A Post for Practical Reasons

I want to put a photo of the bunnies I have available for sale on Ravelry, and it looks like the photo must be on the internet, so if I post it here, I can type in the link to it.... maybe?

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New Thoughts

I have a new thought about the whole MP/blog “controversy.” I’m thinking I could write out my mps, then past part of them on the blog, skipping the more sensitive/personal stuff.
For example I can rant about the stupid purple stuff I’ve been carding for 3 months now. Nasty nasty purple. I THINK I have a final solution which is to combine it with dark brown wool, light brown angora, and a bit of the gold wool. I’ve spun up some samples and it looks quite nice. Very autumnal. Now why in all the world could all this not go on a blog? It could. Would it be interesting and would anyone in the universe be interested in reading it? Who the hell knows, but it’s not like that’s a major condition of writing one, nor much of an expectation
I’d like to think about something more uplifting. Is there anything? I think I will finally finish carding this purple/brown stuff so I can move on to other things. I have a couple of fiber ToDos: work on the dog hair stuff, and take photos of some “black” angora for someone who contacted me via etsy. I think I would not like to offer to do custom work via etsy. It is one thing to list things I have made and see if anyone wants to buy them. It’s another whole thing to take orders for stuff and then have to make it. Ok, that sounds like more of a real business, but I’m not sure I so much want that. After all, I do have an actual job and I don’t want this to become a complete burden.

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Continuation

Back to my questions:

What they are made of?
I pretty much answered this in that my stuff is made of angora, wool, sometimes alpaca, sometimes silk, occasionally bits of synthetic yarns cut up and added in. The angora and wool are basically local (to me), the alpaca and silk I get from nearby fairs, the other stuff anything goes (Michael's?). A lot of what I make is naturally colored rabbit or wool, but I also sometimes use dyes. Sometimes natural dyes (mostly walnut -> browns, and lichen-> purples), more often at this point commercial dyes (mostly Pro-Chem).

Details about my rabbits?
Oh boy, this is where I can go on and on and wax eloquent and use the cool names I came up with. Or not. Basics: my rabbits are mixed French and Giant. They are not registered and I do not show them. They are "dual purpose" meaning that of the litters I raise some rabbits are sold or kept for fiber, while some I use for meat. Yes, I do all the meat processing myself; no I don't like to do it, but I do; yes, rabbit (especially home raised like mine) is delicious and very healthy. I keep my rabbits outside all year round in wire cages protected from the weather. When possible, I let them out in little runs to eat grass (and dig, something they seem to love to do). They are well cared for and I would say seem basically comfortable and content. They are not house pets and I do not sit and watch TV on the couch with them. I do try to handle the babies a lot so they get very comfortable around people.

Superlatives designed to entice you to buy?
Skip this one for now.

Interesting tid-bits about me to emphasize the fact that you would be getting something made by a real (and very likeable) person rather than a corporation?
In fact, skip this one, too, as it is getting late and I am tired and I think I'll go read some Balzac.
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The next stuff I need to think about writing, or perfecting, since it already exists, is the front page etsy blurb. And then blurbs for each item listed. And it seems like on this blogger there is the possibility of “pages.” Meaning, I suppose, little descriptive blurb type things, I wonder if they can include photos. If so, I could put the photos of: me harvesting fiber

me carding

me spinning…..

plus some of the rabbits.

As for the etsy front page:

What would an Etsy Explorer be interested in about me and the things I create?

Would you like to know how I make things?

What they are made of?

Details about my rabbits?

Superlatives designed to entice you to buy?

Interesting tid-bits about me to emphasize the fact that you would be getting something made by a real (and very likeable) person rather than a corporation?

I wish I knew what would be most useful, though I suppose the reality is that some people want one thing, some another, and many don’t care about any of it, just want to see the items themselves and how they look.

Well I will do my best.

