Bunny update and First Fiber Festival of 2009

The baby bunnies are getting bigger every day. Now they look like real bunnies, only small. They were spending more time out of the nestbox than in it, so I finally took it away yesterday to give them all some more room. They've learned to drink out of Genevieve's sippy bottle and they've been eating up her food, so I gave them their own bowl. They're eating me out of house and home! I have to fill the bowls twice a day! I assume that they're nursing too but, since Genevieve has always been remarkably discreet about nursing, I can only infer from their fat little tummies that they're getting plenty to eat.

The girls are enchanted with the little bunnies. They've been spending time with them every day after school and the bunnies are very tame. In fact, if you open the cage door they all crowd to the front and want to be petted.

In this picture it looks like the bunnies have all gotten together for a meeting, but actually they're just crowded around their food bowl.

Last weekend, Lynne and I treated ourselves to a weekend out of town and went to our first Fiber Festival of 2009 in Portland, IN. It was about 2 1/2 hours away. I took a class in rug hooking on Friday night (the beautiful picture of the sheep is NOT my work, but it is a good example of rug hooking)and then we shopped at the festival on Saturday. It was a small festival -- only about 25 vendors -- but we had a great time anyway.

A man was demonstrating the great wheel and he let me spin on it. I had never tried to spin on a walking wheel like that. He also had a weasel and, of course, I had to spin it until it popped (as in "Pop Goes the Weasel"). For anyone who doesn't know, the weasel is a mechanical yarn measuring device. You spin the arms to wind the yarn around and around and when it reaches a pre-determined length, the weasel makes a loud popping sound to tell you that you're done.

We also saw a lot of sheep! This Southdown was sort of a pet and her owner had brought her to be sheared. There were several Shetland sheep too.

This Shetland has just lost her winter coat. Her name is Checkers and she's a yearling and I bought her fleece and brought it home and washed it. I've carded some of it and I'm spinning it into a lace weight for making Shetland lace. The ewe was a black lamb and her wool turned white as she grew older, so the fleece is mostly white with black tips. Once it's carded together, it makes a lovely light grey color, and when it's spun the grey becomes slightly darker.

At the festival I bought some Casbah from Handmaiden. It's a fingering weight mostly merino with some cashmere and nylon thrown in for good measure. It's a gorgeous dark blue/steel grey color. I'm knitting some socks out of it called "Guided by Love." The pattern is mostly a plain sock but with little lace paw prints curving around and up the leg. Around the top of the leg, beads spell out "Guided by Love" in braille. All the proceeds from the pattern sales were going to be donated to a seeing eye dog charity. It's a fairly tricky pattern ... on two circulars using Cat Bordhi's new sock construction. I've been plugging away at it for a couple of days now.

Other than Checker's fleece and the Casbah yarn, I bought some lovely sea-green shadesd merino/silk fingering yarn, two orifice hooks, a ceramic sheep planter that I'm using to put a stock of roving in while I spin, and an exquisitely carved wooden crochet hook (size F). So, even though it was a small festival, I managed to spend money!

This week I gave my Medical Microbiology class their last test, graded their lab notebooks and tests and sent out all their grades. I expect their evaluations of me are pretty grim -- I haven't read them yet -- but, surprisingly, several of them emailed me saying they were glad to have been in my class and that they understood how difficult it was to take over in the middle of a term. They wished me luck with my next class and one even said she hoped I wouldn't give up on Beckfield. I guess that's the good thing about teaching adult students, they have maturity and some even have sensitivity.

Next term, I'm teaching a rudimentary class on Anatomy & Physiology. I'm reading the book now and it's pretty good -- something I couldn't say about the Microbiology book. Also, Olivia Ballard is teaching 2 sections of it just like me and we can put our heads together about it. Olivia is also a misplaced lawyer, but with a considerably fresher degree than mine. I'm hoping that next term will be a better experience than last term.