Super Coop

Someone got new chicks who did not integrate well with their laying hens. Where to home them? At the farm, of course. One tiny detail. We have no coop. So with the help of the 150 page plans from The Garden Coop, http://www.thegardencoop.com/, Sean and I started building the Super Coop. Wait, who's the foreman here? 

Framing accomplished in roomy shop. Transferred with help of giant dolly and plain muscle power heft to site.

And now a roof

for these three beauties

Covid Coop Completed!

Rivertown Feed Store was out of coops. So was every other furnisher of ready made coops in the county. So, with fabulous plans from The Garden Coop, appropriate for a very novice builder, We created a coop/run enclosure for three fetching fowl. 

The lumber was sourced from the protective packing of windows installed in 2017. A million screws and fasteners insured Friedman's a steady customer stream. Whenever a cut was a fraction off, the retort was always, "It's a chicken coop." But that rarely happened...

Winston did not understand why a door was needed. He would look after the feathered friends himself. 

Allan was ready to help, but gosh darn, we're done!

Michelle and company peruse the perimeter. 

Indi-GO!

Who doesn't want to create their own blue jeans dyed with their own home-grown and processed indigo? Well, I am one of those people. This spring I received 2 flats of tiny seedlings from Craig Wilkinson through my Fibershed connection. I planted them in my vegetable garden, easily forgoing the zucchini that would subsequently be given away anyway. The Polygonum tinctorum is Japanese indigo, more appropriate for Sonoma County than Indigofera tinctoria grown in India and elsewhere in tropical regions.  

What are we after? 3-12 grams of "indigo carmine" or indigo will dye a pair of blue jeans from baby blue to super dark. Each leaf of the plant can contain 0.2-0.8% of indican, the precursor. So those plants are serious about creating that compound. 

Let's go through the chemistry because it is so fun. I can now understand the enticement of chemists and alchemists by swishing around a huge vat of extract and watching instant color changes. The precursor to indigo is indican, curiously colorless and water soluble. It is derived from the amino acid tryptophan. Remember the "natural" product that was supposed to help you sleep back in the 80's? Some contaminant caused a horrible rare side effect called eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome in 1989. That is always the first thing that pops into my head when i hear the word tryptophan, but fortunately I never saw a case. 

First, pop leaves into water and let them stew in the warm sun for a week to extract the indican. Hydrolyze and release b-D-glucose and indoxyl. I did this by raising the pH from neutral to 10 with 100 grams of Lye, potassium hydroxide, mixed into 200 liters of water. Oxidize by vigorous stirring and convert the indoxyl to indigotin, the endpoint of indigo dye.

Next blog, cliff hanger, covers enticing the insoluble indigotin to link up with fiber (wool, cotton. or silk for example) to create beautiful blues. The molecule is large and perches on the outside of the fiber. Hence, stone-washed jeans can be embellished with pale patches by literally sanding off the outer edge of the fibers revealing the lighter undyed core. It was supposed to emulate hard work, but the patches to not correspond to anatomically appropriate points of wear. Meow. 

Plants growing robustly before the mowdown. 

Stewing in warm water for a week.

Titrating the pH up to 10. 

Stir vigorously turns suspension dark blue. Next wait for the indigotin to settle to the bottom and then  remove the 50 gallons of water in top of that layer. Simple! 

Thank You, Julie Winkel

This is a three part story, three pivotal days in the communication with seven year old Holsteiner, Clint.

 

Part 1: The Julie Winkel Clinic Julie 11&12. Though mostly behaved, there were times of reduced compliance, mostly demonstrated as going too fast and not coming back into the pace I requested. She said, you have to be the boss and get the job done or else he is going to become a bully and stop listening. Easier said than done, but I was determined to gain cooperation and communication. 

Part 2: First day of horse show: Clint was a doll, totally compliant and quiet, soft in the bridle and evenly paced. I thought it was his first day of adulthood, being less reactive to horse show noises. His pace was the same before and after the jumps. saying balanced and compliant. 

Part 3: The very next day, he was a different animal. He was strong, speeding up after the jumps and taking forever to slow down and come back into balance. And this was after a very nice warm up, so a total surprize. I was contemplating strategies to improve the situation, standing just outside the ring and ready for my next round. Then I heard, "Loose horse!" and a horse in just a halter with leadrope flapping alongside was galloping straight for us! Clint, to avoid being t-boned, did an abrupt spin, and starter galloping as well. The hose was now chasing him. I got him slowed down and then stopped. Someone caught the loose animal. Clint's head was held high, eyes bulging, nostrils flaring, heart racing. He threw in a few Lipizzaner moves for good measure, afraid to go back to the ring. 