How do I make things? I start with the rabbits and I harvest their hair/fur/wool usually by plucking or brushing it out, sometimes by clipping it. I also start with raw wool that I usually get at local fairs or directly from friends that have sheep. I wash it, sometimes dye it. There are many options throughout the process of making yarn, and I use most of them at one time or another. One option is to blend the fibers. In this case I use my drum carder to align the wool and combine it with angora. If I blend in plucked or clipped angora, the resulting yarn is smooth and even. If I blend in brushed angora, I end up with lumpy stuff that makes a textured yarn. Both are wonderful. Another option is to card or flick-comb the wool by itself, then spin that alone. If I want to add angora to this version, I will usually spin the angora alone, then ply the two strands together.

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2 post in one day!!

What could I write about all my bunnies? After all, I have a lot of them, and a goodly number are actually pretty grumpy and annoying. It’s not as if I have 2 beloved rabbits that live in my house and sleep curled up on my bed with me. No, these are outdoor rabbits and in fact are more like livestock. Not that I am completely unappreciative of them. They are lovely. They look great, they are beautiful and on the occasions that I do take them out (besides to pluck or dose with vasoline) they are soft and lovely and soothing. It is also true that some of them are a pain in the neck to feed or groom. Some lunge at me when I reach for their dishes. Some of the guys spray anyone next to them and make a big mess. Some of them scratch and bite when I am trying to groom them. But still, those ears….. especially Bathsheba, Lucky, Angel…. The more French style ears are not quite as interesting. But they are still nice. Maybe I should focus on just what they look like/feel like, and not worry about the whole personality thing. I had thought, way back, to do like the character in the book we read for book club long ago. I am referring to the book that takes place in Ireland about the woman that makes beaded necklaces, each of which she names with some quality, like Perseverance, or Loyalty. They went like hotcakes and she apparently made her living this way. Ok, reality check: this is a novel (and not such a great one to be honest). I had thought I would give each rabbit a personality like that. But I’m afraid most of them would have personalities like “Grumpy,” “Nasty,” “Protective.” I mean which rabbit could be said to be “Steadfast” or “Radiant”? I could give them those names, but I would be lying. Not the first time I suppose.


Lucky of the Alluring Betty Davis Eyes (she’s also mean – call her Mean Girl??)

Bathsheba the Beautiful

Beatrix the Bashful (perhaps not true, but nicely alliterative)

Bo (for Bovine) the Misnamed…

Alice B. Tolkias the Archetypical Albino Angora

Apricot Jam the Sweet (sometimes)

Crystal Cave the Wondrous

Charlotte the Survivor

Cassandra Prophetess

Angel Face with Ears so Soft

Blizzard the Wizard, Big Daddy

Amber Waves of Grain (soon to join that grain in the stew pot)

Bartelby AKA Bart the Wild and Crazy Guy

Onyx Earth Mother

Bavarian Cream Penultimate of Soft

Ok. What does one think of all those? They just might work.









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Not Morning Pages

What an idea! I am currently at the family property and had sat myself down to do some writing about things in general, then decided, hey why not do it on this computer of my b-i-l’s, and then I will transfer it to the blog. That ever-present, never-sleeping blog.


First to explain – I have missed 2 (two! Count ‘em, TWO!) Morning Page/Blog days because of this, as it turns out, aborted “backpacking trip.” The idea (of the dh) had been to park at Jones Nose, part way up Mt Greylock, then to hike up a mile or so and camp at a very nice place that he found while hiking last year. Well, as it turns out, 1) one cannot park overnight at Jones Nose and 2) one cannot camp on the AT except at the shelters. Both things that me friend was wondering about when I described our plan to her yesterday. Points for her! I was assiduously not worrying about any of the logistics, but was leaving it all to the dh, whose plan, as I have clearly stated, this was. Anyway, by the time all this became clear, we had driven to Greylock and so decided to stop at J’sN and just hike up to that spot and then maybe pick blueberries and then come here to the farm for the night. Only when we started up the trail it started to pour, so that ended that idea. For my part, I will say that I was pretty content to be hiking in the rain, after all it was not cold (or rather I should say, because of the rain it was not hot, which it otherwise would have been) and so I did not mind being wet. But the dh wasn’t happy and so we bailed. The point of all this being that I did not write this morning because of getting ready to go, and in fact I did not write yesterday morning because I thought we were going to go then, so I was trying hard to get everything done that I needed to do before going (including things like planning the college visit trip to PA), so I didn’t write. By the time the decision was made not to go (because of a forecast of rain all day) the morning was over, and one cannot do Morning Pages in the afternoon…. Ok, that is lame, but I did some carding, then we went to do errands and get tea, then I did more carding and my friend came over….. so went the day.

