Saturday, June 1, 2013

 Driving near our house every day there is a beautiful bison ranch just off the highway.  Silly me, I should have lowered the window in the car before taking this picture.

See how green and fresh everything is this time of year.  And these bison are LARGE.  They move them around to different pastures as time goes on.  Unfortunately I waited just a little too long to get the picture as last week they had been up closer to the road.

But you can just barely seen them over near the lake.  What a life!

 Ahhh, sweet little Emmy, my daughter's dog.  She is almost two years old now.  What a doll.  She is good natured, thinks she is a real meanie but she's not and isn't afraid of hardly anything.  When the Great Pyrenees and the border collie start barking at something outside, she is the first one at the door.

And she's the only one who gets to come into the chicken yard garden area.  She runs into their coop to see what morsel she can find.  Fortunately she's not much on the 'organic' kind if you know what I'm talking about ... the kind the chickens leave behind.  But she will find scraps of food and veggies they've missed and carry it around in her mouth.

At under five pounds, she is a little stick dynamite on four legs, very quick, very loud and verrrrry sweet.

Ok, so here's the start of my next weaving project.  I always mount my warping board (the big square with the round pegs) on the back of my Ashford loom.  Its just the right height for me and doesn't make my shoulder hurt going back and forth.

To warp (measure your length) you have to figure out how long your project will be and wrap your warp threads back and forth over the pegs.  You can see the cross at the top I'm doing.  This is all to keep the warp threads from getting tangled when its taken off until its ready to wind on the loom.  I will be taking some short pieces of a different yarn and tying these cross threads.  This will help me keep everything straight and tidy when I'm getting it from the warping board to the actual loom (which in this case is currently connected to the board).

Tune in later for more.

2 comments:

Sue W. said...

For some reason, I'm not surprised that Val has a little dog for a pet. I've always seen her with cats, so - basically - she now has a very vocal, energetic cat...minus the cat attitude (but with its own attitude, apparently!).
I assume the bison farm is selling the bison for meat, much as a cattle ranch sells theirs? Are bison stinkier than cows?
Does what you weave depend on the season? For instance, do you weave lighter scarves (or something else) during the summer months?
Green, green, green! Seems like it was an especially long winter. It's nice to see green. :)

Sheryl at WovenDreamsFarm said...

Sue, Valerie is still the 'cat lady' you knew. We've had several tiny dogs that we were so in love with. A friend had the mom and called Valerie to come help when the two puppies were born. Valerie got to remove the sack and was the first voice Emmy heard. They have been inseparable ever since.

Never smell any bison, certainly in a large pasture like this you wouldn't. Only those feed lots smell bad. And I'm not sure where they specifically sell the meat. We can buy it at any grocery around here.

My weaving only depends on what I'm dreaming of and how my back feels. Winding these warps has taken me much longer than I'd hoped. I can only stand for about 1/2 hour, which in my case is about two groups of 40 threads tied and removed from the warping board. Then I'm down with some tylenol and ibuprophen for a couple hours, which usually leads to a nap ... lol.

I've always got lots of ideas for scarves and other things. Sometimes I write them down, sometimes I use colored pencils and draw them. No lack of ideas, just time and energy.

Thanks for asking!