The latest in German Angora rabbits

Here is Little Joe at 3 months old already. His parents are Absarokee and Bitterrootret. He shows great promise of nice black silky soft wool. He is ready for his first haircut.
This sweet little baby is the same Little Joe but shown at 6 weeks old. He is my latest German Angora hybrid buck, and hs is a lovely black. He too is over 98% German Angora, and as you can see by his blue eye he carries the chinchilla gene as well as the black gene.

To the right is Snowcrest with a big black spot of tattoo ink in her ear at 6 weeks old. look how much she grew between 6 weeks and 3 months.

The photo to the left is Snowcrest at just a little over 3 months old and she has already had her first shearing to remove baby wool. It's normally discarded as it's so soft, but it can be handspun to make a delicate and soft yarn that made into knit garments that will get little use, such as a neck scarf. She is a purebred German Angora from Winter's Dream and Snowstorm.

This is Jack, at 3 months, he is over 98% German Angora and so is called a German Hybrid. It's amazing how fast they grow.

Here is Jack at only 6 weeks old. The number is his ear tattoo

This is a newborn shown at day 7

Here is a photo of the purebred German Angora litter of bunnies born this month and they are about 5 days old here. They are born nearly hairless at birth and you can see that they are already getting furred.

This is a pic of Winter Storms as he was as a youngster. I need to get some adult pictures. He is the sire of the upcoming baby littler that I am going to show.

This photo shows Snowstorm; she is the mother of SOW.

Angora photo updates

Here are some of the most recent photos I've taken of the Angora population here. The top photo shows Winter Dreams as he was at 5 months of age. He is my senior purebred buck here and he will be five years old next year.

The middle photo is Snows of Winter (SOW) as she was as a baby, and then as she is now as an adult. She is a shade over 1 year old and has had 11 babies. Amazing rabbit

How time flies

It's been ages it seems since I have had time to post to this blog. Maybe I can start catching up. We've had a cooler, later, and somewhat wetter summer than normal and I have relished it. However, now in September we seem to be experiencing summer. Much hotter and very dry. the poor plants wither so bad I can hardly keep up with their watering. The garden has been growing but slowly and I just hope that the frost stays away long enough to harvest the tomatoes. The poultry have been having a good year, raising chicks, and ducklings and gunieas. Our guineas flock increase this year by 6 new ones, and they are all running wild. They do drive me slightly nuttier because I have to think of ways to keep them from eating newly sprouted greens in the garden, and they chatter continueally.............But the grasshoppers have been way down this year, and tick season was short so I credit them with that. I wish they would catch hornets! They do catch and eat mice though! Sheep wise, that status quo is about the same. We still have 4 ewes, and 1 ram. However, we are likely to add another ewe lamb and we did replace our ram. This new one is 50% Icelandic, and the rest if a border Leicester/cormo complicated cross. His wool is white, lusterous and has a nice handle.
The rabbity has been thriving and we had out first large litter of purebred German Angoras and and all raised by the mother which makes me very proud of her. We've had other purebred German Angoras before, but none that were from large litters, or that were successfully raised by their mother. I gave her the unglamorous of SOW hoping she would raise her babies as easily as a pig does and she seems to. :)
Time to go now. Hopefully pictures next time
Barbara

CLOSE UP OF MORE SKIEINS FOR PN

THIS SHOWS THE RAINBOW DYEING ON PN SKEINS. This was all rainbow dyeing as talked about below

CLOSE UP OF SKEINS FOR PN

WEEKEND DYEING

This picture above of the sock blank after it has been of rainbow dyed. This will hopefully make
an interesting pair of socks. This was done with Pro-Chem's wash fast acid dyes using the colors
of boysenberry ( darkest value) Mulberry medium value) and buttercream ( lightest value). It
is drying on a sweater rack.

The photo top right is the whole of 5 batches I did for punch needle embroidery. The burgunday colored ones are two batches of rainbow dyed ones using the same colors as in the sock blank on the left. There are 3 seperate batches of 3 skeins each in solids also for PN.
The colors used were Prochem Avocado and Spiced Pumpkin but neither at full strength. The blue is Kiton Acid dye turquoise, again not full strength. some of these were heat set in the microwave, and some heat set in the oven at 350 degrees.

The Latest in DYEING

I've started building a palette of colors in yarn for my needle punching projects. I started with a skein of merino 2 ply yarn. I broke it up into useable skeins that average 25 yards each. I've since tried it in the needle punching and it works great with enough "bloom" to puff out on the right side. I need both solid colors, and varigated. I used squirt bottles and sponge brush to apply the dye to the skeins for both the solids, and the varigated. I heat set the dyes by: some in the micro wave, and some in the oven, speed. I used Pro-chem Wash Fast Acid dyes, and one Kiton Acid Dye . Here are the results.