The Latest from the Loom

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Robin

In preparation for Fibershed’s Grow Your Jeans event I wove six shawls using locally grown Timm Ranch wool yarn. I showed photos of these before they were washed in this blog post. Quite a dramatic change. With the exception of the second blanket the weft is all the same as the warp, but naturally dyed. From left to right: Osage orange (exhaust), Jacob wool, osage orange, black walnut, pomegranate, not dyed. One shawl will be worn in the fashion show and they will all be for sale at Grow Your Jeans. After that they will be for sale at the Fibershed Marketplace website and at the Artery in Davis.More locally grown wool. These scarves are woven using Solano County Anderson Ranch wool. Not locally gown, but one of my best sellers–chenille scarves. You’ve seen this before but I hadn’t taken a photo with the magazine cover.Here’s is one of my photoshoot locations. Hard to find a smooth surface in the shade.

Shearing at the Timm Ranch

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Robin

Here is where Colleen (Fiber Confections) and I spent last Sunday. I first got fleece from the Timm Ranch, just a few miles from here, last year in preparation for my show at the Artery. Here is a blog post with info about the ranch and photos of the blankets I wove with the wool. This is a view to the northwest taken while driving through the ranch.Much of the 2700 acres is leased for cattle grazing.The last gate before the ranch headquarters.There were about 90 ewes, several lambs, and five rams to shear. One group of sheep was already in the barn when we got there but I helped with the second group. These are a “ranch mix” developed many years ago and are a blend of Rambouillet, Targhee, and Polypay.

The sheep are brought into the barn (on the left)……move along a lane in the north side of the barn……and end up in the pens in the middle where they are visually contained by burlap drapes. The shearer pulls the next sheep to shear through the drape and when he is finished the sheep is released and…

…it walks out the door to the back.The wool is pushed through the window of the barn into a pile where it is later loaded into a wool press that compresses the wool into bales.These bales can weigh 300-400 pounds.

In this case Colleen and I diverted many fleeces to our piles and inspected, bagged, and weighed them. I had bagged up my predetermined amount of 200 pounds and was ready to leave (having been battling a cold for days and at this point in the day had completely lost my voice). But then it was time to shear the five rams.I figured that I’d been there this long. What’s another half hour?

I’m glad that I stayed.

The ram fleeces were gorgeous. Whereas the ewe fleeces weighed 5+ to 8 pounds the ram fleeces I bought weighed 12 pounds (two mature rams) and 8 pounds (the yearling ram with the horns).

Last year I had the wool spun into yarn and put on cones (easy for weaving). I think that I’ll have this year’s fiber put into skeins because of the appeal to knitters. Last year’s fiber tested at an average of 23.5 microns. I think I’ll send some more samples in from this year’s wool. Be looking for this yarn in a few (several?) months.

Close to Home–Post #16 The End

Posted on December 4, 2014 by Robin

Monday I took down the show. Two dedicated and fabulous friends came to help. They tagged and wrote price labels for all the pieces and sorted sold from unsold. I took out nails, patched holes, got the museum putty that held signs off the walls, and figured out how to condense this whole gallery….into the corner at the end of the room. I didn’t finish until the next day.This is some of the blankets all tagged and ready to show again.

I was able to keep a lot of pieces there. I hope a lot sell because in January it will be someone else’s turn for a show in the gallery and my things will go back out to a smaller space in the main part of the store. Here is what I did. The chenille scarves came back to the display, although baby blankets are still in the other room of the store. One wall. The other wall.Remember this?Now it’s full of wonderful comments. I like Breanna from Fair Oaks mindset, don’t you?

Thanks to everyone who came, who commented, and who bought, and supported the local sheep industry and your local weaver/farmer!!!!

Close to Home…Post #13 Felt

Posted on November 27, 2014 by Robin

In my fiber pursuits I consider myself first a weaver. That’s the predominant technique for the pieces in the show, Close to Home, at the Artery which, by the way is up through December 1. (If you’re just tuning in to this blog you can read here about the concept behind the show.) There are over 140 pieces in the show and most are woven. However, one end wall is devoted to felt.Felt, according to the dictionary, is a nonwoven fabric of wool, fur, or hair, matted together by heat, moisture, and great pressure. “Nonwoven fabric” is the key here. Most of the felt in the show is “matted together” by needle felting instead of the heat and moisture part.

