Goats!

I can't remember how I first learned about pygoras, but it was about 10 years ago, shortly after successfully graduating from veterinary school without learning much about goat medicine other than "goats are not sheep." However, I had been learning about goats as fiber animals and was experimenting with kid mohair. I loved the brightness and the curl, but mohair gets coarser as the angora goat ages so only the first two clippings felt soft enough to me. I was thrilled to find out about pygoras, a breed developed by crossing angora goats (which produce mohair) with pygmy goats (which like most goats, produce a small amount of cashmere). The resulting goats had variable fleeces. They could be curly and shiny like mohair but remain soft throughout the animal's life. They could be fine and soft enough to be considered cashmere. Or they could be somewhere in between. Pygoras sounded like the perfect pet to me, not too big, not too small, and very fluffy.

Of course, living in town, I couldn't have goats, so I resorted to raising silkworms which are not really like goats at all, but they are fiber producing creatures suitable for raising in a shared house in the middle of town.

A little over a year ago, my friend Kelly said there was a pasture available next to her place right outside of town. I was trying to buy a house at the time, so couldn't take on another project, but this fall when I was irresponsibly browsing craigslist looking for a grand piano, I somehow found a trio of pygoras instead. One thing led to another and next thing we knew, we were proud goat owners!

The pasture had been used for horses a long time ago, so the fence was in disrepair. Our friends Christy and John showed up with a truck on our first work day which was a lifesaver in getting wood to replace the missing fenceboards. To goat proof the wooden fence, we first tried chicken wire, but there were concerns over its sturdiness, so Kelly and Ben replaced it with welded wire.

We're eventually going to have a larger shelter for the goats and horse (when Kelly gets a horse) combined with hay storage and tack room, but in the meantime, Charlie and I set to work on a little temporary goat house. 










We decided to use discarded doors from the local door shop for our walls.












I drew my plans out on Sketch-Up and it looked pretty good to me:

So we put it together:











 And it looked just like the plans, except in real life it seemed a little...large.

It kind of dwarfed Kelly's little house and was overly visible from the road. Since we wanted a house just for the goats so they could have a place of their own away from the horse, we took it apart and remade it smaller (and put it in the back of the pasture).


We painted it in nice neutral tones...








and Charlie talked me through putting on the roof.











And here are the new goats!

Forty Niner

Ashley

Havarite

Forty Niner loves the ladies.

Forty Niner is very friendly and loves to be scratched and really really loves treats. The girls are a little more shy but warming up quickly. They've very sweet with each other.

Happiness is couscous...

I'm a lucky girl.

I've been home yesterday and today, sick and grumpy because I'm not doing things and I like to be doing things.

I started warping my Northwest Pioneer loom for the Davis Spinners' Guild spinning and weaving demonstration at the Yolo Wool Mill-In this coming Saturday. The Pioneer loom is an innovative  design with open top reed and heddles that is supposed to make it easier to sley the reed and thread the heddles and wind the warp all at the same time. Theoretically, you could change threadings or sleying in the middle of a project if you so desire. My loom is a 12 harness loom from the 80's. They've made some design changes since then so they're supposed to work a bit better now. I got my loom from a woman who called it a Norwood loom which is an entirely different beast. It wasn't until I drove to Lake County to pick it up that I realized it was such an unusual loom, but I got it anyways since it had 12 harnesses and my floor loom only had 8 harnesses and there was something I wanted to weave that needed 10 harnesses. (I'm now pretty happy with my 16 harness dobby loom, but Charlie has pointed out that I haven't woven since he's known me so maybe that says something.)

At any rate, I've barely used the Pioneer loom. It doesn't like close setts or thin strings; the strings ride up into the open slots of the heddles. And I don't like weaving with heavy yarn, so we're just not right for each other. But I want to like it. It's such a cool idea. Plus now seems like a terrible time to try to sell a loom.

So since we needed a portable loom for this demo, I volunteered my unloved loom and decided to try out warping on the loom since I can't find my warping board anyways. It worked!


The front beam extends out and little warping attachments with pegs fit over them. You can then wind the warp across the pegs, each thread passing directly into the reed then the heddle, around the back hook and back into a heddle, then the reed and back around the pegs to the front. It is ingenious and I think it was faster than winding, sleying and threading conventionally though it's been too long since I did it to remember. 114 ends took me 1 hour 15 minutes. Ergonomically it's terrible though, leaning over the loom. I think I may try it on a taller surface next time.








Here's the loom with the warp wound on. I had Charlie help me wind the warp on instead of using lease sticks for friction. Hopefully it works ok. I'll have to find some weights for Saturday just in case.

You might notice the mess of lamms resting on the treadles in this photo. I think this loom may work fine as a table loom...the few times I've used it, the levers work great. But for more than 4 harnesses, I really want treadles! As far as I can tell, the new Northwest Pioneer looms don't have the option of stand and treadle attachments which is probably a good thing. These haven't worked well so far, but I can't give up so I decided to try to use them again.  This unfortunately means making some adjustments to the loom.

So when Charlie came home today, I was under the loom, scowling and cursing while trying to maneuver tiny wire loops with sharp ends onto little wire hooks. Why didn't they make those loops just a little bigger? Or cover the sharp ends of the wire? Arrrgh! At first I didn't even notice the roses he was carrying. 

 

He also had a very sweet card with an old fashioned sewing machine just like mine and the caption "hoping you're on the mend." Then he started making dinner for his friends who have just had a baby.

Here's dinner for the family. Doesn't it look delicious...and healthy?

He made me a plate too!

