July 12, 2013

Fiber Friday: The Around the Block Fiber Arts Stroll

Yay, Sisters, Oregon! You are high, dry, close to my own sister’s house in Bend (with many locations to drink delicious beer) and the host to the largest outdoor quilt show in THE WORLD. You know how to put on a Fiber festival! I was super happy to be invited to be a part of this year’s Fiber Arts Stroll in downtown Sisters and Pocket and i had a great time meeting new folks, demonstrating the felting process and chatting about wool, art and of course: corgis. Sisters is also a super dog friendly town with water bowls everywhere and shops okay with dogs inside. Corvallis could learn a thing or two!

Dear Pocket was a little overtired from our evening spent out on the town watching lawn games and sipping beer at assorted Bend pubs, so i must admit she was a tad big woofy and even snarled at a passing terrier. Bad dog. But she also invited plenty of humans to our booth and got to meet some of my favorite customers and corgi rescue enthusiasts, Lisa and Ann. (Lisa commissioned Ann’s dogs Rio and Tippet for a Christmas present for her friend.) Lisa and i talked quite a bit about corgi rescue and what ‘baggage’ a corgi might show up with….. i must admit: i think we might go for a rescue next time! Not for a few years though.

Our booth was pretty pathetic, in my opinion. No signage to speak of, hardly any inventory (y’all are keeping me busy with custom orders!) and not even much soap to peddle as i’ve had no time to make new stock. Sheesh – there’s a trend here! Next year i hope to plan ahead a bit more, get some good signage together and have a proper looking display. Heck, maybe we’ll even enter a few more craft fairs. It was fun showing folks how the felting process works and a few people tried it out for themselves! All in all, it was a very fun weekend…. oh did i mention my clutch stopped workign while driving up the pass? Yeah, that was inconvenient but luckily (unluckily?) it’s happened to me before and i’ve learned how to “rpm match” shift sans-clutch. Not my favorite method of driving – but a gal’s gotta do what a gal’s gotta do.

We’d love to participate in some more craft fairs – do you know of any fun ones, holiday or otherwise? I don’t think we’re up to the big ones like renegade, but some small town events would be great fun!

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July 6, 2013

Homestead Update: July 1st

I decided on a new location to stage my ‘monthly update’ photos from and sure wish i’d used it the whole time! Taken from the mailbox, you can now see the whole front yard including the fence…. which is germinating and blooming with what will one day be an amazing hedgerow of perennial shrubs, wildflowers and annual sunflowers. June was a fairly gratifying month, spent doing more relaxing in the perfect temperatured evenings and even working on some aesthetic projects. I put in a little kitchen garden that is actually growing (though the amount of feeding it’s doing is more on the level of an occasional snack whilst weeding) and we’ve buckled down to clean up the house in time for the arrival of my husband’s parents. We’re so excited to see them (i haven’t seen them since we moved away 2 years ago!) and to share this big dream in progress with them. Here’s the homestead on July first with some earlier shots below.

February | March | April

The garden grows! I build this little kitchen garden using facia boards taken off our house during the roof project, painted them white with leftover paint from my parents’ home renovation and filled it with some purchased soil and homegrown rabbit poo:

Speaking of rabbits, i’ll be weaning this coming week and already have one of Sake’s Harlequin/New Zealand Red cross doe kits sold! I’ll have a page up for available animals, eggs, etc up on this website soon. Aren’t they cute at this age? They’re hopping around and eating in earnest. Time to move out of mama’s cage and let her rest for the next round!

In anticipation of guests, we ripped out the nasty carpet in the guest room and discovered the source of the nasty smell. All has been well coated with Nature’s Miracle (which really works!) to neutralize the cat pee smell and the worst stains have been painted with Kilz. New carpet goes in Monday!

I can’t wait to get this room all decked out. Eventually we may rent this room out, so we’ll make it super cute and hospitable. For now, it will simply “not smell” and be a place to put an air mattress. :) Sorry, folks. We hope to get a new bed soon! Other projects we completed in June:

Now we just need to fit ‘evening walks’ back into the routine and i’ll be happy. Some projects to look forward to later in the summer include building a rabbit tractor to graze the growing fryers, figuring out where to put a butchering station and set it up, and figure out how to get plastic up on that darned hoophouse. Lots more to look forward to – maybe even a camping trip!

Have a wonderful July! What did you spend your June doing?

 

 

 

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July 5, 2013

Fiber Friday: Beautiful Bella

This Fiber Friday featured’ dog is another one from “the vaults,” and was my first Australian Shepherd. I must admit, i was nervous when i accepted this commission. Bella’s markings are just so intricate! Her “mom” requested her laying in this demure pose which was fun to sculpt and i think the results were great.

