Woolybuns

Where The Hell Is My Noun?

I've been wandering a lot lately, kind of pinging from this to that, pushed along with life's occasional mallet to the head, the heart or the gut, drifting in a sort of ethereal edge between life and nightmare, not quite in either.  I feel like a dangling participle, unattached, grabbing for the nearest noun and making no sense.  Progress now is actively looking for my noun.

I've properly attached my participle to several really good nouns over the years, with Mother perhaps the best, albeit pretty challenging at times; but as kids do, they grew up so Mother is no longer an anchoring noun.  Student is another noun I fully embrace and I am the type who enjoyed diagramming all those sentences back in freshman year high school English class, which should suggest how I feel about dangling participles.

Rabbit and fiber have been my most public nouns, my go to comfort nouns.  Pretty good ones too, all that snuggly softness, and so much cute it's like Easter candy.  Too much dulls the desire.  No, no, I'm not giving up the bunnies!  But I have scaled back a little.   Nature has helped with that,with only bucks showing up in my litters for the past year, and most of my does either aging out of the breeding line up or some trait turning up that I will not perpetuate: droopy ear, white spots, bad teeth.  With my strict criteria for acceptable breeding quality, I now have 1 breedable doe.  Jury is still out, but I think she just gave me 3 more bucks.  I don't remember hanging out  that "buck stops here" sign, but I'll happily (hoppily?) give it to the first taker.  

I did invest in a whole bunch of fiber, some delightful merino, with plans to get batty.  Some batts will be for sale, some will be for felting.  I made a few sample batts, experimenting with colors and textures, those lovely sensuous nouns fluffing a bit of happy back into life.  Feeling those fibers slip through my fingers tickled that creative urge, that need to surrender thought and body to a special project, to make something uniquely mine.  In this wandering lately, I stumbled over Shalom and felt a whisper, a quiet calling that I need to make one of these.  Not just follow the pattern, but start with it, and use it to explore, to challenge me, to kick the old brain back into action, to attach to life.  That the word shalom has such rich meaning revolving around peace and wholeness does not escape my notice.  So too, I am aware that the pattern is published in a blog called Involving the Senses.  It is in the sensory world that I am most comfortable.

I am not going to buy yarn.  I'm going to spin it.  When I spin yarn, the soothing repetition of treadle treadle treadle and feed fiber onto bobbin gently eases the brain into relaxing alpha waves.  In that state, my mind leaves behind thoughts of finances and future and interplay of calcification and cachexia on an aging heart I treasure.  In that alpha state, my mind embraces the project at hand, balancing twist with grist.  Slowly my mind slips into more meditative visualizing the sweater and how mine will differ, how mine will reflect me.  And the longer I  spin, the more meditative the mind, the more flirtation with elusive theta waves.  Those theta waves take thoughts on a magical mystery tour and if I can hang on to them as beta moves back in, I'll find that elusive noun I know is the right one for my currently dangling participle.  

Soft Ruminations

Baby bunny all growed up.  Well, he's still growing but at 5 months old and brand new babies in the nest box, I can't call him a baby anymore.  He has a lusciously soft coat, nearing the 90 day mark for shearing.  This is not yet an adult coat, but I sheared him before he was 3 months old, so this is not a baby coat either.  It whispers "spin me" every time I pet the bunny.  His is a non-matting type of coat and he has not been brushed since his shearing end of April.  My fingers practically tingle with excitement as that 90 days gets closer.

Perhaps that is why I have started carding batts again.  Merino angora, 75/25 and 70/30 blends, are cuddle you up in deliciously warm softness, so delightful when temperatures    
plunge come winter.  The first two batts are subtle in their colors, spinning up worsted weight as neutrals with just a hint of color. In a scarf or cardigan, that hint of color will flirt nicely with other clothing.  In a thin spin, color speaks up a bit more, but I have to finish spinning that sample for a good look at it.

These are not my usual color choices.  I am sampling, experimenting with effects, pushing my  boundaries.  I entered a new decade this year and that's always a good time to branch out, to test one's mettle.  Playing with fibers is also a soothing re-entry into every day after the recent medical intensity in my family, a means of calming the amygdala, that little almond shaped nugget deep in the brain that gets all jingly and tingly and makes you twitchy and bitchy under stress.  Gooey chocolaty stuff works too, but fibers treat the body better.  

 

The Box

 What could be inside there that might interest you folks?  Nope, not a spinning wheel.  I had my spending spree for those several years ago.  Not a drum carder either.  I have one of those and while I'd love to get a motorized double wide and keep my current drum carder just for white fibers, that's not quite in the budget.  And that's not the way rabbits arrive so it's not a bunny either.  Want to think about it for a while?  Ok, you do that.  Have a cuppa tea or coffee while you're at it.    And I'll work on getting photos.  

