Puff Daddy and Celia Quinn

Woolybuns Puff Daddy making his debut!  :)   He is 7 weeks old, dob 10-19-04, a pure German angora buck.  He is from the 2002 import lines.  A couple of breeders imported new angora rabbits from Germany in 2002 - angora rabbit breeders in Germany follow a very rigorous standard resulting in some impressive density and crimp in the fiber; when someone refers to German angoras as the new imports or the 2002 import lines, these are the rabbits referenced.  There were only 3 kits in this litter, 2 survived.  Puff Daddy will be staying here with me, while his brother will be traveling south.   I frequently get asked "how can you part with them?"  When I know they are going to good homes where they will be loved and cared for, it's easy.  The beaming faces of the welcoming family makes it ok.   

Last weekend, I had the great pleasure of learning with Celia Quinn.   She made a many state tour through the northeast this fall, joining Nutmeg Spinners for our regular meeting, where she presented a lecture/slide show on the history of spinning followed by hands on work with support spindles.  Then the following day, Celia led a workshop on novelty spinning.  Woo hoooooo!!  It was
great fun!  Celia is as talented as she is nice!  We practiced a bunch of different types of fun spinning techniques, including boucle, seed  (which I've also seen referred to as knots), garnetted, knickerbocker,  eyelash - that was both quite fun and surprisingly simple, though you need a specific fiber to make it (silk waste, I believe) and it's apparently not readily available.   So I'm glad I at least got to try it out.   

The opportunity to learn both from a teacher and by experimenting on my own is possibly my  biggest   enjoyment in the fiber arts - well, besides those bundles of bunny in the back yard!   When I first started spinning, I kept hearing about "the right way to do things" and that angora was difficult to spin.  But figuring out that there is no *one* right way freed me to learn a lot more.   There may very well be only one right way for some people, but for others of us, the "right" way is any way that works!   As for spinning angora, it's not difficult.  Angora as a fiber is a bit more slippery than some other fibers so it might take a bit more practice before the fingers come to embrace it, but that practice is well worth the time and effort!  My favorite way to spin angora by itself is from the fold: using raw angora, simply take a small hunk and fold it in half over your index finger, holding the ends on either side with you thumb and the "anti-social" finger.  Then pull up a few strands of angora from the fingernail end and spin from that.   I'll put up photos of that as soon as I can bribe a kid into taking them! 

So, to encourage folks to experiment, I'll be happy to send a small hunk of angora to the first 5 people who email me with their snail mail address asking for some.  The fondle fun alone is worth the effort!

And just in case Puff Daddy isn't a big enough helping of cute for you, here's a three week old chocolate bunny just learning to eat solid food. 

Comments

[Kim]

hmmmm............I love that chocolate!!

[Risa]

Oh Puff Daddy is just adorable and that chocolate is to die for! Beautiful buns. congrats.

[Nancy]

Hello,

I found you while trying to find contact info for Celia Quinn. What a wonderful blog you have! And a fantastic local group of fiber artists/enthusiasts.
I am a knitter and feltmaker (nuno and cobweb mostly) and recently introduced to spinning. Celia is an expert on silk and I had heard in the past that some wheels handle silk better than others. Have you found this to be true? I signed up for her classes coming up near me but one was cancelled and the other is full. Perhaps I will at least get to meet her.

Best wishes,

Nancy