A Weaving Weekend

The Sacramento Weavers and Spinners Guild hosts an Open House in February. This year's theme was Weavers Gone Wild. Here are a few photos. One of the people in last summer's Color Wheel class created this display from the fiber that she blended in class.  Triaxial weaving. Navajo weaving. Weaving with wire. Spinning om a cardboard "wheel". Paper weaving--a great "make it and take it" project.   I demonstrated weaving all weekend. I wove 2 chenille scarves using the warp I wound at Thursday's Art as Inspiration class.After I finished the chenille I put a Shetland wool warp on the loom and wove 4 scarves for a commission.The last warp was all Jacob. I wove one and will finish the other at home. Seven scarves in a weekend isn't bad.This is a close-up of the last one just because I still have my new macro lens on the camera.

Art as Inspiration for Weaving

At the request of a nearby weaving guild I developed a class about using favorite artwork and photos as inspiration for weaving designs. This was based on the show that I had at the Artery a few years ago and that was the subject of a Handwoven article. This is the publicity photo we used for the show. Our model is wearing my Red Canna (Georgia O'Keefe) chenille shawl and Julia's felt hat. Participants in the class brought favorite photos or artwork to use as a basis for designing weaving projects and used......colored pencils and...rayon chenille for their designs. Here are some of the plans:   Won't it be fun to see these projects when they are finished?

A Shopping Weekend

TNNA is The National Needlearts Association. The annual winter trade show was in Long Beach and I spent the weekend there with my friend, Irene, from Cotton Clouds and thousands of other yarn store owners, designers, and fiber lovers. This kind of a show has a different feel than the typical shows where I go as a vendor. Part of that is certainly because I'm on the fun (buying) side of the table instead of the work (selling) side. But it is also because this is where the manufacturers and producers go to sell their fiber, yarns, patterns and accessories to yarn stores and other retailers. Irene and I always look forward to this weekend because, although we collaborate on the phone and by e-mail all year its nice to be face-to-face (and share a room at the hotel). There are a classes offered and I had fun making this needle felted bird. It's good to find out how other people teach topics that you already offer.This is a crocheted coral reef in the lobby.There are autograph sessions for authors with new books. Mom wrote this book, but it features Ava (aka Annie), who knitted the scarf, and also signed every book.

Isn't she adorable? Reminds me of Katie.

For the most part photography is not allowed on the show floor, but usually vendors don't mind if you are going to buy their things. Here is a glimpse of some of what UPS will be delivering soon.

Are you as excited as I am? Make sure you sign up for my e-newsletter so you will know when these new items (and more) arrive!

A Few of the Week's Accomplishments in the Shop

 Baby blankets still on the loom. Baby blankets off the loom and finished. I put on a 21 yard warp and wove 14 blankets.  I hemmed some this time instead of leaving short fringe. I'll be interested in seeing what buyers like best. The rest are shown on this page. I taught several classes this week. This is WWW (Weekly Weaving Workshop), sometimes known as Wednesday Weavers Workshop, or Warped Women Weaving, or....It could go on. It is a drop-in class and we usually discuss any questions that people bring up about anything weaving and yarn related. (Some people come for a therapy session with friends.) Last week I said that I'd teach how to read weaving drafts. Those are the "recipes" for weaving patterns. This week we'll look at drafts for "color and weave" effects.On Friday I taught a rigid heddle weaving class. This is Tanda with her beautiful new scarf woven of Jaggerspun Zephyr yarn on her rigid heddle loom.

On Saturday and Sunday I taught a spinning class. I can't believe I didn't take photos. That was followed by an interview about Fibershed for a well-known (in the fiber world) magazine. You'll hear more about that when it's published.

When I'm working in the shop or at the computer all day, instead of in the barn, I try to make sure I go for a walk or a bike ride with Rusty. That's good for both of us. I'd probably get more exercise if I didn't take my camera because I always get distracted by the view... ...whether it's close-up or......in the distance.

Phyllis Returns Home

Phyllis is a lilac ewe who was born in 2005. She was sold as a lamb to someone who eventually got rid of her flock. Phyllis came home the first time in 2010 as the owner was on the way to the auction with her sheep. It was a surprise when she lambed in January, 2011 with two black lambs. It seems that she was bred during that last trailer ride.  Look at the size of those lambs at about 5 months old. This is what made me think about getting a ram to raise crossbred lambs for market. That's how Faulkner's story here began.  In 2011 Phyllis went to a nearby farm as a companion to Diamond, an elderly sheep (a Pensioner in Jackie's story about this event). Due to the owner's ill health the sheep needed to go, so Jackie and I picked them up yesterday. Diamond is living at Jackie's and Phyllis came back here.   Phyllis and Diamond in the back of Jackie's van. Diamond at Jackie's place.She's in the front of the group here and that's Marley going to greet her.  Here we are back at my place. Phyllis has a very nice fleece.  She is right in the middle there--the one with more fleece.

