I recently visited a small sheep farm in Montezuma County, Colorado that raises churro sheep, Arriola Sunshine Farm. Not only are the sheep churro, but the breeder Cindy Dvergsten is invested in genetics and making sure this endangered breed of sheep doesn’t die out. It almost did after the livestock reduction campaigns* on the Navajo reservation. In the 1970s and 80s, a professor at Utah State University, Dr. Lyle McNeal, worked to bring the breed back from the brink of extinction.

Cindy of Arriola Sunshine Farm remains concerned about the future of these sheep. There are still a very small number of registered sheep that are recognized as pure churro. Her flock is one of those adding to the number of registered animals with pure churro genetics. If you’re a spinner or just interested in saving endangered sheep breeds, the Livestock Conservancy Shave ‘em to Save ‘em is a great program.

I was able to go and see Cindy and Mike’s flock in nearby Arriola, CO this week at Arriola Sunshine Farm.

I’ve been talking about sketch tapestry and weaving simple things about our experiences for awhile here. I always do this time of year because I run an online class called Summer of Tapestry. I thought you might like to see some of the warm-up tapestries the class has been weaving. The header photo of this post is a color tapestry I wove after seeing a lazuli bunting at my bird feeder for a few days.

The warm-up for this class is always about color. Honestly, I think you could have a weaving practice where you just wove the color of things you experienced without much attention to form and you’d have a marvelous collection of tapestry memories. I challenge the group to focus on the colors of something interesting and weave them without worrying too much about the forms they’re using. Stripes, eccentric weaving, or simple forms make the weaving easy and allow us to focus mostly on color. The results can be really beautiful and the weaving is simple and fun.