February 25th, 2018

Happy Late New Year

Hope everyone had a lovely new year! We've been doing a scramble for the past month or two to get all caught up on things we didn't get done in December and early January. Some of which is this website - as you've probably noticed.

We had a lovely vacation for most of last December, part of which was a two week cruise through the Panama Canal on a lovely ship, the Holland America Line's "Westerdam". When cruising, which ship and which cruise line makes a whole lot of difference. So far, I think I like the Westerdam the best of the ones we've been one. I like Holland America Line overall since they have the best service and best food with nice ships. The Westerdam is bigger than the Rotterdam, which had been the previous Holland America ship we had been on. There was more entertainment and things to do on the Westerdam, although that could also be because it's been several years since we cruised with the Rotterdam and they've upgraded things throught their fleet? These vacations are funded by Hillside Farm Hawaii's bunnies who help us create Hula Bunny Yarn, so now we need to settle back into bunnies and yarn production now that we're back from vacation.

Some of the first things to work on once we got back was to get caught up on bunny grooming. This fuzzy ball of fluff is Myste before she got groomed. It's actually a picture of the back end of the bunny, so if you don't see a nose, that's probably why.

Myste is one of the 'atmospheric' bunnies since she has a 'weather' name so she was born in 2016. Our other 'weather' bunnies are Phineus Phogge, Sirocco, Sandy Storm and Gayle. Myste is just under two years old now and her color is called 'lilac'. It's kinda a warmer shade of gray than 'blue'. It also means she carries recessives for chocolate and dilute colors since the color lilac is actually a diluted chocolate, but that doesn't sound anywhere near as nice as 'lilac', now does it?

Myste still needs a bit of fluff groomed under her chin. You can tell it's the older molting off coat due to the lighter gray color. There's only so much color for each hair shaft, so as each hair gets longer the color dilutes. On the blacks and other colors of bunnies, it's pretty easy to see which part of the coat still needs some wool removed. With the white bunnies, it's more difficult to tell which coat is which.

These fuzzy bunnies can have three different coats on them, all at the same time. There's the molting coat, the current coat and the coming in coat, all three which will be of different lengths. When making yarn, it's nice to clip them right before the coming in coat gets very long so there won't be little short bits of the newest coat clipped off. That can make little 'nits' in the yarn, which are little bumpy bits. It can also cause the yarn to shed more since the little bits aren't as spun into the yarn due to their shorter lengths.

Since Myste had her growing in coat over an inch long, I didn't want to clip her since that would have put short fibers in with the longer wool. In cases like this, the bunny's molting coat is plucked off instead of cut off. It's quicker to shear, especially if the horse clippers can be used, but getting good fiber is more important than saving a bit of time so Myste still looks like a fuzzy bunny after her grooming. It's also wintertime around here so the bunnies probably appreciate a bit more fluff left on them, although 'wintertime' around here means the mid sixties (Farenheit) during the day and maybe down to the upper fifties at night.

Last year's bunnies are all 'Zee Bunnies' so all their names start with "Z". It all started with Zookie Schwartz who told me his name was Zookie Schwartz. So, everyone had to either be named with something that started with a "Z" or would have to have a name that was a color in a language other than English. That would have been names like 'Noir', 'Eleele', 'Carbon' or 'Blanc' & 'Kea' or some such things. They all became 'Zees' instead. Zookie has since moved to Maui where he will probably continue to cause trouble over there. Wonder what he's telling them? Probably something about how ti leaves and kale are required bunny nourishment? Anyway, last year's bunnies are all Zee Bunnies. We have four black females: Zelda, Ziggy Stardust, Zoey and Zuzu. Zelda, Zoey and Zuzu are littermates. There's also Zeus, who is a Ruby Eyed White buck and Zorro who is a black buck and the only non-English angora we have.

Zorro is half Satin angora and half German angora. As you can tell, he doesn't have fuzzy ears and lookes more like a rabbit than every bunny else. He's a sweet boy and I should weigh him now that he's about full grown to see how he compares to the rest of them. His wool is soft, but not quite as soft as the English angora. Since we have very limited genetics and we're more of a fiber producing herd than a show bunny herd, Zorro will meet up with a couple of the full English angora girls and we will see how the fiber on their offspring turns out.

