More Fur Babies

I have two new babies - Fur Babies. Last week I purchased two Angora bunnies from a lady who was busily growing her human family and therefore couldn't manage the extra work with the rabbits so she put them up for sale. I felt pretty lucky to find them.

They are both girls, the older one is Margarite. She's an "agouti" which as far as I've been able to find out means she's a gray/brown colour. I think she's marvelous. It's taken about a week for them to settle in and for me to learn their personalities. Margarite likes to let me know if her bowl gets empty. She thumps her cage floor. I can hear it from other parts of the house and I know that she wants more food. I discovered yesterday when I groomed her for the first time (they are to be brushed weekly) that she loves to be brushed and today when she was out she was butting against my hand, asking to be scratched. She loves sunflower seeds and I give them to her as a treat after she's had her romp.

The other rabbit is the baby. Her name is now Lexi and she's 8 months old. She's a lilac (gray/blue) angora. She's pretty fluffy still with her baby hair. She's a little imp. She hops around the rabbit room investigating everything.

While I was doing a little construction on Margarite's cage she was there the whole time sticking her face in, trying to chew the wood, investigating all my tools. It was quite funny.

I bought a Ware Premium Rabbit Hutch which I put together and I put Lexi in it as her new home. She seemed to like it and was very excited the next day, and spent a lot of time hopping up and down her bunny ramp. She also loves her dark hiding area which she didn't have before in the smaller cage she was in. In the picture she's nibbling sunflower seeds from a footstool. After I groomed her I gave her a slice of apple which she really enjoyed.

Lexi learned to use kitty litter in less than 5 minutes. I was really impressed. She's continued to use it faithfully. Now Margarite, being a little older is taking some convincing to be consistent, but I'm patient and we're working on it together (what that really means is that when she pees on the floor, I clean it up and try to remove the smell with bleach or vinegar and hope she doesn't do it there again). Today we had no accidents so I think we're heading in the right direction.

I have a spinning wheel, but for some reason I'm really enjoying spinning Margarite's fibre with the drop spindle. Maybe its the slower pace of the spindle, but I find it very relaxing and rewarding. Of course, the spinning wheel always waits so maybe knowing I have that option helps me be more patient.

I really wanted sheep, but living in a subdivision means I can't keep them so the rabbits are my little sheep. Keeping sheep in a subdivision reminds me of my visit to New Zealand in 1976. Back then, many homes kept a sheep on their front yard, anchored to the ground by a rubber tire. The faithful sheep trimmed their front lawns of grass, fertilized it with their poop and provided wool for knitting, all from one humble animal. You just can't beat that kind of environmental action! I'm not sure if it's still that way in New Zealand today. I certainly hope that it is.

How to Kool-Aid Dye Sheep's Wool

I reported earlier on how to wash a fleece so now I'll show you the progression of dyeing a sheep's fleece with Kool Aid. (This was my first but successful attempt :)

I first spun my washed and carded my wool from Francis the sheep and then spun it on my spinning wheel. I wanted a bulky yarn that wasn't perfectly even so I spun it to be a little larger. I didn't use the whole fleece - I just created 3 skeins and then I was ready to dye it. I chose not to dye the wool roving and also I chose not to ply the yarn until after the dye process was completed.

Here are the steps to Kool Aid dyeing your wool:

Use unsweetened Kool-Aid for this recipe.

1. Open the skeins and tie them loosely and then soak them in room temperature water for 30 minutes or so. This helps them better soak up the dye. You can had a 1/4 cup of vinegar to create acidity but many reports on this process say the Kool-Aid is acidic and it isn't necessary (I went ahead and added vinegar to mine). Also, because Kool-Aid is approved as a food you don't 'have to' dedicate your cook pot as a dye pot, although it would probably not be a bad idea if you did.
   
2. Fill a metal (non aluminium) container with water and add packets of Kool-Aid. I used five 8 gram packets of the colour Ice Blue because I had three skeins and I wanted a fairly strong colour. Stir to disolve all the crystals. The amount of water used isn't the issue to the strength of colour taken up by the wool - it's the number of packets that you use that make the colour stronger.



3. Remove the wool from the water and place the skeins into the dye pot. Press them down gently until they are covered in the water.

Turn on the stove and simmer (not boil) for 30 minutes. You can stir--very gently and slowly--but be careful not to agitate the wool or it will felt.



4. After 30 minutes you'll see that your coloured water has become clear because the dye has been completely absorbed by the wool (note that the water showing in the spoon is clear--and yes I have a very ugly harvest gold stove!)




5. Remove the wool from the pot and place in the sink to drain and cool.


6. Hang to dry. The wool will have a lovely Kool-Aid smell which really makes up for the poopy smell before washing it! The smell will come out eventually.
7. Hang your wool to dry.

Now I went one step farther. The blue came out more a sea foam colour which was fine but I really wanted a purple-blue colour. So once the wool had cooled down to room temperature I repeated the above process and added five 6 gram packets of Grape Kool-Aid to a fresh pot of room temperature water on the stove. Note that you can re-dye and also mix your colours too.

I simmered the seafoam coloured wool for 30 minutes (per directions above). My thinking was that the colours would layer (same technique I use when painting watercolours) so I wanted to build the colour. Also, I wanted to blue to show through the purple.

After the skeins were dry I plyed them on the spinning wheel. I really love the end result--the dye colour varies slightly from raisin to purple to blue-purple and the two-ply helps to show off the colour differences.

I plan to knit a vest with this wool.

If these directions were helpful, please leave your comments to let me know.

Thanks.