CA Wool & Fiber Festival

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I spent last weekend in Boonville at the CA Wool & Fiber Festival which is part of the Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show. I was a vendor at CWFF years ago but this the first time in quite awhile for me. This is a fun show but the hours and the drive make for a long weekend. I left home Thursday afternoon and finally finished setting up the booth about 10:30 that night. By the time I packed up on Sunday night it was 10:30 and I got home at 2:30 a.m. Monday.  Good thing I had a good audio-book for the drive. My 10 x 10 booth was packed full of my farm-produced items as well as retail equipment, kits, etc.

 I entertained myself by needlefelting my first 2-dimensional piece...

...spinning on the new Country Spinner from Ashford...

...visiting with Jackie, who was a great help at the booth, and...

...watching people try on the fuzzy hats in the booth across the aisle.

I have been friends with Karin since 5th grade and she came for a visit. That's her between the cowboys, who are also very entertaining.

I bought this very cool horse necklace from the Navajo ladies who had a booth across the aisle. I have worn the same earrings for about a year and I never buy jewelry, but I couldn't resist.

Although it's hard for some of us to understand, the world doesn't revolve around fiber, at least the furry kind of fiber. This is the County Fair and APPLE Festival. After the fiber building closed in the evening I had a chance to see a few more things at the fair.

I enjoyed seeing the exhibits created by youth groups to promote local agriculture.  Who knew that there was this additional use for yellow squash?

I found another old friend.

This is Freckles, who I sold a few years ago to someone with a petting zoo. What a good life for a sheep who would be culled!

Back to the fiber building.

On both Saturday and Sunday Charlie demonstrated his skill with his chosen fiber animal.

There is a rabbit in there.

An English Angora.

Charlie harvests the fiber with scissors.

He makes sure that there are no second cuts or short fibers in the prime fiber he saves. Too bad you can't do that with sheep.

Fun friends, fun weekend, but long. I'm glad to be home and sleeping in a bed instead of the back of the truck. Oh, there was a sheepdog trial also. I'm going to let Rusty tell you about those photos in his blog.

JSBA AGM (Colorado - Day 1-3)

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We crammed a lot into only a couple of days. AGM (Annual General Meeting) is always fun because you see people who you may only see once a year (or less). Because the AGM is held all over the country and at different times of year, not everyone can go to them all. There was a pretty good turnout in Colorado. Here are some photos of the activities.

Friday evening wool show.

Friday evening Spinners' Lead contest for juniors...

...and for Seniors.

"Make sure that you see the socks too."

Saturday morning sheep show.

Saturday afternoon presentation about The Effects of Nutrition on Fiber Production.

Also Saturday afternoon--AFD (Average Fiber Diameter) testing for anyone who brought wool samples (or took scissors and cut samples from the sheep that were there). This is Ron Cole from ASI, who taught the Wool Handling Workshop in California a few months ago. He brought the OFDA (optical-based fiber diameter analyser) used to measure wool samples and I think he ran about 200 in the few hours he was there. AFD and some of the other statistical measurements are of importance to sheep farmers because it is AFD that determines the best use and the market for wool.

A wool sample is placed between two screens and thousands of measurements are taken in a few seconds time.

This is the information you get from the scans. I usually send in wool samples for all my yearlings so that I have micron data for each sheep at a consistent age. When they are sent to the lab you get this data back in printed format.

I should have taken a photo of dinner. It was fabulous Jacob lamb prepared by students in the meats lab at Colorado State (I think I have the school right) accompanied by corn, potatoes, and Colorado peach cobbler.

After dinner there was a brief meeting and presentation of a Jacob wool shawl (made by me) to Jennifer, who organized the event.

Throughout the day there was plenty of sheep shopping and trading going on.Most people who were hauling sheep left early Sunday morning. Some of us stayed around and drove a couple of hours up in the mountains to the Lonesome Stone Fiber Mill in Granby.

What a beautiful area! Lonesome Stone currently has about 250 alpacas. We spent some time visiting with the alpacas before seeing the mill.

Note the bowl on the head method of bringing alpaca treats to the field. Once the bowl was lowered the treats were gone within seconds.

Isn't this a cute baby?

 

 

 

Lonesome Stone is a favorite of alpaca growers, but they also process wool and any other fibers. When a producer sends raw fiber it is scoured, picked, carded, pin-drafted, spun, and plied. The yarn produced is beautiful. This is carded fiber going into the pin-drafter and coming out...

...like this, ready to be spun.

 

This is a corner of the store where the finished yarn is sold. Oh, did I say that Lonesome Stone also dyes the yarn?

