finaaaaallllly.

The Yakob-Tson Lady Jane rug mentioned in an earlier post became a table runner. The Lady Jane (owned by Perfect Spot in NC) is approaching her 25th birthday and doesn’t have as much wool as she used to. Try as I might, I finally had to realize that there was not enough wool to finish the 24″ wide rug I’d started with her wool. For some reason, a square rug just looks weird to me. Her wool is lovely – light and fluffy and a bit short. Because of the length, it took a little thicker piece of fleece for the weft. In retrospect, I could have used a closer sett. I have excellent hind sight!  The decision was made to unweave the rug and cut the width down to 12″.

Lady Jane is a wonderful old girl, who shows great-great grandget registered in JSBA.

Huntsberger Isla, also owned by Perfect Spot, supplied the wool for this rug..

Isla has a nice unfreckled fleece with a really! nice luster. I had a hard time handing the rug off to Cathy today.

These rugs took me way longer than they should have, even taking into consideration unweaving/reweaving the Lady Jane rug/runner.  I’ve been weaving the fleece rugs on my 60″ Leclerc Gobelin vertical tapestry loom lately. I decided to switch back to my Macomber floor loom for Isla’s rug. Gosh, this is easy!  And educational. You can really crank up the tension on the Gobelin – tight enough that your cuticles start to get rubbed off when you are hand laying in every lock.  In real tapestry weaving, you would  use a tapestry bobbin.  Switching to the Macomber reminded me that these rugs do not require a warp tension that you can play music on.  They are slightly felted in the washing machine after coming off the loom.  I’m warped (okay, no jokes ) on the Macomber for two more rugs, but am anxious to try the Gobelin with a looser warp tension.

Fleece rugs are a great way to use britch wool – contact me for prices using your wool.

Unzicker Jedd

went with Cathy and Greg Robinson back to NC and will move back to his breeder, Royal Unzicker, next month. He’s leaving Patchwork with a son and 7 bred ewes 7 bred ewes and son behind at Patchwork. Catching him up today really made me appreciate his gentle personality. I’ve always wanted to see if roping a horn might be a good way to catch a ram over the fence. Well, I can’t rope worth a darn, although I did rope a few goats as a kid (no pun intended) and did have a rather tense moment when I managed to rope a wild hog and the other guy missed on the heeling part. Blaze was a really good horse!!!.  Jedd just stood there as my rope kept missing his horns and giving me a confused look. I finally just decided to reach in and catch a horn. He politely walked to the truck to be loaded.  He attracted alot of attention at Aunt Sue’s on Hwy 11 in Cleveland, SC where we met up with Cathy and Greg. If you really want to promote your sheep – park them in a busy area on a scenic hwy on a gorgeous day.

But don’t order a chili dog! It was really packed, so I said I’d go get us some lunch to eat outside on one of the picnic tables. Dave wanted a chili dog with onions.  I got my usual garbage dog – whatever you got, put it on.  I have a really strong stomach.  Dave’s chili dog turned out to be minus the dog. I hadn’t noticed when I went to order, but the chili dog doesn’t include the dog. ???? Chili on a bun? I’m still chuckling over the look on Dave’s face. I gave him the hot dog from my garbage dog and had an extra scoop of ice cream for dessert.

I didn’t bring anything to show this year. I didn’t have anything left for sale, was pinching pennies and didn’t want to pay for the health certificate, was feeling stressed enough that dealing with the booth and showing sheep seemed abit too much for this year, and wasn’t sure if I could fit two lambs in my van along with the booth items. Macgyver made the trip comfortably tucked behind the driver’s seat, but I wasn’t really comfortable squeezing in another ram that had been breeding – and certainly  not a ewe lamb!  I got out to the barn to get some pictures of the show and I have to say that I was wishing I had brought something to show again this year. Unlike my years of showing Quarter Horses, showing Jacobs is just plain fun, with alot of smiles and giggles…

It was a treat to see Jacob, with his Barking Rock ewe (gorgeous fleece!) …

and his sister, Sarah, again. Sarah was awarded this Karakul ewe  (and another) at MSWF for her essay.

