Special Treats

I was in the back of the house tonight and heard the sheep yelling their heads off. This is not a normal pattern so I hurried out to the back to see what on earth was going on. They were yelling at Ian - so crazy - so I ran back in for the camera.


He apparently has gotten into the habit of pulling tumble mustard and throwing it over the fence for them in the evening. Actually, I think the habit is their's, given the intensity of their interest. He's just weeding.


And they're happy to help.








Frightened by their arch llama, the sheep have scattered, all but George, who thinks he's a llama.

Zephie, one of the z-girls, is stunned. "You mean he's not a llama?!"







When the market is satisfied, so are the Sage Creek Farm critters.

Dressing the Loom

I have half of the warp on the loom and have run out of white. You don't have to guess what I'm madly spinning on every morning. This is my first time to use lease sticks. We used them in the beginning class I took five years ago but I've never used them on my own. I taught myself how to sley from my hand, using Deborah Chandler's book but never looked further in the chapter to see her explanation of how to put the cross on the sticks. Lindsey explained the advantages of using the lease sticks to me when we were at the Retreat. It makes dressing the loom from front-to-back all that more fun since I can stop and leave the warp ends to come back to later. Notice how short the sticks are - they belong to my 24" loom. Since I can't put all the warp on these at one time anyway, I've decided to go ahead and thread the heddles for this sleyed warp while I'm spinning more yarn. I've never done it from left to right, but it should just be a matter of getting used to.

This is all the yarn that I have left. I like to put my warping board on top of this wooden box and lean it against the wall. It's much easier on my shoulder at this angle. Even with the yarn shortage, it's a big relief to have the weaving in progress.

On the way in

It's that time of year again when we have to pay attention for about five miles as the free-range cattle are out. Every year someone hits and kills one and every year I hope that someone won't be me. This Chica is out standing in her field - actually she's on the shoulder of the road.



These are different cows - they all look alike, doncha know. They don't pay attention unless you stop, which I did, to take their picture. It's all quite pastoral and quaint, but not an ideal fit for drivers who think they're still on the freeway.

I'm thrilled to see these California poppies, introduced by the birds flying over from where else but California, and so far in our valley seem to only be at the top of our property. It seems impossible when daytime temperatures are in the 90s that wildflowers can flourish.







This is a member of the composite family, but then many of our wildflowers, I mean weeds are. They add color to an increasingly dry landscape.



For several weeks now I've noticed this on the side of the road, about a half mile into California and about a half mile from the highway. The white part appears to be made of plastic, though I don't know if the rocks outline the X or secure it

Any guesses????

Not Black Sheep Gathering Friday

Mim came over for a while today for a little fiber sharing since we didn't get to go to Black Sheep Gathering like many of our friends did. Mim showed me the skeins of silk/Shetland that she blended on her electric drum carder, then spun. She left with my copy of Hats, Hats, Hats to see if she can create a hat pattern for these skeins. This is what I'm currently working on. I bought the fiber at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival last year. It's from Great Balls of Fiber and is dyed by Sarah Anderson from Snohomish, Washington. The fiber is 70/30 gray colonial/tussah silk and I have about 12 ounces of it. The color pathway is Painted Desert.


I'm plying the skeins and they seem awfully bright for any desert things I've seen. But then I'm the person who owns a couple dozen khaki or putty pants and wear them with white shirts.





This is Painted Desert in Skeins and clearly not as bright as I had first thought. Time to swatch. All the time I'm wondering why I didn't buy more than 12 ounces. What does 12 ounces make?! What was I thinking??!!





Even with the flash, you can see the colors and they do indeed reflect the painted desert. The fiber has been a pleasure to spin and I'll be keeping an eye out for this vendor in the future - no web presence unfortunately.


I decided last weekend that the solution would be a modular sweater from this book. Ginger was my assigned roommate at the retreat. When they told me she had written a modular knitting book, I was worried. I had seen a modular knitting book recommended on one of the blogs I read. I got from the library and did not care for it at all. So I felt like I was seeing my friends new baby and thinking, "Would you like a banana for your monkey?" One day Ginger wore one of her short-sleeved sweaters and it was lovely. It had shape and drape. I asked her about her book and I realized I was thinking about the wrong one. I've ordered a copy from Amazon and been spinning while I wait for it to come. I'm sure my yarn will shine in a modular format. I'm not a fan of stripes that can come from rainbow-dyed yarns.

I spent some time today starting to get the warp on my loom for my lap robe and realize that I have a huge deficit of yarn needed. I thought I had enough yarn spun up, and I do - for warp. So this Painted Desert project is on hold once I ply off my current spinning. It's time to spin weft. Ugh.

