass with only a little annual grass growing through. The bulk of the green grass right now is annual, not perennial. There are clovers in here too and we want to maximize their vigor by not overgrazing them.

We first set the net fence up along the lane so the sheep could graze that down before it became so tall all they would do is trample it. The grazed part is where I had the sheep yesterday using a short bit of net fence. This morning I switched to a longer section of net fence and gave them a bit more of the grass.

Ginny came to the barn eventually with a ball. Whose ball is this? Chicken or dog?

Trista was in last night because I thought she was next to lamb. I was right, but she sure took her time with it. It was a long time before this labor became anything that was visible.

Back at the Weaving House, one of the things on the list was to photograph the latest v-shawls to promote the class that I will teach at CNCH in April. There is still room!

On my many trips back and forth between the barn and the house I always admire my daffodils.

It was about 1 p.m. that Trista finally lambed. It took another hour before she had the seccond lamb. Look at the horns on this ram!

Back at the Weaving House. Jacob shawls are on the loom now. I hope to finish these tomorrow.

We have seen a skunk twice in the last week around the shop. It seems to be living under the shop. Ginny has confronted it. I There is a distinct “eau de skunk” in the air, even in the shop. There are many reasons why it’s not a good idea to have a skunk around. Fortunately it was not under the shop tonight we we could deal with it.

Back to the barn. This is Coco with the first of twins.

Jade came in tonight because…well, because she is Jade. She doesn’t look particularly ready but she sure looks as though she should be. She was due yesterday I think.

Bright Colors and Lambs

I taught a rigid heddle weaving class this morning and the one participant chose these brilliant colors for her scarf. I think it turned out great!

Dan and I went to the barn to put up a new barn camera and saw this out back. I had put these ewe in last night because she didn’t follow the others in to eat. But I put her back out this morning because nothing had happened and she wasn’t due for another five days. This is Rose, Kirby’s ewe. She is in the photo below just before shearing.

When they are in full fleece, looks are deceiving.

The ultrasound results showed triplets, but there are only twins here. These are dark lilac lambs. Horatio is the sire.

This is Bessie, the ewe that lambed January 29, too early for the “real” breeding season. These lambs are sired by a random ram lamb. They are sure nice looking ewes. One is black and white and one is lilac.

Searching the Archives 12-25

I was looking for a photo earlier and got distracted by others that were of memorable events. Then I realized it had been a long time since I searched for a number to see which photos showed up. I chose 1225 and searched my Lightroom catalog for that number. I turned up a group that is not that exciting, but there are some stories attached.

In May 2017 a group of friends and I went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. We made our trip long enough for some sight seeing. One of our stops was Assateague Island National Seashore where we saw ponies. Here is the story about that.

This is from setting up a show at The Artery in November, 2017. I called the show Loom With a View. In looking back through the photos I have two conclusions. One is that it it looked pretty good. The second is that my style hasn’t changed much. Is that a good thing–in that I weave functional pieces with a recognizable style? Or not so good in that I haven’t evolved? Here is a link to the post about setting up that show.

Maybe this is cheating to keep within the theme of this post (photo # 1225), but here is a photo of how the room looked.

The next #1225 photo is from March 2021. Ahhh, the pandemic years of wearing masks everywhere. I can’t find a blog post from this shearing at the Timm Ranch but here are two from shearing in 2019 and shearing in 2022.

This is not Photo #1225 but Warp #1225. That’s the 1225th warp since I started keeping track. I guess if I run out of ideas for blog posts I could go back in those archives as well. This warp was a sampler that I ended up using to develop the class I just taught last month. Blog post is here. Class description is here.

This piece is from that same warp and seems to be an appropriate end for Christmas Eve.

Week in Review – SF, Sheep, Weaving

So much for my one blog post every day routine. It’s been a week. I think I had a set back last weekend. I often work on the computer in the late evening. Last Friday I went to bed earlier than normal because I had to get up early for the next day’s event. That backfired. I woke up at 3 a.m. and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Charlene (Integrity Alpacas, creator of Gardener’s Gold, and my down-the-road neighbor) and I left at 5 a.m. for San Francisco to be part of the Fibershed booth at the Ferry Building Farmers’ Market.

We arrived at dawn and some people were already setting up. It had been raining and continued to rain and drizzle off and on all day.

This is the opposite view from our location.

A few Fibershed producers arrived, and we finished setting up in time for the market to open. There were twelve producers represented at the booth.

Do you recognize any fabric here? Gynna (creator of Soil to Soil Market is using some of my woven pieces to create earrings! (FYI – Soil to Soil Market is open, there are still only two of us listed while there is more behind-the-scenes work.)