Buck It!

Yep, finally getting a hint about gender in my current litter of babies.  At least 2 bucks.  Sigh.  Don't get me wrong, bucks make fun little pets and clearly are necessary to get  more babies.  But In the last   year, all the babies have been bucks.   And bucks alone cannot make babies.  The one baby in this litter that I cannot yet make out the gender may be a doe.  But that baby is one of the self blue, not the pointed white.  I need the pointed white even more than I need a doe in order to keep pointed white as a viable color here.  The question now is can I justify keeping 2?  With a small herd, it is very easy to concentrate the genetics.  One school of thought about breeding is heavy line breeding establishes ... well, your line.   But German angora rabbits tend to be heavily line bred to the point of inbreeding and I like the hybrid vigor that comes with outcrossing.   I need new bloodlines.  I attempted to bring in some new genetics last fall but ... well...  I still don't know what the circumstances are on that, probably never will since my efforts to connect have all been ignored.   For now, I am enjoying these little bitties.  They will be 3 weeks old tomorrow.  The one I know is a self blue buck is now officially available for sale.  

Little Bitty Babies

 

 Mine are 2 1/2 weeks old now, 2 self blue and one blue pointed white.  The blue pointed white stays here.  I do not know gender yet.  Magic is good with her mothering but not a prolific milk producer so her babies grow more slowly.  Gender is more easily determined when you can see it.  

In the midst of medical drama in the family, these little bitties offer calm, their tiny little foreheads held up as they gaze curiously back at me.  They now accept gentle strokes of my finger along those fuzzy little foreheads, and the velvety softness cushions the sometimes cold and harsh, sometimes heart tugging hospital news.   The baby in the hospital has improved though his circumstance is perhaps a bit more than I first understood.  Details of his condition at birth suggest he arrived just in time.  As I cuddle my little bitties, I think of my niece and her husband, how they must ache to cuddle theirs, yet monitors and an IV line make that more difficult.  They are brand new to the mommy and daddy thing, and this is a harsh introduction to what should be just about the sweetest time of a their lives.  He is a beautiful little boy, a little snuggle bug I hear, when opportunity allows.  I look forward to the days he and his mommy and daddy get to enjoy snuggling in their own little home.

Well, alrighty, then. That was a day.

And then some.  It started on Thursday.  Three completely separate extended family medical events all ended up on the same day.  One was a test, one a procedure I only a few days earlier found out was necessary, one a healthy baby 11 days past due date.  Three on one day.  How can we expect the universe to give us three good results in one day??  The test had gone badly before so I worried intensely about that one.  And the procedure was also a bit of a biggie, with scary history behind it.  The baby was hope and promise and joy, a welcome break from worry we would lose someone.  The first event of the day, the test, was quick with happy results (and not mine to discuss so that's all on that).  Next up was a dear heart in need of help, 84 years old, already the survivor of emergency quadruple bypass seven years ago.   This time, the heart's aortic valve is at issue, badly stenosed, but with a serious side of left main artery once again 95% blocked, with other arteries also calcified but not as extensively.  That left main artery is a biggie and had to be stabilized before tackling the valve.   Thursday's procedure dealt with the left main artery.  Given age, previous surgical history, and the fragility of the body in general, open heart bypass was out of the question.  Procedure of choice this time was stenting, but with some serious "roto routing" of the artery.  As is the case with so many medical procedures, it starts with getting blood pressure reading and inserting an IV.  Those old blood vessels apparently are so calcified they are not easily compressible, so we don't know if we ever really got a reliable blood pressure reading.  And the veins did not readily accept an IV.  

 The view from the room was comforting, as multiple emergencies bumped our appointed time further back.  It is very difficult to watch a loved one endure repeated attempts to get blood and insert an IV.  When that loved one is frail and tiny either from newness or with advanced age, distress is that much more.  The staff at Maine Med center cardiac intensive care gets a huge gold star.  Compassion ruled.  The nurse attempted the IV twice and decided someone more experienced with such difficult veins should take over.  That is huge.  Ego often takes over and insists "I can do this."  This nurse, so cheerful and attentive, put her patient well before her ego.  This is policy, staff said, and it is a welcome shift from previous attitudes.   The next nurse used lidocaine to protect patient but met with similar blown veins.  After reasonable but non-torturous  attempts, she too yielded to greater experience and summoned the PICC team, vascular access specialists who can get in the most difficult of veins.  These people.  All of them, CNA, nurse, specialist.  I am filled with gratitude for them.  

The procedure itself took about an hour.  We had both pre- and post-procedure chats with the cardiologist, and fed him snacks both times.  It is the right thing to do when the doc sits down with a weary countenance,catches his breath and says "it's been a long day and I'm tired."  Peanut butter coated pretzels.  He perked right up.  And he did  his job and gave us back our mother, bruised and battered, but with her heart functioning a bit better and safe for now.  