Just in case you are picturing me with a felting needle and a pile of wool I want you to know that there is a shortcut–thanks to a friend of mine who has a felting “loom”. That’s what they call it.You feed a carded batt of wool in one side (over a light table)……and out the other. The action of hundreds of barbed needles turns the wool into felt.I fed each thin batt of wool in once and then layered them together to become a thicker piece.The final piece went through the needle loom about a dozen times. For several of my pieces I “wove” strips of roving and applied those to the felt part way through the process. I ended up with lots of placemats, trivets (the thick ones could double as stadium seats), and coasters.

After cutting out the placemats and other items I had felt strips left over. I wove those into wall hangings.

There was one piece of felt that my friends convinced me to leave alone and not cut up. I hung it on the wall at the Artery and it sold as a wall hanging.I did use the soap and hot water method in addition to needle felting to create these balls. They are sold as dryer balls (3 in the dryer help reduce drying time and soften clothes), or juggling balls, or cat toys, or therapeutic aids (at least that’s why one friend bought some).

By the way, the wool for all of the felt items comes from either the Suffolk sheep on the Phillips Farm (see Blog Post #9) or the coarser britch wool of my own Jacob sheep.

Close to Home…Post #12 Wearables

Posted on November 22, 2014 by Robin

The previous posts were all about the farms where I got the wool to use in my show, Close to Home…Yarn with a Story. Most of them featured blankets. I love weaving blankets. It doesn’t really matter what size they are, you can weave each in a different color and/or pattern, and who couldn’t use a warm blanket?

But I wove some wearables as well. Above are shawls woven of the same style of yarn from Imperial Yarn Company as the Stars and Stripes blankets. The brown yarn was dyed with black walnut.This is what the black walnuts look like after having soaked in a bucket for a couple of weeks and then been boiled for an hour. These are pots of eucalyptus leaves and twigs on the stove……and yarn in the dye made after boiling those pots. Notice that there are two different weights of yarn in this post. That finer yarn, also from Imperial Yarn Company, is used in the shawls below.The weft in this shawl uses the fine yarn dyed in eucalyptus. One batch turned out rust and another was gold.You can see the two different sides of each shawl in this photo. 883-2 (1) Here is a close-up.Another shawl that uses natural dyed yarn (black walnut) is this one in huck lace woven using yarn from the Timm Ranch.Here is another in un-dyed yarn.By the way, here is what that shawl looks like while on the loom. I always have to convince new weavers to have faith that even if you see spaces when you’re weaving they will close up if you’re working with wool.

There are also several scarves in the show, some of which have been shown in earlier posts.These scarves use yarn from Fiber Confections, Anderson Ranch, and Meridian Jacobs.

Close to Home…Post #10 – Sincere Sheep

Posted on November 20, 2014 by Robin

One of the first yarns I used when weaving for Close to Home was Targhee wool sold by Sincere Sheep.

Story: Brooke Sinnes of Napa began Sincere Sheep in 2003 and focused on natural dyeing yarn sourced from local wool. Since that time she has included other lines of yarn sourced farther from home.
Sincere Sheep’s Bannock yarn is a 3-ply worsted weight yarn that features 100% Targhee wool from Montana and the Dakotas that is milled in North Carolina and spun in Maine.
The Targhee sheep is named after the Targhee National Forest near where the breed was developed beginning in the 1920’s. The goal of the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station in Idaho was to develop sheep with uniformly heavy fleshing and high quality fine wool that was adapted to rugged conditions of the Western range. Developed by crossing Rambouillet, Corriedale, and Lincoln sheep at the Experiment Station, the Targhee breed was expanded by selection of “Targhee type” ewes from large bands of range ewes crossed with Targhee rams. The flock book was closed in 1966.
Targhee sheep produce 10-12 pound fleeces with very soft, bright white fiber that measures 21-25 microns. Sincere Sheep’s Bannock yarn was named for a Targhee Native American Chief.This is one of only two yarns in this show that are not grown in Solano or Marin Counties but I included it because of the variety of colors, naturally dyed, and the quality of the yarn, and it is grown in the Pacific Northwest, which is Closer to Home than many places where wool is grown. I love the color variation in this yarn… …and the variety of designs that you can get on one warp. Sincere Sheep blankets That means that each of the blankets above was woven on the same warp threading in white yarn, but the patterns change by varying the treading and, of course, the color of the weft. Another series of blankets. And another. Sincere Sheep Targhee At the end of the warp I just wove in white instead of making it plaid and then I felted the fabric. That made great fabric for pillows.I also wove a series of blankets on a rusty red warp with a white weft

Targhee yarn is very soft and perfect for scarves as well. After the Artery show whatever items are left will be for sale on my website.