I really loved the look of this pretty ewe, Blue Ewe Sage, owned by Dave and Sally McLaren of Blue Ewe Jacobs in Kentucky. Strong Spahr Farm background – and I do love Spahr Farm ewes. I really prefer four horned, but this girl has a really spectacular horn sweep and  a lovely feminine look that “grabbed me” – not to mention a really nice fleece. I was SO tempted..

This handsome yearling ram really caught my attention. He’s Byland’s Jericho, owned by Ken and Laura Frazier. A very well balanced, primitive ram, with a nice blend of Painted Rock/Perfect Spot/4Horn lines

Laura and Ken also brought two nice ewes, who won first in ewe lambs and yearling ewes, as well as champion and reserve champion Jacob

Perfect Spot Chelsea, bred by booth partner Cathy Robinson was champion Jacob

FarmGirl’s Clara was reserve champion Jacob.  Congratulations Laura!

I’m not sure what Elke of Wellspring Farm was thinking about, but I like the picture

And then there is this picture. I didn’t have time to focus, but had to grab the picture.

The parents were nearby and all was well, but I sure got a chuckle out of this little boy who had been penned with the sheep.

Wow! What a weekend!

We (Cathy from Perfect Spot and I) arrived at the Western NC fairgrounds around 2 on Thursday to set up. In our five years as SAFF vendors, this is the first year that we have returned to the same spot. It sure makes set up easier if you know where you are going to be! The McGough arena is a horse show arena. If you are placed on the rail, you can end up with an interesting curved, pie shaped back wall  and booth – just right for a show arena, but a little awkward for setting up square tables.

Our booth from the front. I don’t know why neither of us noticed that darn plastic bag sticking out from under the table! We had poster collages done to hang on the back wall. They drew alot of attention.

From another direction. Darn! need to get some longer cloths for the table! Shannon’s needle felted bags sold really well.

This llama was very well behaved and I was really impressed  with him/her and the young drivers. But, I got a huge kick out when the llama stopped and looked back at the drivers “what next?”

This is from the felted landscape workshop behind our booth. Amazing!! I wish I’d got some pictures from the workshop on the other side. Melissa Gray’s needle felted woodland creatures were really stunning.

I really liked this needle felted picture in one of the booths.

Stay tuned for “SAFF – part 2 – the sheep.”

and almost ready to GO to SAFF (Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair) in Asheville, NC next weekend. Cathy Robinson of Perfect Spot Farm and I will be back for our fifth year. We’ll be in booth 83 in the McGough Arena (lower floor)

Dave built me another pvc display, so now we have three. These are really easy to build and inexpensive.

They are only partially glued so they can break apart to fit in the back of a Ford Escort wagon.

We made this one a row higher than the two previous ones. I’m not sure if I’m going to put a basket on the top row or not. At SAFF, the baskets will be stuffed! There is a spray paint that works well on pvc. If there is time! I’ll paint the new one black and IF there is more time, I’ll repaint the two green ones black. In the back is a folding wooden display that Dave built me. It’s five feet tall, which is exactly what will fit in my van, leaving me 3 feet behind the seats to stash a couple of lambs It’s very heavy, though. It’s hard to convince a boat and house carpenter that sometimes lighter is better. I kept saying “isn’t that going to be heavy?” and he kept saying “you want it strong, don’t you?”. When we set up at SAFF, we can drive into the barn to unload. You can drive in to load up, too, but when everyone is trying to load up at the same time and there is only one car width in the barn, it’s better to just carry things out – and it’s a long walk (or so it seems after three days at SAFF plus a day to set up.  We put wheels on it today, which will be much easier. I think I’m going to see if I can lash on a few things and use it as a doily make that dolly.

Dorothy really enjoys the preparations for SAFF. The plastic bin is full of batts, packaged for SAFF – and VERY tempting to a cat that loves comfort. Happily, she has decided that she likes the felt sheet that didn’t turn out well (or maybe just needs more work ) set on top of two boxes of JSBA logo items for SAFF. Two handmade felt sheets that did turn out pretty well are there on the left hand side.

