Woolybuns

Challenges

As I promised, this post is about a big challenge I took on.  And right up front, I am happy to say I have enjoyed every minute of this challenge!  Last spring, I was elected vice president and program chair of Nutmeg Spinning Guild.   As program chair, it is my responsibility to come up with a some kind of activity for each meeting.  Nutmeg is a large guild with quite a varied level of talents and experiences.   Planning programs to fit has been well, a challenge.  And great fun.  Last October, we had Greg and Deirdre from Still River Mill discuss their experience starting a fiber processing business.  That seems to have been quite a hit, since they now come to each of our meetings, bringing back fibers they've processed for members and picking up new orders.  Greg was also just voted to be our new webmaster and I am quite excited about that!   We hope to have that up and running soon and once we do, then we can announce our big program for this year.  Fortunately, I can do that right now, right here.  :)  Last fall, I started thinking about the "big names" of fiber.  Nutmeg Spinners has had a number of well known presenters, including Rita Buchanon (a perpetual hit!), Sharon Costello,  and Polly Stirling.   I wanted to continue that tradition!  So I went web surfing for workshops being offered around the country.  One name kept dancing in the back of my mind as someone I had not seen presenting workshops here on the east coast.   Alden Amos,  author of The Alden Amos Big Book of Spinning.  That's right!  Alden Amos will be our speaker for our June meeting!  He will be discussing selected topics, including wheel mechanics, from his book.   Then, for a great follow up, Alden will assist Stephenie Gaustad in teaching a workshop titled Color Blending for Effect.  I am very excited about this workshop as well.  I love color in spinning!  I have also chatted with Stephenie on the phone several times over the past few months arranging all this.  She has been just delightful!  I enjoyed the conversations so much that I shared with Fiber Frolic friends the fact that these two wonderful fiber legends gurus will be here in New England.  Smart folks that they are, they promptly booked Alden for Fiber Frolic also!  Now, here's the fun part for those of you so inclined: there are a few spots still open in the Color Blending for Affect workshop. Email me for more information or to register. 

The Dye Pot

Yesterday, I fired up the dye pot.  Two of 'em, in fact, and kept them going through 8 pounds of fiber.  About half of the fiber is merino.  Last fall at The Big E, I saw a silent auction for a gorgeous looking merino fleece.  The current bid when I saw it was $2 a pound.  !!  So I entered my bid and lucky me, I won it!  The fleece weighed in at 13 pounds - I gave some to a friend, sold some to a delightful chap I met at an alpaca farm, and ultimately ended up with a washed weight of about 4 pounds.  I dyed it in 12 oz lots.  At the same time, I dyed 12 oz lots of angora.  I now have the roughly  8 pounds of fiber drying, some of it outside, some of it on the ugly monstrosity of a kitchen peninsula I have to put up with for a while longer.  I had the angora drying outside with the merino but as it dries, it gets a bit too fly away, in more ways than one.  First, angora being so incredibly light weight, the slightest hint of breeze sends it airborne.  But second, the birds are nesting!  I love watching them wing around, picking up bits of hay and stray wisps of angora, but I do not want to watch my freshly dyed prizes flying my coop to line the mourning dove's.   In the photos, blue is merino, purple is angora.  Those will be blended together. The cherry red merino will be blended with the cherry red angora.  I used both white and gray angora for that pot and love the wonderful range of tones I got.  Angora is water resistant, so requires a bit of thoroughness to get the dye to permeate all of the fiber, particularly when dyeing a large amount.  The purple is pretty evenly dyed, which is what I wanted.  But the cherry red, since I had the gray in there as well, works wonderfully with the range of tones from white to tinted dark gray.  I'm so pleased with it, I may just do another pot of it to blend with the silver to gray to black shetland fleece I got last weekend at Nutmeg Spinners Guild.   Another of my favorite colors is aqua, so of course I have both the merino and angora dyed in that color.  But then I put on a pot of sky blue merino and a pot of pale pink angora and I'm sort of  considering a batt of those colors mixed with the aqua.   Depends on how they look next to each other once dry, though I'll probably make the final decision when I hand all of these fibers over to the processor. 

Another dye adventure I will be experimenting with is a rainbow pot.  I've never done one.  I have some rambouillet/alpaca roving in natural white that is begging for color, but it will have to wait until later next week.  Today, I may do a few more immersion pots.  I will be seeing the fiber processor this weekend, so need to get all that done. 

Updates

Sassy munching on carrot while I fuss around her babies.  :)  Sassy is pure German angora, 100% import, carries an incredible coat full of texture and crimp and, most impressive of all, density!  Her current litter is a repeat of last year's litter.  One friend who had the chance to check out Vivi, the doe I kept from that first litter, put his hand on Vivi's coat and blurted out "Oh, my God.  OH, my GOD!"  And then promptly put in a reservation for one just like her.  :)  So, I'm thinking it's not just me who likes this breeding.   As delighted as I am to have these two new babies, it's a bit disappointing that there are only two.  But I am very happy there are the two!  And here they are at day 6.  They are fully furred now and the eyes will open around day 12.  Between two and three weeks old, they will begin exploring, including taking their first nibbles on solid food, the hay I keep not only in the nest but also in the entire hutch.  I go through a lot of hay with a litter of bunnies, much of it "wasted" because it doesn't get eaten.  It does get trampled and peed on and pooped in.  But since it gives the babies a good footing for moving around in, it really isn't wasted.  As they expriement with nibbling hay, they will also start taking their first tentative taste of Sassy's other food: rabbit pellets, whole oats and whole wheat.   They will also try to get some of her fresh food but the mothers usually horde that for themselves, so the babies only get the tiniest taste of that.  Tiny amounts are good.  Too much new stuff all at once can lead to serious digestive issues like scours, potentially leading to death.  So I'm careful to protect them from themselves.  By the time they reach 3 to 4 weeks old, they are just too cute to stand!!! 