Family Visit

We've had the pleasure of family this past week. Ian's daughter and granddaughter are resposed at Animal Ark where they spent two hours yesterday. We have no pictures of Paul - he's the cameraman. They're staying with us, because son Dustin is at football camp for the week at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Margi is backing up so fast that her hair is in flying forward.

And this is what she's backing away from. Animal Ark is an educational facility, about twelve miles south of us. A visitor to Reno should consider a visit here as an alternate to the other more publicized haunts, like casinos. Two bus loads of school children were visiting at the same time as our kids.
Maps are available for self-tours and staff provide informed lectures. Paul was telling me this morning that the Peregrine falcon plummets from the sky like a rock, hitting it's bird prey, knocking it senseless. It's then able to pick it up from the ground and fly off for a leisurely meal.

Our eight-year-old granddaughter loves animals and has an uncanny Dr. Doolittle sense when she's around them. I called my neighbor Mim on my way to work to see if the kids could pay her a visit. She said that she had a new lamb and would be home, so I called Margi to let her know. Aren't cell phones wonderful?!

Within the space of about 30 minutes, Sissy went from snarling cheetahs to petting a gentle lamb. She had a full day and I'm sure will remember most of it for a long time to come.
This is Dustin, the reason for the visit, breaking away after scrimmage to come over to visit his little sis who is running to him. I love this picture. Margi's son CJ is at football camp in Oregon this same week. Think of your grocery bill, then double it for their household.

Literary Suspense

In this ingenious literary thriller from Michael Gruber, the lives of two men are changed forever by William Shakespeare and the letters of Richard Bracegirdle, a 16th-century English spy and soldier. Jake Mishkin, a Manhattan intellectual property attorney and a bit of a rake, goes on the run from Russian gangsters. Albert Crosetti, an aspiring filmmaker working for an antiquarian bookstore, finds that life is more exciting than movies—perhaps too exciting. Together, Mishkin and Crosetti travel to England in search of a previously unknown Shakespeare manuscript mentioned by Bracegirdle. Though the pace sometimes slows to allow Mishkin, Crosetti and Bracegirdle to divulge interesting aspects of their personal lives, these digressions only make the story more engaging. The suspense created around the double-crosses and triple-crosses works because of the close connection readers forge with Crosetti in particular. The mysterious murder of a Shakespearean scholar, shootouts in the streets of Queens and an unlikely romance all combine to make for a gripping, satisfying read. This book received a Starred Review in Publisher's Weekly and it gets a starred review from me as well.

Saying Goodbye

I took a long walk up to Virginia City from St. Mary's Arts Center. I have always been interested in this area, the foundation of our Battle Born state. Mine tailings are part of the landscape. With modern technology, the ability to strip minerals from the ground isn't nearly as quaint as here, if this is quaint.

The evidence of fire is clear from the flaccid chimney in the foreground. Notice the sheet metal roof on the right. Mark Twain coined the term "Washoe Zephyr" when the harsh winds would rip through the area and tear off the roofs of the miners' homes. He loved a spoof. We still call those winds a Washoe Zephyr and there is nothing gentle or wafting about them.
I thought this was funny - an obviously period structure and a power pole. Huh??? It's not been occupied in quite some time.

This is a view east and it includes the funny little cone that has alway caught my eye.
The cone appears in so many of my pictures that I decided to drive home down the Six Mile Canyon Road to see it for myself. I've wanted to make this drive ever since I moved here, and after I said my farewells, I pointed my car east, and away from home to finally see it. This is the route that more-or-less Adolph Sutro's tunnel took. What an interesting man. As an engineer he proposed the humanitarian drainage - many men died of scalding water - by an engineered tunnel to save the lives of miners, but as an abrasive foreigner who alienated nearly everyone he spoke to, he struggled for support. He finally managed to get his project financed and built, but the hurdles took so much time that when he was finally able to accomplish his visionary tunnel, the mines had started to fail.

He was paid for his endeavor and took this payment to San Francisco where he became mayor and his name appears in many places. He doesn't appear to have been a lovable character, but he did purchase books on a huge scale. His legacy lives on in the Sutro Library, a subsidiary of the California State Library. His massive book collection was diminished by the 1904 earthquake and subsequent fire, but the surviving books were substantive enough to base an entire library on.

And here is the cone I was chased with my camera. There wasn't a lot of traffic on the road so I stopped for pictures when I felt the demand or need.

On the face of my funny cone is evidence of some kind of entire mill racings, bracings for an extraction process. I saw banks and banks of these supports. I can't guess what the in-business mill looked like. I'm feeling a bit of disconnect.

Okay, More Retreat

Nisha says that she weaves to sew. Sewing is her first love. Her grandson is going to the Olympics in Beijing and was weaving the cloth for her Beijing Jacket. She cut fabric into 1/2" strips, did one shot of the fabric, followed by one shot of a novelty yarn in the same color harmony.