Patchwork Tango and Hobby Knob Lorena are another of my monogamous breeding groups

As you can see, they are both very flightly animals – hah! I was waving the broom trying to get them to look alert. Tango continued to eat hay and Lorena came to eat the broom.

Pedigree of this cross

The inbreeding coefficient of this cross is 0.4%.  They share a common ancestor, Spahr Farm Sarah – with Sarah showing up as Tango’s great grandmother and as Lorena’s great great grandmother.  A lamb from this cross will be lightly related to most of my flock.  Lorena is one of my favorite ewes and Tango’s dam is another, so I’m excited about this cross.

This is a cross where the dam is adding the leg flash, although that does not guarantee leg flash on the resulting lamb/s. If we could pick the traits we wanted from each parent to pass onto the lamb/s, what fun would that be . Both have a lovely refined look that I love and want to preserve.

The main reason for pairing these two is fleece. Lorena has a nice soft fleece. It does not have the length, openness, and demi luster that I prefer and she is freckled (small spots of black wool mixed in with the white).  I have other ewes with dense fleeces and with freckles. Both traits are acceptable to me, but are not among my favorite traits. I will usually (but not always) cross those ewes to rams with open, unfreckled fleeces.  Tango’s fleece has length (from his sire, Jedd), luster (from his dam Viva) and a lovely soft handle from both.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The cross of Unzicker Jedd and Patchwork Martha
Pedigree of this cross

This is a repeat breeding.  The original decision to breed Martha and Jedd in 2008 was based largely on the fact that my second ram, Belvedere, is Martha’s brother.

The resulting ewe lamb…

turned out nicely – with presence, fleece, and markings.  The inbreeding coefficient of this cross is also 0.4%.

Martha’s fleece is long, soft (26.4 microns), and has a nice luster – very similar to Jedd’s. Martha, however, is an early grayer. The color of her fleece turned a lovely silvery gray at a young age. Jedd is from a line that holds its color a bit longer. Martha has a somewhat heavy britch – the coarser, almost hair-like wool that comes up from the hock.  I see this more in sheep with longer, less crimpy wool, but don’t know if that’s a trend nationwide or just in my flock.  Nothing goes to waste here! I use britch wool to weave rugs. Jedd has less britch.

Martha is sired by a Yakob-tson ram and out of Craft’s Ruby’s Belle – who is sired by a Hardy Hill ram and out of a Puddleduck ewe – all original JSBA lines going back for over 20 years. She is a primitive, slightly built, very feminine ewe. This line tends to be smaller than some other lines.

Jedd is pretty straight Maverick/Rockies. He’s a heavier built sheep than Martha, but still within the definition of a primitive American Jacob. They balance each other nicely.

Jedd at 21 months.

Dave and I were talking about Nobel Prize winners today  (who isn’t?) and I went to Google to see a list of previous winners. The right hand side of my monitor screen shows paid ads from various merchants. The one that popped up from Amazon was just too weird…

Nobel Prize at Amazon
Low Prices on Nobel prize
Free 2-Day Shipping w/ Amazon Prime

Wow! what a great Christmas present – a Nobel Prize!! It sure beats:

“Starting at $19.95, Name A Star Live is a wonderful, timeless gift. Everyone loves having a star named after them. It’s a meaningful and symbolic gift – perfect for a birthday, anniversary, baby shower, thanks to a client or top employee, or just a fun & touching way to say “you’re special.”

I’m hoping for new Muck Boots for Christmas – or maybe a roll of field fence. But, a Nobel Prize is sure tempting.

I was catching up with my favorite blogs today. Joan at Mudranch has some great photos from a trip to Idaho – shot through a truck window, no less! She mentioned thepioneerwoman as the creator of a PS action. I love PS and I love action/actions, so had to take a trip to visit the site. GREAT site with lots of information and inspiration.

I’m abit too lazy to keep up with the Sunday Stills, Wordless Wednesdays, Send your favorite portrait, sort of things. Plus, since neither Dave or I  have a schedule, I sometimes forget what day it is

But, I’m still inspired by some of the photo challenges and I loved the Favorite Portraits blog entry on The Pioneer Woman site.