Close to Home…Post #9 – Phillips Farm

Posted on November 19, 2014 by Robin

The Phillips Farm is about a mile down the road from my place and I used their wool in the show at The Artery. Story: The Phillips family lives down the road from my farm and they raise a small flock of Suffolk sheep for lamb and meat production. For the last few years I have acquired their fleeces and used the wool in woven blankets and for felt projects.

Suffolk sheep are an English breed developed in the early 1800’s and brought to the U.S. in 1888. Suffolks are large black-faced sheep that are often used as a terminal sire for range flocks. They produce a lofty, medium grade fleece measuring 25.5 to 33 microns.

I sort the fleeces and have the softer wool spun into yarn for use in blankets and shawls. The coarser wool is carded into batts at Yolo Wool Mill in Woodland that are used for felt projects and pillows. The natural springiness and loft of Suffolk wool makes it the perfect pillow stuffing. I sent these fleece samples for testing and the result came back 29.4 microns. In the past I have used this wool for blankets but with access to a friend’s felt loom (machine for needle felting) I decided to use most of it for felt this year. The felt I made is a combination of the Suffolk wool and Jacob britch wool. I made three series of placemats (10 to 12 in each). I also made larger (door) mats and smaller (mug rug) mats.Cutting up all that felt leaves odds and ends of felt. What is better to do than to turn them into weaving projects? So I made these woven felled wall hangings… …and dryer balls. I delivered the prototypes of these to the Artery last year and found a customer who wanted to juggle with them. Here’s a short video of that.

…and dryer balls.

Close to Home…Post #7 – Jacob Wool

Posted on November 16, 2014 by Robin

I’ve been writing about sources of wool from Solano and Marin Counties and from Oregon, but of course I used my own wool too for the Artery show. How to choose a representative photo of my sheep? I used more than one. I can do that because it’s my show. Fanny LolaRams.

Here is the story I wrote for the show:

I developed Meridian Jacobs after my family moved to Meridian Road, north of Vacaville, in 1999 and I purchased Jacob sheep. The Jacob sheep is a rare breed that is hardy and well-adapted to low-input, sustainable farming practices. My flock of 65+ sheep grazes irrigated pasture much of the year and is supplemented with locally grown alfalfa during the winter.

The sheep provide me with unique wool and tasty lamb and are the core upon which I have built a multi-faceted business, selling fiber (from my sheep and other yarns featured in this show), teaching classes, and creating the Farm Club. Lambs for meat are sold to individuals and to Superior Farms in Dixon.

The Jacob sheep is striking in appearance with it’s spotted fleece and multiple horns. The sheep are shorn in the fall and yarn is spun at two California mills. My flock’s wool measures from 27 to 31 microns. By sorting fleeces by color and grade I produce a variety of natural shades and can use the softer fleeces for blankets and garments and coarser wool for felt items.

Meridian Jacobs evolved as I turned my passion for wool into a business.

I had a limited amount of yarn from this year because I sold so many fleeces at shearing day. Some went to Farm Club members and I used most of the rest. It is beautiful yarn. These are all throw-sized blankets.The cool thing about Jacob wool is that you get all of these natural colors without dyeing. For this blanket I used odds and ends of the yarns that were left in warp and weft. It was going to be a poncho along with the other blanket on this warp. I have a poncho that I wore in high school:Yes, I still have it because I always planned to use it for a pattern. (When I put it on it makes me look 17, right? Glasses are gone. With camera angle, you don’t see as many wrinkles. You can pretend that I bleached my hair back then.)Anyway, the fabric in the first “poncho” photo was larger than the poncho that I wanted and it looked and felt so nice as a blanket that I didn’t cut a hole in it. (Good thing–it has sold to someone and it will be shipped to Australia.) This fabric was about the right size so I did turn it into a poncho. It can be purchased at the Artery (or from me after the show). 887-4 This is a scarf from more of the left-over yarn.