This was a cold, wet day. Thankfully we were able to pack up when the market was over at 2. When Charlene went to the parking garage to get her truck she found it, along with six other vehicles, had been broken into. Her rear passenger side window was shattered and the truck had been searched. The next day after, a night of freezing temperature, the front passenger window had shattered and you could tell where it had been hit first but hadn’t yet broken.

I didn’t feel warm until that night in bed (early). I’m ready to stay home.

Back to farm life.

This is SilverSun, one of the March 2023 lambs. I changed coats a couple of weeks ago. Its always a gamble to figure out which coat is big enough to give room for more wool to grow but fits well enough to stay in place. I had bought some new coats last summer and I they fit a little differently. She had probably got a back leg out of the strap and then the front was loose enough to get a front leg through. Eventually the neck opening was around her middle and she was trapped with the coat dragging underneath. The other sheep were harassing her and she couldn’t do anything about it.

Here she is in one of the old style coats that has been patched. That’s a better fit.

Ewes (and a goat) in the small field behind the shop.

I’ve been focused on weaving…all the weaving that I wish I had done earlier in the year to be ready for the holidays. These are three wool shawls now at The Artery in Davis.

I’m also creating other pieces using odd bits of handwoven fabric. These pillows are at The Artery.

At Spinners Day Out on Friday a friend who had harvested our pomegranates brought me a treat of pomegranate soda!

Also at Spinners Day Out, our youngest friend, daughter of one of the original Farm Club members, went to the barn to visit with Jade. (That’s a stuffed kitty snuggled in her clothes.)

Back to normal work–weaving, website, sheep, etc.

Overshot Explorations and More

I tried a new class last week. I used overshot as a way to guide weavers through exciting discoveries of sampling treadling techniques, choosing colors, and changing yarn sizes.

Two weavers came on Thursday to warp their looms. On Friday they were joined by two more weavers and they all wove overshot samplers.

This is the Sample Wall with examples of the drafts and the variables they could try.

I didn’t hang the “orange peel” sample but had it available. This is a good example of the effect of sett on the appearance of a piece. These are woven on the same warp of 5/2 cotton. The one on the right is sett at 12 epi (ends per inch) and the one on the left is sett at 15 epi. With the warp threads that much closer together the orange peel pattern is elongated and the circle becomes an oval.

The next photos are some of the weavers’ work on the looms near the beginning of class.

Two weavers chose black warp as in the samples. One weaver used white warp. Those are all cotton but the bottom one is wool because I already had that on a loom. That is white wool warp with gray tabby weft. It is so interesting to see the differences.

This was the first time for this class so I over-estimated how much warp would be woven. Two people have come back to continue work. Here is the sampler one of the students finished the next day. I will wait to see what others finished at home.

I hope to offer this class again but its not scheduled right now. Look for Overshot Explorations.

Woven Goods

It’s the season for selling when you’re in the business of making. Now I seem to spend extra time taking photos and then trying to keep track if the items are at The Artery or here, listed on the my website or on the Fibershed Marketplace site . Ideally there were would be three batches–some at the Artery and not on the website, some here and just on my website, and some here and just on the Fibershed site. The goal would be to have everything sold by Christmas and to not double-sell anything…but those lines are crossing. I have to be vigilante. Here are a few examples of what I’ve been weaving.

DSC_4954Chenille scarf using clasped weft.Shawl 1065-2-1Local yarns dyed with coreopsis and dahlia flowers.Shawl-1059-3-1More local yarns dyed with mushroom and black walnut.Ponchos 1067This is the stack of ponchos that I finished in early November just before the Fibershed Wool Symposium.IMG_1021 This is how the loom looks from where I sit.IMG_1027 The rainbow colors are a result of a prism that hangs in the window behind me. After my mom died a friend gave me the prism and said that it was to remind me of my mom. And it does, as it reminds me of the friend, Sylvia.IMG_1023Coreopsis dyed yarn.IMG_0308The computer that holds the “brains” of the loom. This loom does not weave without me doing everything (for those people who think that having a computer hooked up means I’m not really weaving). It only keeps track of the pattern that I have put in.IMG_1028This is what that pattern looks like. It will be completely different after fulling.IMG_0307A look down through the warp threads to the cloth below.IMG_0305OOPS! I think I have this in an earlier photo and I haven’t told the story yet of what I did about it. That will still come.Poncho 1067-1Some of the finished ponchos.DSC_4987

DSC_5076Poncho 1067-4-3Talk about a versatile garment. I have grown to love the poncho. It’s really just a blanket with a hole in the middle for your head. Whether you’re at the computer late at night (gee, does that ever happen?), in the car, or trying to stay warm while reading in bed it’s an easy garment to throw on. And it also makes you look young and pretty! Just look at those photos! (Disclaimer–that’s really not me.)