This photo started out as a not very sharp photo – taken with a Fuji 2600Z. A very good camera for the time and capable of very sharp photos. My fault that the photo was not razor sharp. Since I liked the mood of the photo, but not the clarity, I poofed it up abit in PS.

Grandson Alex with our jack, Strider. Alex has grown abit since!

did that ram get that ewe??

Laura wrote: “I’d love to know the variables that are at work in choosing which ewes go with which rams, other than how closely they are related.”

This has worked for me for years. First separate the rams into non-adjoining paddocks. I have a  common holding pen that opens into six different paddocks.  This works well as I can put the ewes I want in the holding pen (my daughter calls it my airlock – and the function is similar). Open the gate to the ewe population. Let half the ewes in – put them in with one of the adult rams. Open gate again, let the other half in and put with the other adult ram.

Okay, I’m joking about chosing ram/ewe pair ups by that method   Although, I can usually get the ewes I want to come into the holding pen by knowing which ones will rush through and which ones will hold back along with a bit of fancy gate work. I am lazy – if I don’t have to drag sheep, I  don’t do it. There are plenty of times when I do have to drag sheep. I’m saving my energy for those times.

I do alot of paper breeding to see what the crosses look like on paper. In most cases, I am dealing with lines I am familiar with, so I’m looking at the strength and weaknesses of the lines. I am not against inbreeding on occasion and will breed closely related animals together for various reasons at times. Did you realize that if you have a sheep with an inbreeding coefficient of 37.5%, which is about the equivalent of breeding a ram to a ewe, then breeding him to a daughter from that union, and then breeding him to his daughter/granddaughter, when you breed that sheep to an unrelated partner, the resulting lamb has an IC of 0%.? I am not advocating inbreeding or linebreeding on a regular basis and I do look at the IC on every potential cross. It’s a consideration when chosing breeding pairs – but just one consideration. It’s overall inbreeding of the entire breed that threatens preservation/conservation more than the inbreeding of one animal or even one flock.  The rule of thumb that I have always heard is to keep your IC at 5% or below and not to breed animals with a common ancestor in the first three generations.  It’s a good guideline. It’s not a rule. Breeding closer is best done if you have a good knowledge of the background animals and like to eat sheep.

My friend, Katrina, from Chicory Lane, talked once about wanting to do a webpage with the crosses she had picked along with the why she had. Katrina isn’t raising Jacobs anymore, but a bunch of us are fortunate enough to still have Chicory Lane in our flocks.

I’m starting a “why”club and hope some of you will join in.

I’ll start and add a few more as I think of it…

Patchwork Macgver and Patchwork Twinky were posed so perfectly for this,  that I have to start with them.

The first glance pretty much says it all as to why on this cross. Twinky has a beautiful fleece and strong well swept laterals.  But she could sure use a little more in the way of facial and leg markings.  And I’m hoping that Macgyver will pass on his backswept top horns.  He’s got a cleaner britch than she does, although I don’t get too focused on britch. Both are the primitive type that I prefer.

Pedigree

The IC on this mating is 4.5% . Three of the four grandparents go back to Hardy Hill Leo, who contributes 21.9% percentage of blood – making him almost as a strong a contributor as a grandparent (who is 25%).

I’ve owned two Leo daughters, Craft’s Ruby’s Belle (dam and great-granddam of Twinky) and Craft’s Praline (granddam of Macgyver). I like the line and I’ve had it a long time, so feel pretty comfortable linebreeding Leo.

After spending most of the week moving panels around to accomodate my bright idea of adding three ram lambs to the breeding lineup, giving me five breeding groups (and only 16 ewes!), I’m pretty excited about seeing what the three baby rams will produce.   Dave built a nifty little shelter out of some cut off pieces of panels that is just big enough for three sheep and easy for me to carry around. With a tarp tied on, it makes a simple, portable shelter for one of the baby ram groups.