You can see that the subtle floral pattern in the fabric is preserved in the weaving. Please check out Sara's blog for more of the retreat and to see Lisa's astounding Nuno silk. Sara called it Golden Days, which they truly were.

Ginger was my roommate. We hadn't met before but found our roommatemanship to be very compatible. We weren't allowed back into the studio after 10:00 because of noise to the rooms below, which is really bad if you're using a floor loom. So we visited, checked our emails and then read for a while which ended up being midnight. I only stay up that late at New Year's. It was like girls camp, but even better. She easily created this fabric while we all kibitzed, but she wasn't following a written pattern. She was making it up as she went. Later she sat down to write it out. It's going to appear in the winter issue of Knitters. Too much math.

Allison and I were trying to do independent study on tapestry. She made the pipe loom she was using while we were there - impressive. I used the warp already on my Mirrix
but unwove the old project. I'm working through exercises in Kirsten Blasbrook's book which I got from the library but am ordering it from Amazon. I'd like a little more experience in making mistakes before I actually look for a class.

I love this shot of Linda warping her loom. The threads are so tiny and, oops, there's her hand. She just bought this was used loom and was disappointed to realize that she hadn't brought the beater bar, but since you don't need one to warp from back to front, she pushed on.

This is Eileen's shawl. Her local guild spun the yarn, dyed it with natural dyes, wove it and gave it to her when she was diagnosed in the early stages of breast cancer. The shawl is a demonstration of their love and support. I think it's a statement of the power of our relationships.

And Yet More Retreat

Lindsey brought a huge pile of locks that she had dyed about a year ago, separated them into individual colors and then carded them into batts on her Deb Deluxe Green's drum carder. She then pulled each batt into roving and wound into these balls, Kaffe Fassett style, so she could spin them to replicate a designer yarn she had found in a magazine.

She wanted green to be the predominate color so wound it on most often. The colors are producing a nice heathery effect.
My first reaction was one of skepticism but as the green is added, you can see that she is producing the yarn that she had in mind.

Sue was spinning a color pathway of Crosspatch Creations that was sold by Carolina Homespun last year at SOAR, and only at SOAR. The colors were representative of Lake Tahoe. I've heard of Crosspatch Creations before but now I want some of my own.


Sue was a busy girl. She dyed several bumps of roving from a sheep of undermined breed. She volunteers for the Humane Society and the sheep was one confiscated from a woman who had neglected her animals. The horses hooves were completely curled and the sheep was found, stuck in the mud on this back with his feet pointing skyward. He hadn't been sheared in years and his fleece was a mess. He's a lucky boy to have found Sue. Those colors are some of the ones that Sara uses in her basic color palette.

Having finished dyeing and spinning, Sue broke out the rigid heddle loom that she had just purchased. A committee helped her get it warped and she was making great progress on place mats as I was packing up to leave.
Nancy didn't want to pack a lot of equipment so brought this stitched rug that she has been working on for years. She decided a retreat is the perfect environment to stitch in the ground - busy fingers among friends. There was a lot of laughter at this retreat.

More Retreat

We called this a retreat, but it really was an independent study opportunity. Each of us brought multiple projects we wanted to focus on, so many fiber projects were in progress all the time.

Knitting was a given.

There were two floor looms, two tapestry looms, three inkle looms and oh-so-many spinning wheels, mostly Lendrum for whatever reason. This room was the surgery when St. Mary's was a hospital. It's on the top floor and the windows face south so the room has a lot of natural light.

We were responsible for our own breakfast and lunch. Dinner was cooked and served by the retreat sponsors, all accomplished cooks. We ate at one very large table in the dining room and enjoyed lively conversation, lots of wine and stunning meals.


Jen, one of the retreat sponsors, was making good progress on her cut-pile rug. This is Sara's teaching specialty and a favorite of several of our group and also at the retreat.

Hazel also had a cut-pile rug in progress on an upright tapestry loom. She is a genuine master weaver and is becoming an accomplished cut-pile rug weaver as well. Well into her 70s, this loom is so much more portable.


Sara had a couple of projects going. This is her inkle loom and on the left of the table, you can see the PVC knitty-knoddies holding her triple-ply rug warp for - you guessed it - cut-pile rugs. She says it's for two rugs, 36"x 90" and at that point, my eyes glazed over at the stunning endeavor. Can you tell that I haven't yet been bitten by the cut-pile rug?

Sara is preparing fiber that she will spin into weft. She had a superfast flier on her Lendrum and she spins so fast that it sounded like an airplane getting ready to take off. Between the beating of floor looms and spinning wheels, this was not a quiet environment. The colorful bobbin on the bottom right was my humble foray into spinning silk. With a little coaching from Sara - more twist! - I was pleased with my work. She explained that silk is soft and will pill without enough twist, so twist it I did. However, the Toni Awards have just started and I must stop at this point - to be continued.