JSBA AGM in OR

What is that title--alphabet soup? No, it's the Jacob Sheep Breeders Association Annual General Meeting in Oregon. That's where I am right now. The AGM is hosted this year by my friends, Shannon and Tony Phifer of Kenleigh Acres Farm. I drove here yesterday with 9 sheep and a truck full of fleeces, dye equipment (for a workshop), etc. Most of the activities are at Shannon's neighbor's place. There is a wonderful barn with plenty of room for all the sheep and people.

Jacob breeders came from as far away as Pennsylvania and Missouri.

Before the official start of activities Karen Lobb of bide a wee Farm gave some pointers to people who had brought fleeces to enter in the wool show.

It could be said that Karen really gets into her job. What do you think? Maybe it was this touch that helped present the winning fleece of the show, exhibited by Joan of Mud Ranch Jacobs.

This is Doug Montgomery evaluating fleeces in the wool show.

Carding in Color

I taught a carding class this morning. The participants created  roving by combining 3 multi-colored batts and also carded blends of wool and alpaca and silk.

Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the finished products, but I did photograph the small balls that I carded after everyone left. This is from the waste that was left on and under the tables.

Three more weavers

I taught a weaving class this weekend. Welcome 3 new weavers to the community!

Yesterday

In a round-about way I figured out how out how to find my photos that are resized for the blog. I will probably learn a better way later.

My friend, Jackie, had asked me to check Rusty's social calendar  for Wednesday because she needed help moving her sheep into the shelter in preparation for shearing a few of them today. What a difference a dog makes. Poor Rusty didn't get to do much because once he showed up the sheep WANTED to go in the shelter with the llama.

Back at the shop, here is what UPS delivered today. This is silk/merino sliver in several colors. Soft, ready to spin.

And this is soft Merino fiber. Now I need to get this posted on my website.

Community Cloth Celebration

I have posted before about Rebecca Burgess's Fibershed project. Rebecca made a personal commitment that for a year she would wear only clothes that originated within 150 miles of her front door. Think about it. That's not an easy task. This project is still ongoing, but yesterday there was a celebration of the project and of  Community Cloth , an effort to build the first farm-based cotton mill in the U.S. To have a viable "Fibershed" there must be a source of fine threads so that we can create cloth for t-shirts, jeans, and "regular" clothes, not just the kind of garments that most of us think of when we knit or weave. It is exciting that it is happening right here in northern California on Sally Fox's organic cotton farm. I drove over to Point Reyes Station with 3 friends. Here are some photos of our evening.

The event was held at Toby's Feed Barn, originally a feed store and still a feed store, but also an event center and gift shop. Chris and Diane and I wandered around town for a little while before the event officially started.

There was great music all evening.

I provided a blanket and a lambskin for the silent auction.

Diane, Chris, and Shelby enjoying before-dinner beverages.

When it was announced that those people wearing their own hand-made garments would be first in line at the food table we all put our outerwear back on.

Check out this bicycle-powered drum carder. The power-source for the new mill will be the sun, not bicycles!

The highlight of the evening was the fashion show. Models wore clothing created by local designers from local fibers for Rebecca's Fibershed project as well as many natural-colored cotton garments sewn from Sally's cotton fabric stash. This is the sweater knit from Meridian Jacobs 2-ply yarn. Note the straw-bale runway!

This model is wearing natural-colored cotton garments. The slide show in the background was going on throughout the event. Paige Greene is a fabulous photographer and she, being the daughter-in-law of a fiber grower, has documented the project from it's inception.

Those are my rams looking on as another model passes by.

Great event, great friends, and you know what is really great? There is so much enthusiasm, especially from people younger than me. I want to keep producing fiber, teaching about fiber, weaving, but not only do I not have time to adequately market my products, I don't have the energy  to think about it or the expertise to do it successfully.  There are people out there who appreciate what people like me are doing and want to help!

Fibershed project

Last year I met Rebecca Burgess when she taught a natural dye class at my place. She told me of her Fibershed project and she describes it much better than I can: "The Fibershed Project is a challenge:  To live for one year, in clothes made from fibers that are solely sourced within a geographical region no larger than 150 miles from my front door; this includes the natural dye colors as well!

Why? The textile industry is the number one polluter of fresh water resources on the planet, as well as having an immense carbon footprint. The average CO2 emitted for the production of one T-shirt is up to 40 times the weight of that shirt. The goal of this project is to both show and model that beauty and fashion can function hand-in-hand with sustainability, local economies, and regional agriculture."