Zorro liked being groomed, he seemed pretty happy to have his molting off coat removed. He does seem to have a rounder head than the English bunnies and more of an elongated body type than they do, although part of that may have been the relaxed bunny spread all over the grooming table as well. I'm not sure if the shiny on his wool is from his Satin mother or not. As far as I know, the shiny of Satin bunnies is a double recessive. If he is Satin Shiny, then his black German sire would have had to have had the Satin recessive for shiny. Which, if he was a full German, would have been difficult? I don't have a pedigree on Zorro, so all I know about him is his mum is a black Satin who has had Ruby Eyed White babies (i.e. she carries the recessive for albino and may have given it to Zorro, although we won't know for sure until he has some white offspring). His dad is a 'black German' and that's all we know other than his date of birth. I'll start keeping records on him and his offspring, but it's much nicer having a pedigree to work with.

Other than getting the bunnies caught up on their grooming, we've also been getting the guest room organized. This is an old house, built in the 50's so all the windows were built in place. None of those new fangled built somewhere else kinda windows here! The guest room windows hadn't been refurbished since we bought the house so they didn't move up and down and had screens in need of repair as well. Not to mention a window sill eaten by termites.

Getting ready to work on old windows like this means the trim around the edges is removed. The trim is sorta structural on these, but it's basically just a 1" thick by 6" wide board. Those were pried off and the old cast iron sash weights which had fallen to the bottom of the cavity made by the trim boards, were rescued. There's a pulley at the top of the window box, one for each side of each big window pane, so there's a total of eight pulleys and eight sash weights. The sash weights are pretty heavy, I didn't weigh them but probably about eight to twelve pounds each? In the picture above, most of the sash weights had been recovered and retied, but the new window sill still needs to be installed as well as the trim boards put back in place. In the picture, the two sash weights for the lower left window pane still need to be installed.

New nylon cord replaced the old cotton cords which had rotted through and dropped the weights to the bottom of the trim boxes. The previous 'knots' seemed more of a loop with the tail tucked in, these got perhaps a bit of an 'overkill' amount of half hitches tied on them, but they should stay attached. Hopefully the nylon line won't rot, it shouldn't since it's nylon. Hmm, was nylon line even avaiable in the mid-50's? Cotton line may have been the only options they had at that time? Wonder if linen was an option and if linen would have lasted longer? Tarred cotton would have been messy but it may not have been as susceptible to rot? Maybe when they were building windows in the 50's they just expected everyone to tear apart the windows and replace the sash cords every other decade or so?

This is the finished window project, well sorta finished, and the mostly finished guest room. There's still one small portion of ceiling panel to be installed as well as the trim between the panels (just small flat strips of wood with rounded edges, but it covers where the ceiling boards meet). Then a final paint on the ceiling. We also need to do some more filling and painting at the top of the walls and install the crown molding there as well. Also, to finally finish the window project, we should install some tiny trim strips in the 3/16th inch gap between the bottom of the window trim and the new but thinner window sill. Older boards are thicker than new boards, but a bit of trim will fix that, we just have to cut it to fit and install it. Paint it afterwards, too, I guess. But, the window repair and guest room project is done enough for now. Mostly because we ran out of time, but that happens when there's too many projects to do. It is a big improvement even though it's not officially finished. Our guest will be here soon, so it's done enough for now.

The festive curtains were a yard sale find. There's actually four sets of them along with the traverse rod mounting hardware so the guest room curtains match the living room curtains. There was a set of 'blackout' curtains at the same yard sale as well, so we bought them as well. At some point, the black out curtains will be fitted to the back of the guest room curtains. Most of our guests come over from the mainland which is all timezones behind ours, the further East they come from, the further back their time zone. That means our guests normally want to wake up hours before we usually do because of their change in timezones. Having the early morning sun come in the windows doesn't help them sleep later either, so with the blackout curtains to keep it darker, maybe that will help. The black out curtains are, well, black and that's not exactly a color that goes with the peachy walls and white trim, so it will be another project to line the printed curtains with the black fabric. Not sure when that project will get done, there's still some more catching up on bunny hutch building to do before that project.