Welcome home, Phyllis.

Sheep in the Sun

During the winter the sheep are mostly in the barn and corral area. The pasture doesn't drain well and I don't want it to be a trampled mess. I'm also waiting for there to be more growth there. It's been dry enough the last few weeks that I opened the gate to the small paddocks near the barn. The sheep were thrilled to get out to that grass.  This is Summer (the sheep, not the season).  This is Spring (also, not the season). Here is Eliza. They are all looking a little heavy, but that is because they are due to lamb in about a month.  Stephanie, the old goat, is so stiff in the cold weather we've been having. I walked her out here to enjoy the grass.  Most of the sheep kept their heads down eating. But Kyra just wanted to play.     Happy sheep! I still have the new lens on the camera. It is a 40 mm lens and I wasn't that close to the action. I'm surprised that I was able to crop the photos to this degree and still have them relatively sharp.

Weekly Photo Challenge-Round

Remember the cloud photos? The next photo challenge is Round. This was my first choice that I found when I hunted through my photos. Then I went to the barn with my camera and the new lens.   

There are a lot of versions of Round.

Fleeces Revisited

I haven't finished getting the wool ready to send to the mill. Holidays get in the way. Now it's COLD. Farm Club members have been helping and I think one more afternoon of skirting and sorting will do it. Sending wool off in January means I'm way ahead of my usual schedule. If you are not excited about wool these photos won't be very interesting. But to me they are a precursor of beautiful yarn and blankets.Alison's fleece. The 3 x 5 cards provide scale (as well as remind me of whose wool is whose). Eliza's fleece

Athena's fleece is a little shorter than the others, but very soft.    Miller is a ram lamb born last March. This fleece is only 9 months growth. I can't wait for next year's.Hattie's fleeceDid I say it was cold while we were working? Mary and Dona helped one day and Linda on another. Here was the best place to stand--a south-facing wall in the sun. We already finished with your fleece, Jazz.

Photography Fun--A Weekly Challenge

Not that I need a another thing to add to the to-do list...but I saw a blog that has a weekly photo challenge and I thought it might be fun to participate. This might only last a week--we'll see. This week's challenge by A Word in Your Ear is Clouds.  Without working very hard I could go back just a couple of weeks to find these photos that I took the day after I got my new lens from Santa.This is the field across the road from my house and the next one was taken just up the road.What is a sunset without clouds?  Notice the fog rolling over the hills--fog is just clouds on the ground, right? These sunset photos are taken from my barn looking to the west. The last photo, below, is another that I took from the field across the road.  

Snowshoeing for the first time

I love the mountains, but not in the winter. I am not a snow person--I have a hard enough time staying warm without any snow. My son and daughter-in-law live in the mountains and spend a lot of time enjoying the outdoors in all seasons. We joined them for snowshoeing the other day. It was a beautiful day. I realized that, because I avoid the mountains in the winter, I never see this beauty in real life. All the views looked like calendar photos.This is Union Valley Reservoir in the El Dorado National Forest. No one else had been there since the last snowfall. There were huge expanses of untouched snow. Gorgeous.The snow had a sparkly crystalline surface which even Matt and Kaleena, who spend a lot of time here, said was unusual.    We had one experience which, fortunately, turned out OK, but could have been tragic.  Sam, one of M & K's dogs, bounding ahead of us, fell through the ice into a creek. When he couldn't get back on the surface he panicked and Matt had to rescue him. (You can see the photos in Rusty's blog.)  Fortunately, among all of us we had spare socks and pants.  Also, fortunately, Sam wasn't in the lake, but in a stream (although it was still waist high water).    This was my first experience with snowshoes and it was Rusty's first experience walking through the snow. He finally figured out that the snow was fluffy enough that he could sort of plow through and didn't have to lift his feet all the way out of it. He was also obsessed by the sparkles in the snow. Look back at the other photos of him and you'll see that he is just staring at the snow. (That's a Border Collie thing--not staring at the snow, but obsessing over sparkles or shadows.)  I took a lot of photos with my new lens but there is a lot to learn about photographing snow.  I have a hard time seeing the meter through the lens when I'm wearing sunglasses, and without the glasses I can't make out what I am sort of seeing. So there was a lot of trial and error. Some were over-exposed, but there are enough decent photos for me to enjoy.

Abstract Art with the Camera

  Just having fun with the camera.

A New Toy

A few weeks ago I said something about wanting a macro lens and Santa heard me. Here is a sampling of what this lens can do. I need to learn a lot more though. It's not that easy when you are working with extremely shallow depth of field.

It seems that this lens does pretty well for landscape too...

...and portraits.

A Frosty Morning

Who lives here?

How about here?

What a beautiful day, though cold. Good Morning.