The Bulky Sweater

It took 6 starts, but I finally have the bulky polwarth/angora/silk sweater well under way.  I have a reasonable expectation that it might come close to fitting because, as Jackie Fee advises in her book The Sweater Workshop, I did try it on at when it measured about 3 inches above the ribbing.  It might be a little big but that's ok.  It's going to be super warm, which for me is perfect!  I love working this sweater!  On size 13 needles, it's a fast knit, so even though I might only knit 4 to 6 rounds at a sitting, I can see progress each time.   A great motivator, that!  That the cable pattern is coming out so well is quite satisfying.  I love the looks of cables.  The only time I took a knitting class, I went as an intermediate level student.  The class description stated the class was for both beginners and more experienced students, beginners would make a specific project while those with some experience could bring whatever project they wanted.  I brought a cable project.  The instructor told me I was trying to do too much, that for her, knitting was a mindless activity in which she found refuge from the demands of working.  Well, fine, for her.  But I'm not employed and I wanted (still want) projects that will challenge me in some way.    If that's not what she intended to teach, she should have specified that in her class description.  Fortunately, I didn't bother listening to her and went on to experiment with lace, as well as cables.  I'm loving it!  The only downside to falling in love with this sweater project is it has totally distracted me from the Pi Shawl!  But it makes waiting to get started on the Stonington Shawl a bit easier.  :)

My next post will be about a big challenge I took on.   Stay tuned - it involves Alden Amos.  :)

 

Sticking Close To Home

With the two baby bunnies in the nest, I've been sticking close to home this week.  Two babies don't have as good a shot at survival as a bigger litter - the babies bunch together under mom's blanket of fiber and share the warmth, so more babies means more warmth.  I've got a heat lamp on them but that's also another reason to check on them frequently.  One advantage just two in the litter have is milk supply.  These little bits are growing fast!  Once they grow enough of their own angora, I will discontinue the heat lamp. 

Sticking close to home means I've been giving older bunnies more play time.  This young bun had a great time exploring the house.  He is a 4 month old pure German, 100% new import lines (translation: he's got a great coat!)  His name is Woolybuns Puff Daddy, though he's doing his Plucked Chicken imitation since his hair cut a few days ago.  He's proving to be quite the fun fella!  Some rabbits brought into new to them surroundings will hunch in as tiny a shape as they can, waiting to see if disaster looms.  But Puff Daddy instantly started exploring, making photography tricky, hence the blurry ears as his curiousity kept him in constant motion.  Took him only a couple tries to figure out climbing stairs was a hoot.

CCR Sweet Dreams, on the other hand, is a bit more shy.  She hunched for a bit.  She needs a haircut but I want to spend time getting her comfortable in the house and being handled upside down and legs stuck this way and that in preparation.   This delightful redhead nicknamed Reba is a 7 month old satin angora with nicely intense rufous coloring that I want to bring into my German type crossbreds.   I like that satin sheen, too!  My original red doe, a mix of several breeds, carried the satin gene so I'm hoping perhaps some of her offspring got it too.   Reba also figured out the stairs fairly soon, but for her, the stairs were an escape route, not a fun toy.  She raced to the top of the stairs and ... ok, quick as a bunny, scooted into my son's room to seek refuge under his bed, behind his tangle of electric guitar and bass and amp and assorted computer cords.  Since this was supposed to be a gentling time for her, I had to fetch her out of there carefully.  Bunnies love to chew cords so I did that balancing act of keeping her safe but not scaring her.  Then we sat for some cuddling and head scritching.  She did indeed succomb to that, stretching out on her back, eyes closed, nose in the air kind of relaxed.   We'll do some more of that today.

Karen is stirring my interest with her new pursuit: pottery!  My few attempts at pottery were great fun but not exactly promising.  Watching her progress in the class she is taking with her husband is great fun.  I can almost feel that slick, wet clay squishing between my fingers and I really like it!  My favorite pottery to buy comes from Maine and the studio of Edgecomb Potters.  With the amazing glazes these talented potters create, they have taken pottery to the level of art.  I visit that area of Maine frequently, so often stop in to see what luscious new fun they've been up to and now have a small collection.  Someday, I'd like to have an entire dinnerware service, but that will be a while.   In the meantime, I've also picked up a couple of non-pottery (read durable against teens and grandchildren) items from Edgecomb Potters.   Center stage in my living room is this tree.  The original one DH and I saw is possibly still on display and available at the studio.  It's too big for above our mantel.  But we did contact the sculptor, gave him our dimensions, and a few weeks later, got this fabulous tree proportioned for us.   One of my favorite finds at Edgecomb Potters is a delightful piece of whimsy that always makes me laugh!  The sculptor made a number of versions and this is the one that fit for us. How can you not be in a good mood with this little chap dancing his way into your day?

On the fiber front, I'm making good progress on my bulky sweater.  I did rip it out and start over with the ribbing on smaller needles.  Amazing!  Nancy was absolutely correct: I was not going to be happy unless I started over.  And the ribbing just flew without a mistake once I used the smaller needles.  I'm now three inches into the body, with a center cable for a touch of design.   When the cable is easier to see, I'll post a photo.