What an awesome guy!

Cats and Wood

A little while ago, I started a woodworking apprenticeship. Meep thinks that's old news. It is, but I've been too busy to write about it.

Woodworking is something I've enjoyed for a while. My friend Dan and I plotted to make electric guitars way back when. He made his pretty quickly while I hemmed and hawed and realized I didn't really have the woodworking skills to get started. He ended up making an electric bass for me and I did the inlay and staining. Dan is now master luthier at Born Guitars and I'm still plotting to make guitars. I did learn how to do inlay pretty well doing that first bass. Since then I've taught myself a few more things. My first spinning wheel is functional.

 And so far, the recipe bookcase I built for the kitchen remodel is holding up well.

It's great to be able to design something and build it, but I've been wanting to take my woodworking to the next level. It was the perfect opportunity when a local Davis woodworker put out an ad for an apprentice. Even better, Joshua makes fine furniture and art mainly from salvaged urban wood.



Frank gets logs from local arborists, so the trees that he mills are not cut down just for their wood but are removed for other reasons. Normally they would be mulched or just used for firewood, but Frank mills them into boards.













Hank the dog is very helpful except when he is distracting.

After the logs are cut into boards, they're sprayed with boric acid to keep insects from eating them and stacked to dry with stickers (spacers) between them to allow air to circulate.














Some of the wood is spectacular. It's hard to look at it and know it will be a year or two before it will be dry and useable. Walnut is my favorite wood and Frank mills a lot.








It gives me wood envy, so to distract myself today, in between helping spray and stack wood, I took pictures of the very photogenic Nigel.









He was not at all helpful, as he likes to get in the middle of things.

He is disarmingly cute.












































And he likes to use wood as a scratching post.

But he is very very very handsome and cuddly.

Which is not to say the new Davis shop kitty is not equally affable. Joshua is moving shop from Frank's place in the country north of Woodland to Davis. Lester has made himself comfortable in the new shop.

And the shop is taking shape. Very exciting.

With moving the shop, we haven't been getting a ton of woodworking done, but I have been scavenging from some walnut burl we brought in and made this little necklace.















Here's some eye-candy...a corner of the burl that's waiting to be made into something magnificent.

And finally, a plug for my boss: Joshua just launched his new Kickstarter project today: the Urban Shelving Collection. Really beautiful pieces out of really beautiful and sustainable local woods. Woods include Claro Walnut, Valley Oak, Mulberry and Silver Maple and I can't wait to work with them. There's a bike shelf, a bookshelf, an entry shelf as well as smaller items. Check it out and spread the word!

Dumplings

I adore little tastes of things. Some of my go-to recipes for bringing to parties are cream puffs, Brazilian cheese puffs, romano bread puffs and sesame balls. I've made lumpia and potstickers and such before, but am so excited about my newest cookbook purchase, Asian Dumplings by Andrea Nguyen. I've been craving dumplings since it arrived and treated myself to an order of dumplings from The Dumpling House Saturday night. They were tasty, but didn't curb my desire for dumplings. Fortunately I found friends to make dumplings with me Sunday night.

We were busy cooking then eating, so I didn't take many pictures but here are a few.

The dangerous dumpling dames:

Nefarious nibblers:

The goods: steamed vegetable dumplings

 

The steamed vegetable dumpling filling was amazing. Tofu, shitakes, carrots, leeks, ginger.
We also made pork cheek bacon dumplings with the same wheat dough skins and used the steamed vegetable filling in some wonderfully gooey glutinous rice flour balls. Those were amazingly tasty and photogenic too, but I was too busy eating to photograph them.

Birthday pork chops

Dave must be one of my favorite names because I seem to collect friends named Dave. One of my Dave friends is Climbing Dave, or Bitter Dave, or Dave Provider of Chalk and Food. Dave Provider of Chalk and Food is also known as Awesome Dave as evidenced below.

Exhibit A: pork chops from the two different farms at the Farmer's Market

 Awesome Dave got Yumi and I a pair of pork chops for our birthdays with the stipulation that we had to cook/eat them together so we could compare them. Accordingly, we planned to cook a feast together.

The first step was making risotto.  Cooked the onions and butter then started browning the rice.

 

 Added broth and mushrooms and asparagus.

And of course couldn't forget the bacon (from Bledsoe Farms in Capay Valley)

 For vegetables we stir-fried brussels sprouts and green beans.

We browned the pork chops then baked them simply with salt, pepper and olive oil.

 

Sitting down to dinner. Photo by Charlie who provided appetizers and joined us in the feast.

And the plate:

Birthday fun

It's been over a month since I turned...older. Just haven't gotten my photos together until now.

On my birthday weekend, I visited Aaron in Monterey. The weather was beautiful and we biked out along the Monterey Peninsula trail to the REI in Marina (hey, there are worse destinations).

We stopped at Fort Ord and checked out the abandoned barracks.



Stopped by REI since who can resist, then biked over to Seaside where we ate at Tortuga, a tasty tasty Oaxacan restaurant. With no bike racks in sight, Aaron rigged up the bikes with chairs to thwart any would be thieves.


We had an amazing tlayuda. We were so hungry we didn't take a picture of its beautiful presentation before we dug in.

  
BBQ that night, with more amazing food.

On my birthday morning, I got to do my favorite bike ride around Monterey, basically going along the coast into the 17 mile drive (see previous post).

 
After his drum class, Aaron rejoined me and we went for a little walk. Found a bolete.




 

Aaron, always the soil scientist.

lots of stairs

 Beautiful trees towards the top: