No, this isn’t a fairy tale.  It’s more needle felting! My friend, Claire (see Kerfuffle blog to the right for entertaining reading), and her friend, JoAnn, came by this morning. The first things that caught their eyes were all the felt kits. I wanted to finish another hummingbird so they each picked out a kit and we went to work. Here are the results:

Claire created the red fox (still needs eyes)  and JoAnn felted the bunny.

I felted this hummingbird and finished the bluebird I had felted previously.

Here is the complete ecosystem. Hmmm. I guess that’s a vulture size hummingbird in the fox’s world!

Following the visit and felting party I held WWW–the weekly Weaving Workshop. My friends surprised me with a birthday party! They brought cupcakes and drinks and a singing balloon. I am grateful to have good friends! I have a cute photo of Chris dancing to the balloon music, but I won’t post it without permission!

I have been working on scarves for a few weeks.  I’m designing scarves for Cotton Clouds kits as well as weaving for holiday sales.

This is a scarf woven from all the cones in a recent chenille delivery. I used each color twice with 6-thread stripes.

This scarf was designed after someone in my Weekly Weaving Workshop class asked how to weave a scarf with pure colors in two stripes. The next scarf is on the same warp, but you can see the dark weft crossing the light weft.

I had a hard time taking photos of this scarf. I need to try again. This warp has black yarn alternating with odds and ends of green and variegated yarns. See the table below. If there is 3 yards left of a color I have kept it knowing that it would be enough for a scarf warp. So the scarf in the photo uses the greens. I have a few more scarf warps to create from the cones below.

504=Number of bales of alfalfa to move into the barn last weekend. At 30.55 tons that’s about 120 lbs/bale.

I finally got my hay. I looked at hay and committed to a truckload 2 months ago. But even though I tried, I couldn’t seem to get delivery during the summer, when we would have had time to move it into the barn over a period of weeks. I got a call Friday night that said the hay would be here Saturday morning.

I had planned to go hiking with my son, Chris, near Redding, but I called and asked if he would change plans. I am grateful to Chris  (and my husband, Dan) for spending Saturday afternoon moving hay. And I am most grateful that they were both cheerful about it. What a nice feeling when no one is grumpy and complaining.

This photo doesn’t do the hay stack justice. There are 6 stacks on the right that need to be put in the barn. The squeeze dropped one stack on the left and there is another stack not in the photo.

This is from inside the barn looking out.

Notice the hay in the stall with the door. That stall is completely filled and then we fill the adjacent stall (with no front wall) and the one across the aisle. We also end up with 2 pallets-width in the aisle of the barn and more hay at the other end.

After the first 6 stacks had been put in the barn then we could get into the barn with the tractor,  so Dan picked up a lot of the stack that had been spilled. Looks easier, at least for Dan.

Dan has “teacher hands” now and even through gloves they took a beating. Chris’ hands are a little tougher since he’s been fire fighting all summer.

Sunset.

I have two friends who do needle felting, but until recently I hadn’t tried. Do a I really need another project to finish? When I shared a booth with Shannon (see link for Kenleigh Acres at right) at OFFF I was intrigued by some kits that she was selling. I am now carrying these in my shop because I think they are so cute.  Here is my first attempt at 3-D needle felting:

I was amazed at how easy this is–not that it is easy to master completely, but the whole process is easy to learn. And it’s amazing how you can “sculpt” the wool to shape it and add detail. I think I’m hooked.

So while I sat at the Farmers Market this morning for 4 hours I made two friends for my first bunny:

If you don’t look too closely you won’t realize that the next two bunnies might have turned into sheep before they got the long ears.

I have these kits on my website now, although I don’t have the write-ups complete. But you can see the variety of kits there are. What is cool is that once you have learned to do one of them you realize that you can really make anything you want to!

I was taking photos to try and get a good one for an ad.

Gem

Janelle

Moon

Zelda

Dazzle

Prancer

Zip

Babe

Fanny

These Meridian ewes are all with Kenleigh’s Savor. He’s just a little guy but has been doing the job.

Last, but not least, Amaryllis.

I just got this order of rayon chenille. I can’t wait to start weaving these! The first warp will be one in which I use all of these together! Just wait and see.

I am not the music video star, but some of my sheep are. A young woman, Shannon, who lives in town contacted me when she was looking for a location to film a nativity scene for a music video she wants to produce.  It sounded kind of fun so I said she could use my place.  The filming date was last Sunday .  Shannon’s friends and family members were the actors and actresses and I was livestock wrangler.

My ram pen was the perfect set–nothing in the shot that looked modern. None of these kids had any livestock experience, but they all did great.

Violet is the starring ewe and she played her part well, standing patiently while Shannon filmed close-ups. The goat kids were a little more difficult–eating the bedding in the manger, the robes, etc. We substituted one goat kid for another part way through.

One of Shannon’s friends has a three-month old baby who was used in most of the shots, but this is the baby stunt double.

After filming in the barn, the shepherds went out to the pasture to get footage with the sheep and the donkey.

The weekend weather was great, but on Tuesday that changed. We had 5.25″ of rain on Tuesday with high winds. That was the date scheduled for a meeting of a group of weaving friends known as Yolo Weavers. We had already planned to meet at my place and make paper. It turns out that paper-making was just the thing to take our minds off the nasty weather.

This is a pile of paper scraps.

This is that pile of paper in a blender.

Here is the resulting paper. The yarn in the first photo creates the texture in this paper.

This is another of my creations. Notice the glitzy fiber in it!

And here are the two girls (middle), daughters of a spinning friend, who taught us to make paper.

I spent the last two days in Placerville teaching Weave a V-Shawl to the Hangtown Fiber Guild. Here are the results:

Ladies,  please turn around.

These are the warps for shawls not quite finished:

Quite a variety of shawls!

Last weekend was Lambtown in Dixon, CA. The fiber building was so busy that I barely got outside to snap a few photos. The sheep-to-shawl contest was one of the most popular events. Teams come with looms already warped and they need to prepare and spin the yarn and weave the shawls during the contest. This year the fiber for the weft was Jacob wool from my flock. It got great reviews from the spinners.  Here is the winning shawl woven by the Silverado Guild from Napa:

And a close-up:

The Del Oro Guild got second place:

I didn’t get photos of the other shawls, but I did get one of Hangtown Guild’s portrayal of their theme of  “Au Naturel”:

There is a new use for all that roving that you don’t have time to spin! Hangtown always does it with a sense of humor!

One last photo taken at Lambtown:

Do I want to swap out my sheep for a flock of these  cuties? Hmmm…what is a group of chincillas called? Covey–no, that’s quail. Warren–isn’t that where rabbits live? Crowd? How about Cloud?

It’s been a week now since I went to the Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival with two friends, Chris and Diane. I didn’t take as many photos as I thought I had–or at least they didn’t turn out that great, but here are a few.

When Shannon of Kenleigh Fiber Studio asked if I wanted to share her booth I liked the idea, but I really didn’t want to drive the whole way myself. I wanted to drive straight through and I didn’t know if my back would let me do that. Diane and Chris were game, so we had a great road trip.

We left shortly after 6 a.m. on Friday. First stop:

Coffee for Diane.

We took turns driving. It’s my turn in the back seat. You can’t see the speedometer in this shot, but Chris and Diane made pretty good time!

As it turns out, Shannon and I probably could have each filled a booth. We did a pretty good job of cramming everything into one booth. Shannon raises jacob sheep also and does fabulous needle felting. Her sister makes goat milk soap and lotion which we also had in the booth.

These are a couple of Shannon’s felt bags which sold out. The Festival was packed with people and there were 150 vendors!

Diane did her part to support the vendors!

It was a great weekend and I wouldn’t mind doing it again. Read more about the event on Shannon’s blog–click on Kenleigh Acres  on the right.

Next event: St. Helena Farmer’s Market in the morning and then Lambtown!

I took this photo  earlier this week after we’d had a little rain. It was only 1/4″ but everything felt so fresh and clean.

I think I’m ready for summer to be over–at least the hot weather. But we’re going to have at least another few days of  triple digits.