As the heart procedure  progressed, we got occasional updates on the baby in progress a couple states away.  It was an on again off again labor.  Tough on the woman, with serious lack of sleep.  That was her experience for a bit more than three days, I think.  Finally, early Saturday morning came the welcome text from my sister, baby's grandmother, "he's born, he's beautiful, and he's perfect!"  Followed a couple hours later with the stark update: sweet little baby was born with pneumonia.  That will bring your happy to a crashing halt.  Born with pneumonia.  But... NO.  He had great prenatal care.  The other two events were the scary ones.  How does a healthy, well tended baby end up with pneumonia in utero?  As related to me, the theory is the baby attempted to breath too soon and inhaled amniotic fluid.  Once again, a tiny, fragile body endured long attempts to get blood and insert an IV.  Having so freshly watched that play out on the aged loved one, I too easily visualized that new little life so in need of skin to skin bonding with his new Mum enduring instead latex coated hands restraining him while poking sharp needles into his soft flesh.  And instead of nourishment at his mother's breast, he lay instead with tubes of oxygen feeding his little lungs.  For hours we waited and eventually I had to return home, a 5 or so hour drive, without knowing how the little baby was doing.  I did finally at one point stop and call another sister.  There was finally an upate.  The baby's oxygen levels were slowly improving.  And later last night the even more reassuring update that baby and mom were finally getting skin to skin contact, though still not yet nursing time.  That's when tears flow for me.  Things are ok, I can let emotion flow.  Finally last night came a few wonderful Mom and baby pictures, all the more heartwarming for the struggle to get them.  They are not mine to share.   This morning I am still hoping for an update.

Back here at home, I immediately slipped into my own concerns.   New baby bunnies 12 days old, babies whose photos I can share. At 12 days, their eyes should open.  They don't always. If they don't, I have to help them with that task.   Before even going into the house, I checked my babies.  Only one had open eyes, so I fetched a clean, soft cloth, dampened it, and helped the babies see.  And then I lingered, stroking that soft little head with one finger, life and the threats to it once again on a more manageable plane.

Oh, Look, I Do Still Exist

Several of the plants that delight me in my yard now sprung up of their own accord, or likely because the birds... well, dropped seeds.  When these Brown Eyed Susans first stuck their faintly fuzzy little fingers above ground, I thought they were weeds.  Much of my yard was after that whack from the 2011 tree disaster, and these were definitely not something I planted.  I started to yank those leaves but something about that fuzzy nature gave me pause.  You know, cause I'm sort of all about the fuzzy.  Even if they were weeds, a lot of weeds blossom into pretty wildflowers, and I didn't have anything better to put there, nor any mulch to stem any growth.  No one else sees that spot, so why not just let it grow and see  what happens?  So I left it, came back to visit each time I fed the rabbits since this spot is near the shed where I store their food.  Watching the fuzzy little story unfold tickled my curiosity and as buds unfolded, that tickle just kind of flowed into sweet satisfaction.  And what  happened is now kind of a big burst of happy because how can you not grin in the face of all that sunny goodness?

Why was that so satisfying?  Out of chaos came grins.  Storm whalloped trees which sucker punched my house, my yard, my wallet, my spirit.  With the towering pine tree now gone, light shone where it hadn't before and those little fuzzy fingers emerged.   If I'd had a plan, I'd have ripped them out and never known their delight.  That's sort of my creative process.   I only have a vague gotta make something kind of tickle.  After that, I'm sort of along for the ride to see what happens.  I am simply the tool by which the raw materials make their magic.   I shut up, they speak, and they speak the loudest if allowed to sit out in full cluttered view.  Others might look at my oh so scattered and disordered creative space and wonder how anything gets accomplished, but order in my creative space makes me twitchy.   It's too neat.  Sitting there.  All confined.  Don't touch me I bite.  But give me space and stuff - fuzzy stuff, sparkly stuff, shiny stuff, colorful stuff, textural stuff... that's when oh, yeah, touch me baby happens.  And I do as the stuff directs.  And out of that chaos comes grins.

Sometimes I get a little push.  That happened a couple weeks ago.  Diane at Felt Inspiration needed guinea pig students and lucky me, I got to be one.   Go on over there and look at these great little NoBodys she created and teaches people how to make.  And ask her when you can learn, too.  I have a strange little learning style, sort of inhibited and a wee bit stupid at times.  I've had some rather impressive failures in some workshops I've taken, but took to heart a long time ago the advice to learn from my mistakes.  It is one of my guiding principles.  My little NoBody came  out a wee bit different from Diane's but still my own success.  And a funny little thing happened.  I went into that weekend still feeling the sad of the losses this year.  I came out of it finding my happy inside my little NoBunny.