Ultrasounds and other veterinary observations

The veterinarians from UC Davis VMTH were here on Monday. The VMTH sponsors the State Fair Nursery so they will come here to ultrasound ewes. I will be breeding 3 or 4  ewes at the same time as all the others are lambing. This fall, while I was breeding ewes to 6 different rams I also had a non-breeding group. Unfortunately, one of the rams got in with that group on the last day of my breeding season. I gave the 2 ewes he bred the sheep equivalent of the morning-after pill, so Monday was the day to see if it had worked.

No! Shelby is pregnant with a single and Mary has triplets. I think this is the photo of triplets. (If you must know, I can't always tell what I'm seeing in these.) By the way, a lamb at 42 days gestation is about the size of a gummy bear. That's not something that you find in a veterinary text, but vet students have pointed out the relationship to their teachers.

Here is one that I could see. There is a large (relatively) single lamb here in the middle just under that dark line. (It doesn't show up in this photo as well as it did seeing it on the screen.)

While the vets were here I showed them a wool sample from the fleece of a ram lamb, Presley.

It isn't all that obvious in this photo, but can you see that distinct change in color and texture at the bottom of the locks? It is not weak at that point, but the fleece definitely changes color. That is the cut end, so the change occurred a couple of months before shearing. I thought that maybe this related to selenium deficiency or some other mineral issue. We looked at the ram.

This is Presley, taken in mid-September. One observation of mine is that he won't register as a lilac ram, but his fleece is the brown/gray of a lilac and definitely not black and white. (In this photo the dark wool just shows sun-bleaching, but when you look at the fleece sample you can see that is is not black.) However his facial markings look black. I think this is what some people are calling a chocolate lilac. This is Presley now. Take a look at his horns.

I hadn't noticed before, but all 4 horns have a ridge in the same place and the vets wondered if this related to the same conditions that caused the change in the fleece sample. When you look back at the first photo of Presley from September 17 you see that his horns are smooth. I posted a video of Presley taken September 24 that shows what I think is one of the many possible symptoms of bluetongue. The last two photos were taken 3 months after that. Did the illness result in the change in horn growth and the fleece observations? It is not any matter of earth-shaking importance, but I find it an interesting idea. My simple question about the fleece has led to a lot of other inquiries.

We looked at the rest of the rams while the vets were here.

 This is Larry, who was breeding a friend's flock and just came home. The friend told me that she thought Larry had blue tongue also. Note the ridges on his horns.

The reason that I asked the vets about Presley's fleece is that I had remembered seeing another fleece with the same discoloration. I had taken a photo of it at the time.

 Ginseng is also a lilac lamb and her fleece shows the color change at the same place as does Presley's.

I have no answers yet (except that Mary and Shelby won't be going to the fair), but I'm going to examine the rest of the fleeces as I sort through them and I think I'll pay more attention to horn growth after this. I'll report back if the vets give me any answers.

A Riot of Rams

You've heard of a Flock of Sheep, a Herd of Horses, a Gaggle of Geese. How about a Riot of Rams as a subset of the Flock? Larry came home yesterday. He is a ram born last February (still called a lamb up to his first birthday) and was with a nearby flock of ewes. Whenever rams that have reached sexual maturity (and that could be 5 to 6 months) are to be reunited there are apt to be fights until they have figured out the pecking order. The shepherd's job is to prevent injury, death, and property damage. Most of the time that means putting all the rams together in a pen that is small enough that they can't back up and put their whole body force into the inevitable ramming that occurs.

This is Larry. He is a nice looking ram lamb. Since I was going to be moving all the rams I took the opportunity to trim all their feet.

This is one of the ram lambs born at the State Fair in July.

 He has nice wool, doesn't he?

Here is Sullivan, a yearling ram. He was shorn along with the rest of the flock last month. Larry missed shearing so I'll have to shear him by hand, and I didn't shear those lambs that are going to be sold. Do you notice a swelling just under and behind the two spots on his shoulders?

 Here is what it is like close-up. I noticed it a few days ago and I think it is a hematoma, probably a result of rams tussling.

How do I put the rams in close quarters? I don't want them near the ewes because that would be asking for trouble. I particularly don't want any of these rams trying to get over or through the fence to get in with the ewes. So I use one of the stalls, but a 12' x 12' stall is way too big. I use panels to make a pen in the corner of a stall.

There is a feeder just out of this photo at the bottom of this photo. The two shorn rams at the feeder are the February lambs. The two rams with wool at the feeder and the one in the top corner are the July lambs. Sullivan is the 2-horn ram in the center and Larry is the 4-horn ram next to Sullivan. Small enough pen?

Evidently not. I tried to take video so I could share the real impact (pun intended) of this, but it was too dark in here. In this photo Larry goes for Sullivan.

Now it's Sullivan's turn. You can't tell in these photos but there is real power behind these hits.

Larry's turn again.

Another view. They are still fighting.

I collapsed the pen a bit more and they gave it up. Or maybe it took the fun out of the fight when they couldn't back up to bash each other.

This morning all the rams were behaving so I gave them more space. Tomorrow they will go out to the ram pen and live happily ever after...