After this field trip I drove 3 hours to Colorado Springs to visit with my husband's sister and brother and their spouses, spending the night north of Colorado Springs. I left for the airport about 8:30 and got home around 4:30 p.m. It was a great weekend, but I am glad to be home. Tomorrow I'll be on the road at 5:30 a.m. to pick up my new sheep!

 

 

 

 

Trip to Colorado - Day 1 (2nd half)

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I am now at my brother-in-law's house in Colorado Springs and my computer is plugged in. I will finish the post of Friday's Events, but it seems like ages ago now. When I ran out of power last night I think I was including photos of things I thought interesting at Schacht Spindle Company... Image

...Like these rope twisters.

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And this beautiful tapestry of Barry and Jane, their family, and other things of significance.

ImageHere is a farm related photo. This is a chicken coop outside of the building. Employees can sign up for chicken duty for a week. The employee who takes care of the chickens for the week and cleans the pen at the end of that time gets the eggs for the week. There are also garden plots that employees can use if they plant and maintain them.

After touring the business I drove to Shuttles, Spindles, and Skeins, the yarn shop in town. ImageBelieve me, this is not your average yarn shop.

ImageHere is what you see when you enter the shop.

ImageTurn to the right and enter this room with coned yarn (off to the right of the photo), looms, wheels, and workshop space. Walk through this room into:

Image...this classroom. You could probably fit 15 of my shop into this room alone.

ImageThis is the other end of that room. Look at all those looms!

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This poster caught my eye, partly because I had just been reading about the idea of "yarn crawls" in the Yarn Market News. Wouldn't this be a fun idea in our area?

Changing gears. I left Boulder and drove to Henderson to the Adams County Fairgrounds where the JSBA AGM was to be held.  That will be the next post. Good night from Colorado. (My posts will be behind because I'll probably be home before I write the next one.)

Trip to Colorado-Day 1

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I flew to Colorado to attend the annual meeting of the Jacob Sheep breeders Association. The gathering started on Friday afternoon so I planned the day to include a side-trip to Boulder to visit the Schacht Spindle Company. I carry Schacht equipment in the shop so I thought it would be fun to have a tour of the business.

Here is the first look into the factory/workshop area. Looks confusing, doesn't it? There is a lot to see, but I'll just pick out a few photos to share.

There are several big, fancy, and I'm sure very expensive machines like this one.

When you look closely you see that the machine is drilling and changing the block of wood on the left into the one on the right. This is one side of the Flip loom.

Each piece is sanded using a variety of machines--ones that do flat surfaces, ones like this one with stiff bristle rollers that sand inside all the crevices and holes.

Each piece is dipped in Danish oil. I love the smell when I open a box of Schacht products--I now associate that oil smell with new toys!

Work is done under the watchful eye of Elvis. (There is a sentimental story behind this.)

This is the room where the spinning wheels are put together. You know me with names...I can't remember this person's name but he puts together all the Schacht-Reeves wheels.

I am in my motel room. My computer just told me that I am on reserve power and it's going to go to sleep in a minute if I don't plug it in. I can't find the power cord and I hope it's in the car. I have to quite now. More later. I hope I have time to upload this.

Pasture Maintenance

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Nothing very exciting in this post.  But I spent all day Sunday in the pasture  after thinking the job at hand would take only a couple of hours.  I find that I am always writing blog posts in my head so here it is.

I started by mowing the paddock that the sheep had just been grazing. Now that I have my mower (never meant for this heavy duty work, but so far still working) I have been working on the dallisgrass that gets ahead of the sheep this time of year. In the past I have tried burning, trampling, weed eating (photos and past efforts in this post and this post and this post), but I think this mower will be the answer. It is at the south end of my pasture(right side of the photo) that the dallisgrass gets so thick and tall. The idea is to mow right after grazing and then everything has an equal change of regrowth, and the dallisgrass will be in a more palatable stage and the sheep will keep up with the growth.

In this photo the paddock that I just mowed is to the right. The sheep grazed the one on the left a few days before. I mowed that one that last time they grazed it and that made a big difference. I shouldn't have to mow after each grazing--maybe once or twice per season I think. Notice the fence-line. That is a 3-wire electric fence and this was the other thing I wanted to deal with on this day. I have been putting off cleaning up the fence-line with the weed eater, but when you can't even see the wire, it's time. I have already used the weed-eater in the area where you can see the wire. This dallisgrass is tough. I have the heavy duty string on the weed-eater and it still gets used up quickly.  Slow-going. It took me about 3 hours to finish this fence-line.

Speaking of problem plants, here is another. This is what the medusahead looks like when it's dry. There are plenty of posts about my battle with this noxious weed also. This is along the perimeter fence.