Everyone totally understood when we requested a few minutes to regain composure. Should I get off and give up? Should I ask Hugh to quickly shave and pretend he's me? NO, Julie's advise came flooding back and I figured this was a teachable moment and if I can get the job done now, it will be a lesson worth remembering. 

So we went back to the warm up ring. Lots of transitions and jumps with control on the landing side and reestablishing the bend and cadence.  I felt I could then enter the show ring. It is entirely possible Clint felt my determination and complied. He still was a little strong, was a little bouncy on the landing side, but generally in the ball park. We had really good distances to the fences. I came in purposefully very stead into the five towards the ingate so he didn't have to stuff one in on the out. And we ended up with a second place ribbon! 

Reference to horse's reading our emotions:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/02/sunday-review/horse-crazy-nir-language.html?smid=em-share

Looking innocent...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj22nbOY-g8

The actual round after the a galloping loose horse incident. 

New Kitchen Towels, Some Assembly Required

Who doesn't want four-color echo kitchen towels? First, there is inpiration. Looking at the lovely images in Marian Stubenitsky's book, Weaving Echo and Iris, and getting detailed information from Alice Schlein's detailed posts were enough to send me to the drawing board. But floats of 33 made me realize that developing a workable draft took, well, work. And every pretty picture did not have an associated draft that I could find. So I experimented on my own, and then wisely spent a weekend in January of 2019 in Chico, California at AVL with Janie Taylor for a hands on workshop. What a teacher! We developed hundreds of drafts over those few days. At least one should work.

The warp color decision seemed to take center stage. This warp has 4 colors, one single end of each color in the same order throughout the entire warp. I used 8/2 unmercerized cotton in grey, red, yellow and blue. 576 ends total, 24 inches in the reed with 24 ends per inch. I started with a green weft. So green represented 50% of the total color, and the others, 12.5% each. So just like Sunday comics, with dots of 3 colors optically blended to simulate more variation, the warp colors would optically blend and alter the green to the yellow or teal or dull it down with contrasting red or grey. When I ran out of green, I tried other colors as well. 

When washed, the width shrunk to 20" which I used lengthwise. Next time, I'll have a starting width of 20" shrinking to 16" and have a more traditional size. But I never sample; I figure they're dish towels and will get plenty of use and abuse!

Draft with tie up and treadling on a 16 harness compudobby. 

Turns out all the time agonizing about warp colors was largely wasted. They serve to modify the weft, which is the main event in this balanced weave. Network twill structure.

View of the laptop which feeds line by line information to the loom for the next lift. This pattern had a repeat of 192. Try memorizing that with traditional treadles!

Various wefts as I serially ran out of a color. Small cones are frustrating. I do own an iron but it doesn't show here. Now to hem and dry the dishes. 

The Cushion Caper

I have friends with a lovely stone hearth in front of their fabulous fireplace. They enjoy a glass of wine gazing into each others eyes, overlooking their garden at sunset, and thinking about their elongating to-do list, I suspect. One problem: they are so fit that their boney bottoms are impaled onto the stone surface.



Sheep to the rescue. I was recruited to make 2 cushions just the right size to provide an elastic and thermally reflective surface between the smooth cold hard stone and the athletic derrieres.

First , get a specialty breed called Gotland sheep. They originated in Sweden and have ringlets of variegated silvery locks. Next, breed said sheep and provide lambing support for the newborns.





Watch them grow daily, which provides a panoply of FB posts. At 6 months of age, schedule shearing with expert John Sanchez. Six inch silvery curls fall to the barn floor and are gathered up.





Next felt squares. Start with 24x24" square of Corriedale batting. On top of that, lay individual locks over the entire surface. Wet thoroughly with warm soapy water. Place netting over the surface so locks are not dislodged much and start rubbing away. It feels like washing your hair with slippery fibers rubbing freely over your scalp. This mixes them up and forms actual fabric of felt.





Secure the fibers even more by forming a rolls between 2 layers of bubble wrap. Roll 50 times, open up and rotate 90 degree and roll another 50, repeat all 4 directions, then flip over and repeat. 400 rolls total. Then gather up the square and throw it over and over again, splashing water everywhere. This is called "shocking" the felt and tightens it up. I finish the process with placing the square in a mesh bag and add it to a load of laundry. The 24" sides shrunk to 15". You can iron to flatten out the undulating surface.



The material is so thick, my sewing machine was totally overwhelmed. Enter Meg, with an industrial machine. It glided around the edge without a hiccup. I left a hand-sized hole along one edge and filled it with washed belly fleece. That is fleece from the belly of the lamb with less curling, suitable for stuffing but less attractive for spinning or felt. Hand sew up the entry hole and deliver! Bottoms rescued! The "End"