On another note, what I need to write, besides this rambling, is to write up stuff for my etsy descriptions. I find that I actually hate writing those descriptions. Cutesy, Hallmark style upbeat descriptions are just not my style. Maybe I should try being more “myself” with them, instead of trying to be like I see on other people’s pages. Not that everyone is cutesy. I just don’t want to be raving about how great I am, how great my rabbits are, how great my yarn is. Though of course it is great. But no one seems to want to buy it (oh sob sob, poor poor me……..). I mean if I am trying to have a business, then the point is supposed to be to make stuff that people will buy, and to work on “selling myself.” But that is very tedious. So maybe I will try being more free and easy and (gasp) honest, and see what happens. I need not put every last thing I write on etsy, after all.

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Today's Goal - Photos

Today’s focus should be on taking more photos so I can post more things to Etsy. Oh, AND I got the information for signing up to join the Western Mass Artists and they provide a web site for each member!!!! So, again I need photos for that. And big time I need to organize the photos on the big computer since right now they are all over the place. I keep waiting for a non-rainy overcast day to take photos, and I was hoping to get a friend to help me, but these days I feel like I have no friends (sob sob). That’s not really true; it’s just that a couple of them, the ones I was hoping I could get to help with photos, have not responded to my calls. The friend that does respond, and is loyal to the end, I am hoping to get together with today to do some writing. If we do, I will try to work on getting epithets for each rabbit, and writing up good descriptive blurbs about what I do, my animals, my processes….etc.
Here’s something exciting: I did my errands via bicycle yesterday! It was actually fun, it provided me some much needed exercise (somehow treadling a spinning wheel does not do it) and I felt very honorable for not using any fossil fuels or spewing any more co2 than what I was (admittedly very heavily) breathing out. And I was able to return the thermometer that I bought to use with the solar oven I made (out of cardboard – very high tech) that only measured to 120 degrees, not very helpful for an “oven.” I actually exchanged it for a candy thermometer that measures between 100-500 degrees F, so that should work. And speaking of solar ovens, I tried dyeing some wool using the black bin covered with glass technique. It certainly got hot enough. I was trying to do some lichen dye that has been sitting about for a long time. I don’t actually know if it was a second attempt to extract dye from the lichen, or what, so I don’t know how good it would have been in the best of circumstances, probably not very. At any rate, it dyed the wool a rather pale pink, which is nice enough. What I really need to do is try it with commercial dyes that I know are still strong.
The etsy fast group (other fibrous folk) has some sort of blog list and I was thinking about putting mine on it, but then (gasp) someone might actually read this. Oh dear. Part of me is definitely just as happy to have no one do so.
I have nearly finished the grey stuff; I started knitting it up last night and I think it will be lovely. I’m using probably a needle size of 1. Yesterday I also (while listening to my cd about court cases of the century – very interesting) played around some more with the rest of the purple stuff to finally decide what to do with it. I tried blending with brown alone, then brown and grey angora, then brown and white angora, in various ratios. Not sure which I like best, must look at it again today.
Tomorrow the dh and I are supposed to go camping – actually backpacking – on Mt. Greylock. I think it has the potential for being fun, though I’m a little nervous about the backpacking part since it has been so long. I think my back will hold out…. And I do not want to spend a bunch of time gathering all the necessary equipment, much of which is probably at the other house, so I told dh that he must do that! I’d probably better put my mind to food, though, or we’ll be eating some disgusting freeze-dried stuff that will cost a fortune.
Time to meditate and get on with the day!

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A Rather Dull Ramble

What to write today? I just wrote a long email to the dd that is far away, so perhaps I satisfied my writing needs. I am royally sick of the ongoing Butt Burn that doesn’t seem about to abate. It sucks and I’ve been really careful about what I’ve been eating.
I did 2 rabbits yesterday which is always hard but feels satisfying after. And I moved 3 of the big babies to a larger cage. I left one with the mom because she actually looked kind of lonely by herself! And the new babes are doing well – I will post some photos.