Rebecca visited today along with designer, Kacy, and photographer, Paige. I donated some yarn to the project last year and Kacy designed a sweater as part of the wardrobe.

This is Rebecca wearing her Jacob sweater and showing off her new book (with photos by Paige) which will be out in April. I will have some here.

The three creative women who were here this morning.  You'll be hearing much more from these three.

In the meantime while we were busy Dora lambed with twins:

Learn to Weave class

I had back-to-back classes last weekend. The day after my v-shawl class I taught a Learn to Weave class. Here are the projects on the looms:

Mary chose 4 bright colors of Jaggerspun Lambspun wool and wove a sampler that looks good enough to wear as a scarf.

Susan wove a twill scarf using natural colored wool.

Dona wanted to weave a wall hanging of green fields, spring flowers, and sheep. She was very creative in her choice and placement of weft yarns and weave structure to depict parts of the landscape. She will embellish the piece with a few flower buttons and wooden sheep.

A very successful class and a fun weekend!

V-Shawl Class

I taught a v-shawl class last week. It's always fun to see the variety in these shawls. The v-shawl is warped for double weave. The fronts of the shawl are woven with two shuttles and the back is woven by cutting one pair of warp threads at a time and weaving them in as weft.

Tina chose natural colored Rambouillet and Jacob yarns.

Jackie used brown Rambouillet and a space-dyed yarn for accent.

Marilyn used softball cotton in natural and tan with accents of ribbon and a novelty yarn.

Yolanda has space-dyed wool yarn with a blue stripe.

These are the shawls right off the loom so there has been no finishing of fringes.

The back view shows the designs that you get from the warp stripes.

A Fiber Weekend

I spent the weekend at the Sacramento Weavers and Spinners Open House. When I wasn't helping in the Sales Area I demonstrated carding with my Ashford drum carder.  I chose a fleece from the November shearing and washed it in two batches. I also wanted to experiment with my new Power Scour to find out how much I needed to get the wool clean.  The first 2 pounds of greasy wool weighed about 1 1/2 pounds when cleaned. I don't think I got all of the lanolin out so I'll probably increase the amount of Scour for the next batch. Even if there was still a bit of lanolin in the fiber it carded beautifully. I took this batch to the Open House on Saturday and here is what it looks like after carding.

That will provide a lot of spinning time. I was sure impressed with the drum carder. It breezed through that fiber.

These are a couple of skeins spun by a friend of mine using fleeces she bought from me. Aren't they lovely? The wool in the lower skein is blended with carded sari silk which adds beautiful flecks of color.

This is a close-up of one of the pieces I had at the show. It is a tencel scarf woven in undulating twill.

There are some very talented weavers in SWSG. Here are a couple of stunning pieces woven by members.

The warp for this screen is silk covered wire and it is woven with rice paper "yarn" if I remember correctly. (I thought that I'd remember from yesterday to today without taking a close up photo of the tag.)

New Yarn

Isn't this a beautiful sight?

This is Jacob yarn and some black Rambouillet from a sheep rancher in Rio Vista.  The light gray Jacob in the lower corner is already sold!

This is white, lilac, dark gray, and black Jacob yarn, labeled and for sale .

Here is the Rambouillet. I  sent this batch to a mill that said that they could work with the fine, short-stapled Rambouillet, and they did a great job. It is very soft and I knit up a small sample on #6 needles. I don't have this yarn on the website yet, but it's available in the shop.

Here is some white yarn from sheep that live up the road from me. I can't wait to start weaving with some of these yarns!

State Fair-Day 2

This is Day 2 for the sheep show at the State Fair, but a couple of my ewes have been there longer. Mary lambed there a few days ago with this nice ram lamb.

Stephanie is also at the fair waiting to kid.

The longhorns are always at the fair white the sheep are there. There are not as many as previous years and that's too bad. They're sure fun to see.

I have been staying at my sheep area all day  because I have a large display and am competing for awards for that. So today I took my drum carder and my electric spinner. I also took a bag of odds and ends that I've been waiting to send to the mill to blend with other wool. I decided that I'd do it at the fair. So this is what I'm starting with. It includes all the little bits and pieces that are left over from classes, samples from breeders, old dye projects, etc. There is mohair, Angora bunny, alpaca, silk, glitz, and a huge variety of wool.