And lets not forget devils-claw. This one isn't so bad because I don't have much of it and it is easy to chop out the big plants. It doesn't invade the irrigated pasture, but is along the edges where it is dry.

What is the problem with devils-claw? See the fruit? See those curved, pointed ends? When the fruit dries it splits in two and those curved points get caught in wool. I'll show you other photos sometime. This is seed dispersal in action.

Moving on to other plant problems. This is the small blackberry bush on the west fence. On this morning I actually had breakfast here because the berries are ripe, but in general the blackberry bushes become a problem when they cover the electric fence as they do on my west fenceline. (Note wheelbarrow full of devils-claw.)

I started irrigating Sunday evening. Here is a spot that I hoped to get water to this time. The last few times I irrigated the water didn't get here.

This is the pathetic state of the trefoil that didn't get water.

Here is what it looks like where it was irrigated.

And here is a view of a paddock that has had plenty of water, has a manageable amount of dallisgrass,and hasn't been grazed for a few weeks.

This is  self-portrait of the irrigator.

Farm Field Trip

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Today I hosted a field trip for 24 six and seven-year-olds and their accompanying adults. Thanks to the Farm Club for helping me out yet again. Kathy, Dona, Mary, and Maggie (Mary's daughter) all helped with the kids. We split into two groups for petting animals, learning the differences between hay and straw, sorting "sheep" in the chute (with shoe-laces, without shoe laces), etc.  I don't have many photos because we were busy with the kids but I caught a few.

I always ask the kids if they think I have crayons in the barn. They say "no" and then I show them my crayons. 

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Kathy demonstrated how we use crayons.

 

 

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The demo turned into the farm version of face-painting.

 

After the groups got back together, Rusty showed how he works sheep. 

ImageThen the kids watched us demonstrate carding, spinning, and dyeing. We read a story, gave them all a postcard with Rusty's photo and they got back on their bus. Us adults retreated to the shop for de-briefing and visiting with the A/C going. Thanks Farm Club!

 

No Sheep in Paradise

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We just came back from my first visit to Hawaii. We went to visit with my father-in-law who moved there with his wife last year. They don't plan to come back here, so if we're going to see them we need to get to Hawaii--not a bad place to "have" to go, but it's not that easy to make the trip when you have animals to take care of.  Here are some photos of our visit. This is the little 10 (or 12?) seat plane that took us from Maui to the Big Island. We were skeptical, especially when we saw one of the pilots for another commuter plane who looked like he was about 12, but it actually gave us great views of the islands and the coastline.

Isn't that water beautiful?

We were met by our relatives, leis in hand.

The first evening in Hawaii we got to the beach just as the sun was setting.

This photo was taken at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. This is an incredible place to visit but you need a couple of days to be able to hike the trails and see it all. We drove down to where the road was blocked by a lava flow 10+ years ago. This is right on the coast and it would sure be something to watch the lava flow into the ocean.

That's all lava as far as you can see.

There are beautiful textures...

...all around...

...and color when you look more closely.

The landscape is immense.

We especially liked the message on this cap. Can you read it? (See next photo)

We did some touristy things:

One day was spent in Kona shopping and eating. One thing it's hard to get used to is that many of the buildings don't have walls. As long as you can get under a roof you will be out of the rain, but it's never cold enough to need the walls. I wonder what the CA Health Department would do if they saw birds walking around on the tables in a restaurant.

We spent one morning zip-lining through the trees. That is Dan and, yes, I did it too. I'll have to get photos from Dan's camera. The scariest part was the drive to and from the zip-line course.

It took 6-wheel-drive to get up there and we were still slipping and sliding on the road.

Food is an important part of any vacation and we tried a few of my in-laws favorite places. This is a meatloaf sandwich on homemade sourdough bread.

There wasn't much beach time but we were there for a couple of hours before it started to rain.

Next time I'd definitely like to explore more beaches.

We feasted at a lu'au...

...and as the sun went down...

...we were entertained by the show. Since our goal was mainly to visit with family we spent a lot of time at the house--which is not on the beach or in the rainforest, but at Waikoloa, in the dry area of the Big Island.

I loved the bananas--a different taste from the ones at Safeway.

I was amused by the geckos...

...although it still seems strange to see them roaming around inside the house.

We were gone for 8 days and needed a day to recover when we got home. It's fun to visit but good to be back home to sheep and yarn and chores...and, of course, Rusty. I was going to write a blog post about what it took for us to be gone this long, but I think I'll ask Rusty to write that one. He has been waiting to use the computer because I had it with me. Check out Rusty's blog a little later.

Farm Club Farewell

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One of our "founding" members, Tina, is moving to Portland soon. Dona offered to have a farewell party at her house in Wilton. What a wonderful way to spend our Saturday. Food, fiber projects, animals, and most of all, good friends.