Here’s a grumpy thought: I was at my bookclub meting the other day, and one of the members was talking about these beaded watches she’s been making – basically she strings big fat beads and adds a watch to it, so one can wear it on your wrist. They are very nice, if you like that kind of thing, which I don’t really. Anyway, quite a while ago she showed them to us and was asking about trying to sell them, did we have any ideas, what should she charge, stuff like that. Well, she put them somewhere on consignment and was telling us Sunday that they had all sold! I should be very excited for her, it is good, and I do wish her well of course, but also of course, I felt competitive and was feeling very discouraged. Of course, people would rather pay $10 or whatever she charges for a nice jewelry watch than $10 for a tiny ounce of handspun yarn that they don’t know what to do with. Well, people do at least some buy my yarn at the fairs, and I can’t say it is in any way fair to say that Etsy is not working since I only have 3 items up. I need to take more photos and get going on that.
It was really hot yesterday and I had a hard time getting much accomplished after the rabbits. A friend came over for lunch and we talked about something called the Transition Towns which I will look into more, sounds very good. After that I kind of floundered. Part of it is feeling crummy because of the butt burn thing.
Oh, I just took photos of some hats and I was going to describe what I’ve been doing. I’ve been knitting up this new style – all in k2p2 rib, and using up bits of yarn so they are a bit wild in the color department. It’s lots of fun to do and is satisfying because of using up the small yarn balls. I will post a couple of photos.

Unfortunately, the photos look crummy. I really don’t have a good place for taking nice photos, some sort of nice surface or background. I suppose I should just stick with the white poster board. We’ll see how these look.
I will finish this second skein of the grey stuff I’m spinning,

and at some point fairly soon today I need to go do errands.
What a reject posting. Ok as morning pages, rather awful as a blog post!!

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Impending Disaster

I’ve got to get this off my chest. Very late last night, after I had been in bed for already a long time trying to get to sleep (it usually takes me a long time) the dh came to bed, and told me that he’d read something really scary and he didn’t want to tell me about it because it was too scary, but then let me know that it had to do with methane and the gulf oil leak. Well, I tried to be comforting, but let me tell you, it made for a bad night. It played into all my worst worries and nightmares and feelings of failure. It seems he had read on line (he spends way too much time on line) about a possible methane bubble that the now blown out well had tapped into. The idea is that this is going to lead to a massive outpouring of methane into the atmosphere that will cause a mass extinction similar to what occurred at the end of the Permian (not sure about that, I’ll have to check). And you know what? This is possible. And even if it does not occur that way, surely adding even more methane to the atmosphere from the rupture, even if it is not a massive bubble, cannot be a good thing since as greenhouse gasses go, methane is far more “effective” than CO2. And there is already a huge problem with methane being released by thawing permafrost in the Arctic. We may already have reached a tipping point as far as warming is concerned. The idea of a huge disaster that destroys most of life on earth does not freak me out as much as the idea of gradually destroying everything. The reason is, that if there is a massive die-off, then presumably I and my children will be part of it, and that will be that. Life on earth will go on in some form or another and over the millions of years that these things take it will evolve into new fantastic forms. I don’t feel as if humans are the pinnacle and if we are gone there is no more point to anything (not sure there’s much of a point anyway). What freaks me out is the sense that things are going to get a lot harder soon and life for my children is going to be very difficult. Will that spur me to some sort of action? Some sort of letter writing campaign? I am feeling like I should call our “wonderful” new senator Scott Brown to urge him to vote for the extension of unemployment benefits. The reason is a bit convoluted. It seems like people really vote from the standpoint of their pocketbooks. If they are feeling really pinched, they’ll vote out incumbents. If they are feeling more flush, they are less likely to. If the unemployment is extended, maybe there is less chance of congress losing too many Dem seats. Keeping the Dem majority will at least make it slightly more possible that some sort of reasonable energy bill could be passed. That is my reasoning. Not that it will work, since I don’t think there’s much chance he will vote for it, but I think it will pass anyway because of the lovely Maine Republicans. Yay Maine.