These are some of the carded batts. I started spinning it tonight at the fair. I think I'll ply it with a gray yarn and weave a blanket.

More photos tomorrow.

Wool samples, wet dogs, and a turkey!

I posted a photo of my rams yesterday. Here are the wool photos:

This is the fleece of Meridian Tioga.

Here is Kenleigh's Savor's wool. Tioga's wool is crimpy and soft. Savor's wool is lofty without visible crimp. Both are good fleeces for spinning, but have different character.

Portrait of Savor.

Jackie came back to the fair today to help out with the SplashDog performance and give her dog,  Ringo a lesson. These are photos of Ringo learning the game.

And here are some of the pros:

Obviously NOT a dog.

Trip to Santa Barbara - Part 1

There has been plenty to blog about but not enough hours in the day. I keep meaning to share photos I took in Santa Barbara when I made a quick sheep-delivery trip. People from San Diego  met me to pick up sheep and then I spent the rest of the weekend visiting with my friend, Kenna. We crammed a lot into Sunday of that weekend.

Double checking before I left that I had the important things--my dog and my spinning wheel.

We had breakfast and a walk on the beach with my cousin, William, who lives in Santa Barbara.

Next stop was the Santa Barbara Mission where it was the date of the annual I Madonarri festival, a fund raiser for the mission. This is based on the tradition of Italian street painting. Local businesses pay for spaces in the parking lot and then fill the spaces with chalk art. Look at the incredible detail in this design.

This is not just your regular side-walk chalk.

Aren't these incredible?

After this Kenna and I went to her friend's house nearby. Hebe is an incredible person--she is a quilter, weaver, jeweler, felter, painter, and probably more. She was recovering from back surgery but was gracious enough to take her to her basement workshop and show us some of her treasures.

This is a recently completed weaving.

Hebe has completed 10 incredible felted figures and will have a show after she has finished 12. I can't remember the names of these ladies (and men), but the figures are created with humorous themes in mind. Attention to detail is incredible. You can't tell in this photo but the tennies are covered with sparkly red sequins.

The felted rocks alone are amazing, let alone the rest of the creation.

The afternoon's adventures will come later.

Still weaving

I haven't written about weaving lately, but I'm still working at the loom. I have orders from 3 regular customers for 9 baby blankets. I just finished a warp with 10 blankets.

Last week I finished an order for wool throws. This customer had her yarn spun at Yolo Wool Mill and wanted 5 different blankets. Sometimes it is necessary to add a lot of spinning oil to the wool during processing. The yarn isn't very appealing in that state, but woven blankets aren't truly finished until they are 'wet finished'. In wet finishing  the  oil is removed and the blanket is fulled. Take a look at the before and after photos of these blankets.

I calculated a sett of 5.5 epi. I used a 6-dent reed and left every 12th dent open. After I started weaving I worried that you would see that empty space in all 5 blankets and that would distract from the woven pattern. I didn't need to worry.  In the photo below you can sort of see that line, but when you see the blanket you focus on the diagonal twill and don't even notice the vertical line.

Above is the before and after of another twill blanket.

Plain weave. Before fulling is above and after fulling is below.

This is one of my favorite weave structures. I was concerned about the finishing of this blanket. The yarn that I got from the mill was on cones and in skeins. The skeined yarn was so much oilier than the coned yarn  it almost seemed to be a different batch. You can see the difference in the photo. In fact, there was so much tacky grease that I had to pull a length of yarn out of the shuttle with every pass or my end-feed shuttle would go flying off the loom (guess that's because I have a fly-shuttle loom!) because the yarn wouldn't feed out properly. I was relieved after I washed the blanket that there was no difference in the fulling of the two yarns.

New Baby Blankets

I haven't written much about weaving lately, but I'm getting a few things done. I have woven some baby blankets using SuperLamb. That's the washable Merino wool  by Jaggerspun that i am selling in the shop. It will be great for baby blankets--very soft and the added advantage of being machine washed and dried.

Here are some of the blankets still on the loom.

And here they are off the loom. These blankets are at The Artery right now.

Clouds and green hills

I drove back to Rio Vista today to pick up the black wool from yesterday's shearing. It had been left in the barn for me.

No one was around. The shearing crew has moved on.

Here are the bales of white wool.

This is a beautiful time of year in the hills of Solano County and I am always fascinated by these huge windmills.

It's hard to realize how large these are until you see the truck at the base of this one.