Tina, Chris, and Jackie watching Dona's goats.

Shelby and two of Dona's Boer goats.

Cracker treats for the lambs.

Some of us whip out our cameras at every opportunity but Alison always has a sketch book at hand. (And her sketches are wonderful.) By the way, that is Faulkner's daughter on the right.

Last minute food prep as Shelby gets a lesson in whipping cream.

What a feast!

Kathy and Shelby present Shelby's lemon tart with freshly whipped cream.

This is all of us who were able to make it to Dona's sharing a wonderful afternoon.

Tina, if we don't see you before then we'll meet up with you at Black Sheep Gathering in 2013.

 

BFL x Jacob

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Several people are anxiously waiting for the black BFL (Blue face Leicester) x Jacob lambs to grow up so that we can evaluate their fleeces. The BFL is a long-wool breed (but with a finer fiber diameter compared to other long-wool breeds) and Jacob wool is in the fine-medium range. Crossing these two doesn't mean that you get a fiber in the middle range of fleeces. Here are some photos of the BFL X fleeces and lambs.

The photos below are of the youngest lambs. You can see quite a difference in their fleeces.

By the way, I did not cross these breeds with the idea of keeping sheep for fleece. My goal was to produce a larger lamb and be able to market them more quickly at a higher weight.

New Buttons

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I made new buttons this week. This is a multi-step process and after each step I know that I have not priced my buttons too high. If I were to show all the steps the first photo would be the head of a sheep (butchered for meat). Then there would be the photo of cutting the horns off the dead head. (Lately this step has been done by the person who butchers sheep, but I used to have to do that myself.) The next step is letting the horns sit in a bucket of water for a week or so. The hotter the weather the better, because the slimy parts that are between the bony core and the outside horn get rotten and smelly and then I can pull the outer horn off. Then I'm left with this:

I use a band saw to cut the horns into button shapes. That was a huge improvement over the table saw. I could easily cut a finger off with the band saw but it is probably not as likely as with the table saw. These are pieces that are ready for the next step:

I still need to drill holes and sand these buttons. Then I finish each button with polyurethane.

Rounded buttons.

Squarish buttons.

Shawl pins (without the pin part).

These are for sale on my website

A special gift from a special friend

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What did I do to deserve such good friends? Look at my Christmas present from Jackie.

These are four placemats. Jackie bought fiber from me, then spun it, knit it, felted it, and then needlefelted the designs. (Is that little red hen in the corner Jackie's self-portrait?)

Here are close-ups:

Amaryllis

Hudson is the lilac ram so he is on a mat of lilac wool.

This is the bantum chicken that hangs out in the barn.

Stephanie

Thanks so much, Jackie. This is an amazing gift.

 

 

Tie-Dye Meets Christmas Cookies

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Chris and Meryl wanted to make Christmas cookies. They discovered that it didn't work with chocolate chip cookie dough (although that didn't stop us from eating the cookies). Next batch was using a more traditional recipe.

The original idea was to frost the cookies later, but then I got out the food coloring and sprinkles.

Each successive batch was more interesting (creative).

I had to leave before this batch was finished. What fun to have grown up kids in the house!

More about the spinning class

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These are not all spinning projects but they are pieces made by the talented ladies who took this class.

Paula needle felted this cat...

...and this sheep.

She and her mom felted these bunnies. These kits and many more are available here.

This is some Jacob yarn. I think this is Yolanda's.

Jean spun this blue yarn.

Debbie stayed a little after class to choose Jacob buttons for her in-progress cape. Isn't this a beautiful project?

 

 

Another busy day

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I spent the morning at The Artery. I December we spread into the gallery so that all the artists have more space for their displays.

This is my space.

This is one of three handspun wool scarves that I just finished.

The latest v-shawl.

A v-shawl I wove with handspun yarn. I wore this one at Black Sheep Gathering in the Spinners Lead.

As I was walking to my car I picked up these leaves. The colors reminded me of the last batch of scarves that I wove. However, they don't look very brilliant in this photo. (I am happy with my new i-phone, but the photos are lacking something in the color--I feel like I'm looking through fog. Anyone else have that issue? I think I need to go back to the store and talk to someone.)

I got home just in time for WWW. We talked about weaving, but we also spent some time working on a felting project. I want to put together some kits for needlefelting Christmas ornaments and the WWW's did my product testing.

Here are some results. We'll be making these at our Holiday Market this weekend.

As soon as we were finished in the shop I helped my brother shoot a video  for his business, Ranch Management Consultants. I thought I was going to be holding the camera, but I had to be the performer while he filmed. There are probably no Emmies in my future.