Is that all enough of a rant? I had to get it off my chest. On to fiber (am I hiding my head in the sand by spending so much of my time thinking about fiber??????

I finished one skein of the really nice grey stuff. Perhaps I’ll post a photo. Then I spent the rest of yesterday in town having tea with a lovely friend, taking the dd to get her bike tire fixed, going to the library where I got Canterbury Tales and more cd books (to listen to while I spin – see I’ve tied fiber in), and then – paying bills (oh wooooohooooo). And then I cooked a big steak for supper, which as far as methane goes is really bad since cows are a huge source of methane. But I’ve had the butt burn really bad lately, so I decided to go with meat since that usually works for me. And today I really ought to do a bunny which will provide more of that (without, I assume, the methane – I think it is just ruminants).

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Yarn and Hutches

Today I am doing my Morning Pages Blog on the big computer in the living room. I will try writing on Word, then transfer it, but I seem to have trouble with that. The only way I’ve gotten it to work is to email it to myself, copy it from the work email, and then paste. If I try to paste directly from Word it doesn’t work. Go figure.

I felt kind of crummy most of yesterday, so other than spinning the gray stuff

 I didn’t get a whole lot done. DH was great about fixing up 2 old hutches

One of which, as you can see, has a bunny in it. They are kind of small, so really just temporary for adolescent babies and such.  He also cut a hole in an old picnic table we have, and we put the deck umbrella through the hole so there is now a table again on the deck. Very handy. As he noted, I am very pleased, in large part because we spent no money. As for the frame of the old (formerly glass) table, I’m thinking it could work very well as a frame to hold up more temporary cages. I would put some studs across it, then the cages could sit on top. It’s an idea. Or I could try freecycling it. OR, I’m even thinking, I could cut a section of ¾ “ plywood to fit on top, paint it, and there we go, all fixed.

I think I will be feeling better today and will be more productive. I went to bookclub last night and felt like a slug. Partly it’s frustrating when we go to someone’s house for our meeting and then the big focus seems to be on eating. Last night I felt like I couldn’t eat much, due to the dreaded Butt Burn issue. I’d rather we just met at coffee shops. Our next book is To Kill A Mockingbird in honor of its 50th. And our next meeting is not til September, so that gives me lots of time to read some of the other books I’ve been wanting to read. Right now I’m on a bit of a Balzac kick. The group chose The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford from my group, so that leaves Under the Volcano and Darkness at Noon that I can read on my own. And maybe a Doris Lessing.

I have a big todo list to work on.  A lot of paperwork type stuff that I think I will do once it gets hot. It’s not supposed to be too bad today, and it might thunderstorm this afternoon. I should put out the laundry now, so I can take it in if it rains.

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dizzy

Today’s big issue is that yesterday I gave blood, and today I am dizzy. It comes, I assume, of not following their directions thoroughly to drink 4 extra glasses of water. And in the afternoon we drove to Winchester to see the basement walls, and then to Shrewsbury to take the Gma to supper. So I got very very hot and probably was sweating. Anyway I am trying to take it easy today. Not hard for a basically lazy bum like me.

Let me think about what I still need to do:

Take more pictures of stuff to put up on Etsy

Take more pictures of rabbits – one of each adult, then pictures of me in the process of yarn creation, and photos of babies!

A big one – figure out this kit idea. It seems like it would be helpful for people interested in buying yarn if I had kits for them to knit things. But I get stymied because it seems like to make that work all my yarn should be the same grist and same size skeins. Or tailor skeins for particular projects. But I don’t want to stuff all my skeins in kits so people can’t just buy a skein by itself. I’ve thought of having instructions that include how much of what basic thickness yarn to use for them. That would mean grouping yarn by size which gets tricky. I could just group by Bulky, Medium, Fine and give the other potential names for those – dk, worsted, etc. I could even have a few Extra Bulky and Extra Fine. Then I could suggest how much of any of those would be needed for each item – hat, scarf (though that one can really vary, but say, a 5’ long 12” wide scarf), wrist warmers, socks, headband.