Close to Home…Post #6 – Anderson Ranch wool

Posted on November 16, 2014 by Robin

Last March I watched some of the shearing on a large sheep ranch in southern Solano County and I brought home fleeces. Here is the blog post from that day. Rio Vista shearing In September I got the yarn back from the mill and used it for pieces in my show at the Artery.

Story that is part of the show: Margaret and Ian Anderson farm land that Ian’s great grandfather settled in the late 19th century. While Ian’s great grandfather raised only sheep and grain the modern ranch is a diversified farming operation growing hay, grain, and cattle as well as sheep. The original sheep on the ranch were mostly Corriedale but today’s 3000 breeding ewes are a blend of Corriedale, Polypay, and Rambouillet breeding. The ewes are bred to Suffolk and Rambouillet rams to produce each year’s lambs. The lambs are raised in adherence to the strict animal handling and environmental sustainability protocols of Niman Ranch, where most of the lambs are marketed. Local sources of Anderson Ranch Lambs are Nature’s Bounty near Vacaville and Chuck’s Custom Slaughter in Dixon.

As in many U.S. sheep operations the Anderson Ranch wool is handled as a by-product and is usually baled and sold in bulk. Last spring I watched some of the shearing and brought home about a dozen fleeces. I sorted and pre-washed the wool and shipped 90 pounds to Zeilinger Wool Company in Michigan, one of the few mills in the U.S. that can adequately process fine wools in small quantities. The wool was spun into 54 pounds of 2-ply-sport weight yarn. The fiber averages 20.4 microns. Feel how soft it is for yourself!

This yarn, like the yarn from the Timm Ranch and processed at Zeilinger’s, changes dramatically from it’s coned form to skeined yarn or finished piece. I will do another blog post about that because it’s so cool to see the changes. This would make a great knitting yarn as well (although I’d skein and wash it first) and it is on my website for sale now. This blanket and the one above it are woven with the same weave structure, but they look different because one has dyed weft. The browns are dyed with black walnut. This blanket has weft dyed with osage orange that grows across the road.I also wove some scarves. This is beautiful yarn, very soft and would make great knitted scarves or caps. I look forward to weaving more projects with it. Maybe I’ll even be enticed to get out the knitting needles.

Close to Home…Post #5 – Mom’s Yarn

Posted on November 14, 2014 by Robin

I’ve been writing posts about my show at The Artery in Davis. Here is a link to the first post that explains the concept.I used this photo in the show but had a hard time deciding between it and the one below both taken probably in the 1970’s at our place in Cotati, CA where I grew up. Here is the story:

Everyone I know who is a weaver has a yarn stash and I am no exception. My stash includes what I like to think of as “archival” yarns that were spun by my mom years ago. Over the years the odd ball of my own handspun yarn has ended up in the stash that I have accumulated.

Most of the yarn mom spun was from sheep that were the descendants of my brother’s 4-H project (I raised dairy cows and didn’t do anything with sheep back then) and many years later from my flock of sheep. Mom took up the hobby of spinning in the 1970’s as an adjunct to her expert knitting passion. These yarns reflect the lumpy, bumpy style of that era as that was the type of yarn she liked to use in her knitting and later in weaving.

The blankets in this show that are labeled with yarn from “My Mom” are woven by me using these yarns for warp and one of my current yarns for the weft. Pillows and organizers labeled “My Mom” use her handwoven fabric scraps left over from constructing jackets, vests, or blankets.

Two throws, above and below. All of these blankets have Mom’s yarn as the warp. The challenge with weaving something like this is that all the yarns are of different grist, amount of twist, and elasticity. That can cause waviness (or seersucker effect) in the woven piece. By using small amounts in each place instead of big bands I can minimize the effect, but it doesn’t all go away. There wasn’t enough of any one for weft so I used other yarn for the weft yarns–either my Jacob yarn or other yarn featured in the show.

Mom's yarn The next two blankets, above and below. This is the batch of yarns from which I worked. Not that Mom didn’t spin in color, but for most of the pieces of the show I was trying to stick true to the “local” aspect of source of yarn and dye. This is a pillow in the show with Mom’s yarn in the warp. This fabric was leftover from a blanket I wove for Katie when she lived in VT. See this post for a photo of that blanket.Mom also did some weaving. This is fabric that Mom wove of her handspun yarn and I think she used some for a vest for my brother or maybe my uncle.

There will be more blankets to come using more of this yarn.

Meridian Jacobs' Blog

Life on the farm and at the loom.

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