*Note: Bella is a great example of one of my ‘earlier’ Friends: smaller, slightly less detailed and maybe less firmly felted. My current Friends tend to be running slightly larger (5 inches long vs 4, though i’m trying to keep them tiny they seem to sculpt themselves at times!) and are very firmly felted and more sturdy. We all improve over time, right?

Fiber Friends make awesome gifts, especially for the ‘hard to shop for’ person. Fiber Friends are great for a college student heading away from their childhood pet for the first time, service-folk overseas missing their state-bound buddy or as a soothing reminder to someone whose lost their best pal to the rainbow bridge. Bella was a Valentine’s day gift as i recall (or maybe a birthday?) In any case, her dad seems pleased as punch with his little Bella Friend.

Fiber Friends on the road: If you’ll be in the Sisters, OR area this weekend come on out to the Around the Block Fiber Arts Stroll! Tons of vendors (quilters, felters, spinners, you name it) will be available with wares to sell and skills to demonstrate. I’ll be at Sundance Shoes with Pocket and we’d love to meet you in person and show you some felting basics! Noon-4 this Sunday (July 7th, 2013).

 

 

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July 2, 2013

In The Rabbitry: Heat Wave

The kits are nearly a month old and their coats are nearly all on. Their colors fascinate me: the genetics behind them, the way they change as they get older. It’s such fun to watch and interesting to see which kits grow the best and have the most personality. Once i begin my own ‘real’ breeding program, reserving junior bucks and does to become my replacement herd, i will be basing my choices on health, vigor, personality and maybe a little on coat color. I recently found out that my ‘red’ doe actually has a bit of a “smutty” coat and my ‘red’ buck’s belly is too white. Well, harumph, i say! They still make pretty babies. The kits my blue doe threw are really interesting to watch progress in color: i THINK they’re blue, opal and one black, but the jury is still out on the opals.

I absolutely love the color combo of my black japanese Harlequin rabbit with the red buck. Two of the kits are reddish plus spots and 2 are the light creamy color of Sake’s lightest stripes. I must admit, they are my favorite. I hope they’re all does so i can sell them to some interested parties (new page with animals and other things on the farm that are for sale coming super soon!)

So, my barn is full of cute lately and Blackberry is due in about a week. I’m guessing there will be some chestnuts in that litter but it really is a surprise. There’s something else in the rabbitry of late, and in the house, and outside: HEAT. There’s a heat wave in the Pacific Northwest right now, and although our creek and position at the base of hte coastal mountains keeps our evenings cool, the days have been in the 90s. Rabbits would love it if it could be 60 degrees all the time, so 90 is definitely stressful. I’ve been employing some short term coping methods, but am looking for something more long term for the future, as i do believe in climate change and doubt this weather will get much better anytime soon. Here are some of the methods i’ve been using with success:

  • Fans on! i have one big box fan blowing into the rabbitry from the center of the barn. My future barn plans include a large, industrial fan installed in the exterior wall of the barn
  • Misting: i don’t have “misters” per say, but i can squirt a bottle into the air on occasion
  • Ice: frozen water bottles work well but don’t stay frozen long, plus the rabbits chew them apart. The best solution i’ve found so far is to freeze those extra large yogurt tubs and place that in the cage. They can lay against it, lick it and once it thaws some the ice cube can be popped out to become a tiny iceburg that the kits enjoy standing on.
  • Wetting ears: get their ears wet to cool them down.
  • Frozen ceramic tiles: i freeze some big ceramic floor tiles in my chest freezer overnight and put them into the cages at the hottest part of the day. They really love these!

Those short term strategies are great, if you’re home. I’ll be vending the farmer’s market tomorrow so i won’t be here to place ice at the hottest part of the day. Some longer term strategies would include:

  • installing a misting system: there are issues there as we have such a low producing well i’d be afraid it could dry up with all that water pumping out. I’ll have to check on the gallons per minute. I’ve seen some that are portable and really inexpensive for the important impact they’d make, so i may invest in that and still be able to move it when i change the rabbitry location in the barn.
  • Insulation: I doubt i’ll be piling up a large berm of soil against the barn anytime soon, but adding a shedrow would help to shade the wall and i could perhaps add concrete blocks in the rabbit area to further insulate against the heat. I wonder if i could just insulate using old fleeces from friends’ sheep and adding a secondary wall…..

Clearly i have more brainstorming to do. Rabbits are hardy little creatures, but i hate to see them suffer. I have few enough that i can utilize these labor intensive coping strategies, but i have too many to just ‘bring them inside.’ If you’ve kept rabbits in the heat, please comment with some of the strategies you’ve utilized to cope with the heat.

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