Other things I do need to do:

Vasoline the rest of the bunnies – I did 6, 9 to go

Clean cages

Eventually get those metal roofs on the cages that need it

Fix up the 2 derelict hutches

A nice thing to do:

Start spinning up the grey stuff for dn and hubbie.

I did have an actual thought this morning. There are been many many times when I have basically gone around all day having conversations in my head with various people, or sometimes with a therapist if one was in the picture at the time. Well now I go around thinking about what I am going to write here. I bet other people that do blogs have this experience. It’s kind of odd, and in fact kind of dumb. In a major way I am very glad that no one reads this, it makes it more free. Although there is always the potential for discomfort if someone does eventually read it, since they can always go back and read previous stuff. And I’ve put the link up there on the Etsy page so anyone can read it all. Well to all those reading hordes, I apologize for the ramblingVisit my new Etsy Shop!!http://www.etsy.com/shop/twistedmysteries

Not really disaster, I'm just being dramatic, but when we got home from the outdoor concert last night, I went out to feed the buns

and found that the umbrella attached to our deck table had blown over in the thunderstorm and broken the glass top of the table. The good news is that the table was the same kind of glass as a windshield, so it shattered instead of breaking into big shards. Still, it means that I no longer will have any shade on the deck, nor a table, AND I stepped on one piece that was sharp and it got stuck in my toe. I did manage to get it out, and the dh very nicely vacuumed the whole deck this morning. I need to vacuum our entryway, which is where I got jabbed, and clean off the picnic table which now has a rabbit on it, and move that to the deck. As for the umbrella, I don't know. The table has support wood in the middle under the top, so I couldn't just drill a big hole for the umbrella to fit through. I suppose I can prop it up which will work in a pinch. Most of what I do fits the “in a pinch” model anyway: cages that are jumbled together, the kitchen faucet with the duct tape covering the hole, the entire basement waiting to be finished…….

Yesterday (on a more pleasant note) was quite nice. We went for a hike (in the roasting heat, but it was ok). We had to wait until after my dentist appointment (no cavities!) and after I could pick up the veggies at the barn at noon. So of course by then it was already roasting hot. We decided not to bring the dog which was a good thing. We spotted a car at the north end, near the concert we went to after, and started at the south end, and hiked along the Pocumtuck ridge.

It was about 4 miles, very hot, very buggy with nasty little gnats, but still nice. And the concert

after, at the Energy Park in Gfield was nicer for being tired and feeling like we deserved a rest. It was a free concert to kick off the Green River Festival which the dd will be going to all weekend w/ friends. Dh is jealous of her, but I think I would get bored with sitting all day listening to music. And the groups last night were not that great. A little too “country” for my tastes.

Baby bunnies seem to be doing fine. I took some photos yesterday of the big babies, from which I will make a for sale poster to put around, and I took some of adults that I can use on the Etsy page. I will try to do more photos today. I would very much like to make a whole montage of how I harvest and process the fiber that I can put up in a booth. Oh - I sent in the form to sell stuff (I hate the term “vend” ) at the event in Wellesley in August. Perhaps that will make up for missing the fair here in July. Plus it is a new area, new people to tap into….

This technique of writing on the laptop in the sun room, then transferring to the blog seems to be working well!

Disaster on the Home Front

Not really disaster, I'm just being dramatic, but when we got home from the outdoor concert last night, I went out to feed the buns  and found that the umbrella attached to our deck table had blown over in the thunderstorm and broken the glass top of the table. The good news is that the table was the same kind of glass as a windshield, so it shattered instead of breaking into big shards. Still, it means that I no longer will have any shade on the deck, nor a table, AND I stepped on one piece that was sharp and it got stuck in my toe. I did manage to get it out, and the dh very nicely vacuumed the whole deck this morning. I need to vacuum our entryway, which is where I got jabbed, and clean off the picnic table which now has a rabbit on it, and move that to the deck. As for the umbrella, I don't know. The table has support wood in the middle under the top, so I couldn't just drill a big hole for the umbrella to fit through. I suppose I can prop it up which will work in a pinch. Most of what I do fits the “in a pinch” model anyway: cages that are jumbled together, the kitchen faucet with the duct tape covering the hole, the entire basement waiting to be finished…….

