Woolybuns

Felting

As I progressed in spinning, I of course wanted to use my yarns.  But a wrist issue made knitting impossible (until I found a wonderful chiropractor).   The fiber kept growing in the backyard and while there is a market for angora, both raw and spun, I wanted to use my own fiber for my own finished goods.  I found felt!  Hand fashioned felt happens in three basic fasions: knit first then fulled in the washing machine, needle felting, and, my personal favorite, wet felting.   Each technique has its uses and creates different textures.  Knitting first with my wrist issue was obviously not going to work for me.  Needle felters create some deliciously fun "critters" as well as some wearables like hats but the technique just doesn't capture my fancy.  Wet felting with its slippery, wet mess is just what my fingers crave.   

My first effort at wet felting sort of didn't work.  In someone else's kitchen, we tried following the directions off the internet for making a piece of felted fabric.   I did get a piece of felt for which my cat was grateful (she got to sleep on it) but it had holes in it and really just wasn't a quality piece of fabric.   Eventually, I took a workshop with Susan Wiley, making 100% angora felt to then sew into mittens.  Oh, what a delicious fabric!   Later,  I was getting a rabbit from Leslie Samson and discovered she also does felting.  Her enthusiasm for the felting process is infectious and I got hooked.  :)  At the same fiber event, I also took a felted boot workshop with Deb Yeagle and that process was equally delightful, though fraught with disaster - I managed to not felt the front and back of the boots, leaving me with "seams" that shouldn't have been and poor Deb shaking her head in wonder at the mess she had to coach me through.  I spent that night in my hotel perfecting my needle felting as rescue techniques!  Learned a lot that night!  Here are the boots:

  I have now taken several felting workshops, including felted tapestries (uses both wet felting and needle felting techniques), hat felting, and wet felted mittens.   I use 70% angora/30% merino or rambouillet to make my felted mittens and I love the look on people's faces when they put their hands inside a pair of those!  One woman once asked, "Isn't it a waste to use angora for felting?"  I immediately had her slip her hand into an angora felt mitten.   "Oh!" she exclaimed.  "This is like an orgasm for the hand!" 

My latest adventure in felt was exploring nuno felting in a couple of workshops with Geri Forkner at SAFF in North Carolina (scroll down the page to see the nuno felt and airy felt scarves).  That was a great trip!  I traveled with a friend, Leslie Shelor , and we each took different felting classes.  We also picked up a fabulous fleece to share, a moorit colored CVM cross with a luscious range of apricot to pale chocolate hues.  While at SAFF, I saw a coat made from alpaca and on the 12 hour drive home, my thoughts tumbled around the nuno felt techniques I had just learned and that beautiful coat and my angora rabbits and what if??????   Gotta play with the idea here at home now.  :)  I do travel a lot in pursuit of all things fiber and the alone time in the car is perfect for design thoughts! 

Chris

one of the other fuzzy beasts

Button came into our lives quite unexpectedly, half dead and looking pretty miserable.   She was a three month old pup, a product of the puppy mills, and had just finished the torturous trip from Missouri to Connecticut.  She arrived crashing from hypoglycemia.   According to the pet shop rules, she should have been rejected and returned to the truck.  In that case, she would have continued the rest of the New England circuit, then taken the return trip to Missouri.   Without careful attention that first night, she wouldn't even have survived until the next stop, let alone the full trip back to Missouri.  The pet shop employee handling the arrival of the new puppies couldn't bring herself to reject the pup, knowing it meant a death sentence.   The employee was authorized to take the pup to the vet, but it was about 8 pm and after 9 pm, the entire vet staff went home.  The pup needed food and water at least a few times over night.  So the employee brought the pup to us.  DH spent a couple hours cuddling, feeding and watering the pathetic little pup.  The pup officially joined the household a couple days later.   

Button is a Maltese, a tiny little mop of a dog weighing about 5 pounds.  She's  not a very good quality Maltese, if you consider show standards.  But as a companion, Button turned out to be a delight: cheerful, playful, entertaining and quite friendly.  And apparently she's made of springs!  She's very Tigger-like in her movements.  And even more like the Engergizer Bunny in activity!   How she packs that much energy and enthusiasm into her little 5 pound body, I'll never know.  I cannot tire her.  I can tire the bigger dogs in the household, but not Button.   Taking her into our lives has proven to be as much a benefit to us as to her. 

Now that Button is reliably house trained in the kitchen, one of these days, I'll have to let her into the living room.  It will be interesting to find out how she will deal with all that fiber.    She could easily be lost for days!  What she'd really like, though, is to have a bunny of her own to play with.  She thinks they are great, even if they are bigger than she is. 

About the only thing that Button has found so far that she doesn't like is grooming.  Maltese are a high maintenance breed of dog.  Button's coat is more like human hair and must be brushed every day or she ends up with snarls and tangles.  She also needs a bath once a week and needs to have her face washed daily, otherwise, she ends up with face staining eye gunk oozing very unattractively onto her face.  So this is not a breed to get just cause they are cute and oh, so fun!   But I am quite happy that she got dumped into my life!

Chris

Me

This is my second attempt at blogging.  While I'm not an expert at anything, I am distinctly not a computer geek, hence the second attempt.  LOL   But what am I?    Mistress of the Warren is as good a title as any, I suppose.  I raise German,

German hybrid,

Bun Franklin, 
German  hybrid angora buck

and German crossbred angora rabbits, and I use the glorious fiber they produce to make things.  What a lucky gal I am!!   The rabbits are chock full of personality: loveable, funny, soothing, and just overflowing with that luscious soft stuff called angora. 

About ten years ago, I naively agreed to help my mom in her yarn booth at Common Ground Fair in Maine.  I knew nothing about fiber or spinning yarn.  My "help" consisted of comic relief and babysitting either the booth so others could take a bathroom break or my sisters little kids.  During one of my own breaks, I wandered into the bunny barn and came face to face (well, I think it was a face - kind of hard to tell with all that FOOF <G>) with a pile of white fluff.  Literally stopped dead in my tracks, those animals are just that impressive and hard to believe!  One of those moments when you just KNOW.  Somehow, someday....   "But honey," I promised DH.   "I can learn to spin my own yarn and get my own angora sweater."  It took three years, but I did finally come home from Common Ground with a baby angora rabbit.  I promptly named her Sweater so kept my promise!

Sweater

Now there are a few more bunnies and  Sweater departed for the Rainbow Bridge.  Her daughters and grandkits, even great great grands are still here keeping her spirit alive.    And in the living room are 5 spinning wheels, a drum carder, a couple sets of wool combs, some hand cards, niddy noddies, spindles, patterns, books, and of course, FIBER!  There's fiber in the dining room, fiber in the family room, fiber in the car, fiber on our clothes, fiber in the food....  LOL   Those bunnies produce!   

I am indeed a lucky gal.

Chris