Despite having been thinking about snakes lately, seeing more snakes this year than I ever had, and even posting a blog entry about snakes, yesterday I did the one thing that you should never do. I picked up a wooden pallet from the ground with my hand.  I know better and I always flip a pallet with a pitchfork. Always – except yesterday. And I’ve never come across  a snake when I flipped a pallet – until yesterday. And it was a copperhead.  It was in the high forties yesterday morning and the snake was slow. It was at the far end of the pallet and not the end where I had put my hand. Copperheads are actually pretty lazy snakes and don’t normally jump across a few feet to strike. They do, however, strike if you stick your hand in their faces. I learned a lesson, but at least it wasn’t a painful lesson!

I’d planned to put the breeding groups together the middle of October, but the rams have been fighting already, so decided to make everyone happy and put them together this week.  The middle of October seems to be the ’sweet spot’ for my area if you want the ewes to breed and lamb in a very short period.  With September breedings, I believe we’ll have lambing spread over 4 to 6 weeks, starting the middle of February.

Irregardless of the fact (for those of you that read some of the sheep lists) that I don’t routinely handle my rams or even my ewes,  separating the two adult rams, dividing 20 ewes into three groups, and getting the right groups with right rams was a non stressful event for all of us and I didn’t even need Dave to help

Patchwork Belvedere has:

Patchwork Macaroon (bred about two minutes after turning her in – the hussy!)
Broken O Melodie
Broken O Ruffles
Hillside Holly
Sweetgrass Heather 2
Pleasant Run Vesta

Unzicker Jedd has:

Patchwork Badger
Patchwork Olivia
Patchwork Martha
Painted Rock Kayleigh
Puddleduck Celine
Patchwork Sasha

The three ram lambs will each get one or two ewes, but I still need to get their paddocks put up.

Patchwork Zevon will be paired with Patchwork Willa Lena and Patchwork Nicollette.
Zevon is in serious need of an attitude adjustment if he’s going to live here long term! I’m thinking of breaking him to plow to work off some of his excess energy.

Patchwork Macgyver with Patchwork Twinky
Macgyver will spend a little time at Perfect Spot and then move on to his new home and new flock.

Patchwork Tango (formerly Jackson) with Hobby Knob Lorena
I seldom use a two horned ram and I wasn’t really planning to do so this year. But, I kept looking at his fleece, his pretty horn sweep, that gorgeous head, and thinking, “why not”.

Joan from Mud Ranch (a VERY creative person) sent me the Kreative Blogger Award.

I’m supposed to list my 7 favorite authors? Joan listed books, so I’m going to go with that. I don’t have as much time to read as I’d like. But, I can’t fall asleep without a little time with a book – or two. My nightstand always has a novel and at least three nonfiction books.

Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson. I have loved this book since I was ten years old. I don’t know how many times I’ve read it. It’s  a book that has continued to appeal to me for 50 years.

Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.  Funny and disturbing.

Color in Spinning by Deb Menz. This book is always inspiring no matter how many times I pick it up.

Three Guys from Miami Cook Cuban. A cookbook by three guys from Miami . Dave and I have missed the Cuban restaurants we frequented in our 15 years in the Florida Keys. I’ve managed to get acceptable results replacing the lard called for with olive oil I collect cookbooks, but seldom use recipes

Prodigal Summer (or just about anything by Barbara Kingsolver)

In Sheep’s Clothing by Nola and Jane Fournier. A really good reference book.

Most anything by Scott Kelby, who writes books on using Photoshop

The seven blogs that I think of when I hear “kreativ” , you don’t want to know. I have an aversion against cute spelling. You won’t find me in a restaurant called “kountry kitchen”. But when I think Creative…

Patrice at http://patricelynneyoung.blogspot.com/

Sara at http://myfavoritesheep.blogspot.com/

Robin at http://meridianjacobs.wordpress.com/

Shannon at http://www.kenleighsfiberstudio.blogspot.com/

Joan at http://mudranchmercantile.blogspot.com/

And this one that I happened across the other day http://nobitingwolfie.blogspot.com/

I know most of these blogs have already received the award, but I don’t really follow many blogs, so have to do some duplicates here. Besides, you guys are the most creative people I know