Yesterday (on a more pleasant note) was quite nice. We went for a hike (in the roasting heat, but it was ok). We had to wait until after my dentist appointment (no cavities!) and after I could pick up the veggies at the barn at noon. So of course by then it was already roasting hot. We decided not to bring the dog which was a good thing. We spotted a car at the north end, near the concert we went to after, and started at the south end, and hiked along the Pocumtuck ridge. It was about 4 miles, very hot, very buggy with nasty little gnats, but still nice. And the concert after, at the Energy Park in Gfield was nicer for being tired and feeling like we deserved a rest. It was a free concert to kick off the Green River Festival which the dd will be going to all weekend w/ friends. Dh is jealous of her, but I think I would get bored with sitting all day listening to music. And the groups last night were not that great. A little too “country” for my tastes.

Baby bunnies seem to be doing fine. I took some photos yesterday of the big babies, from which I will make a for sale poster to put around, and I took some of adults that I can use on the Etsy page. I will try to do more photos today. I would very much like to make a whole montage of how I harvest and process the fiber that I can put up in a booth. Oh - I sent in the form to sell stuff (I hate the term “vend” ) at the event in Wellesley in August. Perhaps that will make up for missing the fair here in July. Plus it is a new area, new people to tap into….

This technique of writing on the laptop in the sun room, then transferring to the blog seems to be working well!

Visit my new Etsy Shop!! http://www.etsy.com/shop/twistedmysteries

Getting to be a pro

I THINK this is going to work. I did get this “ancient” (remember – 2004!) laptop to connect to the internet with the help of the WONDERFUL computer help desk guy at work – above and beyond, he did not have to help me with my home computer. It is very very slow (because of being ancient – 6 years old!!) so I am gong to write on Word, and later transfer it over. But it means that I can sit out here on the lovely deck, in the nice cool (before it gets scorching hot again in about an hour) and write, and I am doing it after I’ve fed bunnies (they are happily munching away) and before I meditate.

I spent a chunk of time last night playing with the new templates, etc for this blog, so I hope things will look good. I don’t think the signature link will be live, but there is  a place for links on the side, so I will use that, instead. There are all sorts of other features which I will need to explore to see which might be useful. One nice thing about using Word to type is that it self-corrects some typos, and capitalizes at appropriate moments. Very nice.

Oh – more exciting fibrous news: Bathsheba also had her babes. She is in one of the cages with the enclosed hutch attached, so she made her nest and had the babies in there. She also uses the inside for her bathroom, though at the other side, but still…. I’m not so sure the fumes are that great for the babes. I’ve been cleaning out the poops every day, but I kind of wish I could move them into a nest box. I haven’t actually even looked at hers, because last night when I found them and was going to get them out she got very grumpy at me, so I decided to wait til this morning. I need to get the fur snipped so no one gets tangled. And I’d like to check colors. Angel’s seem to be doing fine, though they are both kind of small. And this all begs the questions: what (as the dd wonders) will I DO with all these rabbits? Well, I’ll put it right out here – these are in fact “dual purpose” rabbits, so some are destined for the stew pot. Not a process I love, but I do it. I could go into great detail on my thoughts  on the subject, but suffice it to say that I do in fact eat meat (with my digestive issues, that I can expand on another time, meat works very well for me, thought I still don’t eat a lot of it or every day) and I feel like if I am going to eat meat, better to do it responsibly and raise my own as much as possible. This way I know the animals are humanely raised and humanely killed. We also just joined a meat csa from which I get 5 pounds of sustainably raised meat each month (we share that with one other family). We’ve just done one month so far and it was great.

Well, wow, look at all I’ve written…..

As for the rest of today – dh is home today, and we made plans to go hiking then to a free concert. I’m a bit concerned that it might start to rain later, and we cannot leave until I have picked up our CSA vegetables at noon – though I could ask the dd to do that (she’ll probably say that we have too many vegetables already and not want to (she does have a mind of her own, that dd).

Ok, time to meditate. Maybe I’ll try to upload this to the blog.