Shearing day times 20

Friend and fellow Jacob sheep breeder, Lynette Frick, (IDEAL Jacobs) called me a couple of days ago and said that her shearing crew would be working nearby and she invited me to come watch. Lynette started shearing a year or so ago by going to one of the shearing schools and then being hired by a crew. I am so impressed. I don't know if it makes her mom and dad nervous, but since I'm not her mom I don't have to worry--I just think its cool.  I had never watched a commercial crew operate. They sheared 1000 sheep yesterday and hoped to finish today.  The shearers are working inside a long trailer.

The sheep come in along one side and when the shearer is ready he (she) pulls down a gate and pulls the sheep out and over into the proper position.

These are Rambouillet ewes. They're definitely bigger than Jacobs!

After shearing the sheep the shearer pushes her through a gate on the opposite side of the trailer.

This is the outside of the shearing trailer.

The shearer pushes the fleece under the chute where the sheep are held...

...and someone on the outside of the trailer grabs the wool and takes it to the skirting table. It is graded and put into one of four piles--fine, medium, coarse, or poor quality (weak, short). Fortunately most of this clip was going into the fine and medium piles.

The wool is compressed into bales.

Isn't this pretty wool?

The bulk of the flock is white, but these are some of the markers. There is approximately one black sheep for every one hundred sheep in the flock. That way the shepherd can get a rough count of the flock. Coincidentally, this is the ranch where I picked up the black Rambouillet that I used for the socks that I had made last year.   I will go back tomorrow to pick up the black fleeces.

Is she or isn't she?

I've been sorting fleeces. Here are samples of Glenna and Millicent, 2009 March lambs that I got just before Christmas.

That is black wool from another sheep in the middle and here is a close-up:

When I got these sheep there was one definite lilac among them. (For those of you non-Jacob sheep people, lilac is a color other than the more common black and white, usually a shade of grayish-brown.) I wondered about the others because they are out of lilac ewes and sired by Kenleigh's Nitro, who is registered as a lilac. Shannon, Nitro's breeder says that he was very dark and one of the JSBA inspectors said he was "chocolate" lilac.

Gladys is the obvious lilac, but what about her sister?

This is Millicent,  out of Nitro and  Meridian Millie, a lilac ewe who I sold a few years ago.

Here is Meridian Tess, who was born here, definitely not a lilac, but I thought she would be a good comparison.

So is there a difference between the black and white Tess and Millicent? Telilah is Millicent's half sister/cousin (sired by Nitro and her dam is M. Tillie, a lilac ewe and the identical twin of Millie, but that's another story.) Of course it's hard to know what color you're seeing on the computer, and I had decided that these sheep were regular black and white. But after opening up their fleeces today I think I've changed my mind.

Here is the group of these new sheep playing in the early evening. They stay together most of the time--I think they'er happy to be on the pasture.

While we're looking at sheep, here are a few that look ready to explode. The first lambs are due in about three weeks.

This is bide a wee Haylee...

and this is Hillside Paula.

Warm feet

What's better for cold feet than sheepskin slippers with wool socks? Well, I won't be short of wool socks any time soon. I just got the wool socks that I had made. Unfortunately they weren't here in time for Christmas, but I think I'll still have some for next Christmas. There are over 400 pairs!

These are the Jacob wool socks. From left to right: 1/4 sock size 9-11, crew size 9-11, crew size 11-13, crew size 13-15.

These are Rambouillet wool socks in the same sizes.  I'll be putting these on my website next week after I figure out labeling, etc.

Last blanket...almost

I just finished two twin size blankets using a customer's natural colored yarn and her yarn that I dyed. This will be shipped tomorrow  along with the king-size blanket. I've had the heater on in my shop all day so that I can get these dry. I also finished a couple of v-shawls.

The blankets have the same warp. This one is woven with 2-ply light brown weft.

I didn't have enough of the customer's yarn for weft in the second blanket so I used some of mine. I took a chance on using 2 strands of singles yarn wound together on the pirn. Normally I wouldn't try to wind 2 together using an end-feed shuttle, but in this case the yarns wound around each other and I didn't have any trouble at all.  So this weft is one strand of light gray and one strand of dark gray yarn together. I think it gives a nice depth to the blanket.

I have one more custom order, a king size blanket in several colors, but it will wait until after Christmas. The last time I did that (last year) I broke my arm before I got the left-over weaving finished.