Visit my new Etsy Shop!! http://www.etsy.com/shop/twistedmysteries

a Test

this is a test to see if the Etsy link I have added to the bottom of each post will work.
Well, it's there, but not live...

Visit my new Etsy Shop!!
http://www.etsy.com/shop/twistedmysteries

A thwarted attempt

I decided to attempt using our "ancient" (2004!) laptop outside to write this morning, but I can't get it to connect to the internet. It is a total pain of a laptop besides being huge and bulky. It sucks because I had been thinking that I could lend it to my friend whose laptop had died, but if it won't connect, what is the point? I have often had trouble in the past, and can usually by some magic incantations get it to connect, but of course, being magic,one cannot write them down or commit them to memory. So it goes, and thus I am again stuck inside to write.

I think I should go back to the technique of writing first before I meditate, so I can purge my brain of whatever random thoughts are in it. Not that it would truly work, since more random thoughts would still pop up.

My friend did "purchase" an item from my Etsy page, and it worked fine, so that is good. I need to find someone with paypal to try that part. And of course now I need to repost that item (back to its original price). In a bit I will put up a photo of the lovely dark stuff I am carding, destined to be spun up fine and then knit into the stuff for my niece. The rambouillet  I am using is really soft and nice, and not too messy or tangled.

Yesterday the dd and I went on a college tour. It was actually pretty fun, even if it is not a school she wants to go to - the tour guide was absolutely adorable, but as dd noted, she never said a word about academics!

Oh - big news!! Angel had her  babies - 2 of them! Finally I get something out of Blizzard - he has not seemed very effective in the mating department lately. Bathseba is acting decidedly broody also. It's just as well having these small litters, I hardly need more babies. I tried again with Lucky and Onyx - ever hopeful, but I doubt anything will come of those. 

What else is there to say? I think this blog idea is not the ideal way to do morning pages, because I do feel constricted. Like I don't exactly want to tell the Universe (even though the universe, and in fact not even a single soul, actually reads this) things like if I am feeling grumpy and about what, or complain about the things I usually complain about in my journal.

I think I will clip the nest hair for the new baby, take a pic and take a pic of the carded stuff that is so soft and lovely.

Here I go

My first day with blogging as Morning Pages.... Now I can't think of anything to say, which is very normal with morning pages, even though all morning while doing everything else I do - stretches, feeding bunnies, meditating - I've been thinking of things to say.

Well, this will be very rambly, but that is ok. One thing that I am not at all sure I will like, is having to write this at the computer, instead of sitting in my lovely sunroom (except today it is more of a rainroom). SOMEDAY I will get myself my very own laptop, then I can sit in the sunroom and still do this, as well as many other things. Someday. After we get the dd her laptop, which she will need for going to college, and in fact wants now, so she can do her homework (and facebook) in her room instead of int he living room.

As for things fibrous: see from above, the photos of the pink stuff I FINALLY finished spinning. This has been a long haul because of the hours spent carding and blending the purple, and it was not the nicest fleece, so it took a lot of work to get the bits of hay and tangles out of it, and then I blended and blended in the gray angora. then i did not like it, so I've been trying all kinds of options. I finally settled on this, for which I had to card up the pink and white angora, then blend it with the purple. I am happy with the result. It is super soft and will certainly fluff up a lot, as it contains a lot of angora. I think I will post it on my Etsy page, and I must figure out how to link to that from this blog.

Today's fibrousness: I am working on making some yarn that I can use to make a neck warmer and probably a hood or cowl for my dn and her new husband. I have some very nice dark rambouillet that is super soft, and I think I will blend it with angora. Should be fun.
time to get to it.

hello world!

I think I will try again with the blog thing, because I now have an ETSY page, and blogs seem to go along with them nicely. I've been writing morning pages pretty well all summer, maybe I will substitute this and focus on the fibery side of life, as that is a lot of what I write on the morning pages anyway.
Plans:
- take more picckies of buns that I can use on the etsy page to better describe where the fiber for my stuff comes from (dd says I already have WAY too many bunny photos, but too bad).
- take pics of more skeins and put them on the page.
- firm up some sort of instructions to go along with skeins.