And now we talk about our Angora Rabbits!  Like the Garden installments, I’m posting about my Angoras because they are producers of base craft materials – in this case, FUR!!! Lovely, soft, silky, expensive FUR! (And no you don’t kill Angoras for their fur – it sheds off naturally or can be trimmed/shaved off).

Harvey and I got Angoras to spin their fur into yarn.  This was a crazy scheme borne during the Ice Storm from Hell while I was studing my Reader’s Digest Book “Back to Basics” and wishing I had one of the iron cookstoves pictured inside.  A few pages away from the woodstoves was the section on spinning – a joke was made – a lightbulb went off and voila! In the future we’ll sell not only the yarn but finished knit, crochet, felted and woven items made of the yarn/fur.

Currently we have 7 adult rabbits. 4 are pedigreed French Angoras and 3 came from an Amish small animal auction – I’m pretty sure they’re French as well but they could be crosses of some sort. Of the pedigrees there’s: Abby (a red-eyed white doe), Bucky (a broken black buck), Sundown (a fawn doe), and Little Joe (a lynx buck – and all around little turd).  For the Amish buns (who are all 3 black) there’s: Gertie (doe), Yoder (buck – and such a sweetie), and Moto (a little too interested in my fingers…).  If you’re not sure, a Doe is a girl and a Buck is a boy.

Now on to the meat of this story – the new bunnies!

3 weeks ago (on June 12^th) Gertie, (my black French Angora doe that came from an Amish small animal auction) had babies. I hadn’t realized she was pregnant at all – I’d actually been concerned about how thin she was. But Harvey saved the day (I was at work) and quickly set up a box for her and diligently searched through the grass beneath the cage for the escaped babies (they fell through the wire mesh of the cage floor).  I came home to 6 kits and one highly agitated mother. Then I heard a noise… and upon some investigation, found 5 more kits – for a grand total of 11 babies.

I was a bit shocked.

Now keep in mind – I’ve raised rabbits before.  As a ‘tween’ I had a lucrative pet bunny business breeding New Zealand White rabbits (large white rabbits with red eyes – normally used as a meat animal) and did numerous 4-H projects with them (support your local 4-H!) but 11 babies is a lot. Well she was pretty upset which was understandable so I put the additional babies in the box and left her alone.

First thing Saturday we’d lost 3.  She hadn’t eaten them (as Does are wont to do on occasion) – they were just dead in the box.  By that afternoon we realized something was wrong and we posted a plea for help on the Ravelry Angora Rabbits group.  After getting some advice we took the babies out and attempted to force feed them (we held the doe on her back and held the kits up to the teats to feed).

I have never seen a doe react to her babies like this one did.  When she bothered to stick her head in the box, she would jerk back when one of them moved like she was scared of them!  My New Zealand mothers never ignored their babies.  When I looked in on them the experienced mothers would watch from the doorway of the box until I was done and the new mothers would jump in the box to stand over the babies, hiding them from me. If they didn’t want the kits, or something upset them badly at the birth they would kill them, eat them, and move on. (Disturbing, yes but more humane then allowing the little things to just starve to death!).

Sunday morning we were down to 6 and my late Sunday night we were down to 3.

We managed to keep 3 until this past Monday  (the 22nd) when we lost the little black.  I don’t know what happened with him. We had noticed a scab under his chin a few days earlier but he seemed to be okay. I think perhaps the doe may have hurt him during one of the feedings – she usually manages to wiggle free once during the process and has stepped on them once or twice.  Or there could have been something really wrong with the litter and we didn’t recognize it like she did.

 Gertie is still indifferent to them – when we let her up after feeding she doesn’t even sniff the babes – just goes to check out whatever tool has been left on the desk while we put the bunnies back in their box.  I think we’ll try 1 more breeding with her but if she does this again we’ll retire her to a fur only bun. I’m thinking of putting her with Yoder – most of her babies had lots of white on them and I’m wondering if she and the boys are color biased – it’s possible if they came from a farm with all black angoras.  They might not even realize the off colored rabbits are rabbits. (Moto took a chunk out of Sundown’s nose when I tried to breed them – and she did not kindle, aka ‘get pregnant’).

As of today the broken black’s eyes have been open for a week – the gray bun has just opened his first eye this afternoon.  They are hopping about the box and perking their ears at the noises around them.

Here they are:

 

 

And here’s Mama (who’s really tired of us laying her out on a towel twice a day to serve as buffet)

For some reason I don’t have a picture of Abby… I’ll post one soon.

I planted my Earth Tones Dent Corn last night – not much came in the pack and I’m thinking about going back to Rural King to get some more.  I had to wait later to plant this than I wanted because my gardening neighbor also planted corn (to eat) and I didn’t want to cross pollinate and ruin his food crop!  So this is what it looks like (image borrowed from Johnny’s Selected Seeds):

 I’m going to attempt to make beads out of the dried kernels – hopefully those colors will as impressive off the cob as they are in the picture!

This was supposed to be up yesterday but at some point, apparently, Wednesday turned into Tuesday and I didn’t figure that out until Thursday…

The Zombie Apocalypse is a subject near and dear to my heart.  It started as joke with my Mom and my Brother but now it’s become a rather motivating factor… that ‘what if’ that wiggles around in the back of your brain. While not ‘crafty’ exactly, the exploration of the Zombie phenomenon makes you be creative – and if it does happen we’ll certainly need to be inventive to make it through!

 My Zombie posts will hopefully serve as a reminder to take a second look at the shambling hordes around us everyday and keep all the exits in mind.

 So today we are going to talk about the coming Zombie Apocalypse, The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, and Zombie Preparedness.

 As we all know, the Zombie threat is very real.  It could strike at any time from any number of sources, be it cosmic radiation, terrorists, our own government or some teenage chemistry wunderkind playing in his garage.

 And so we must be prepared and we must be vigilant!

 Step 1: Buy the Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks.

 

I found this book wandering through Books-a-Million one day and laughed. I started to pass it by and then realized just how thick it was.  It made me wonder.  How in the world could someone write that much stuff on Zombies?  So I cracked it open… and was immediately hooked.

 This book actually takes a very realistic approach to surviving a Zombie outbreak; from a pro/con examination of not only weapons, but clothing and methods of transportation, to planning for a siege, to escaping an infested city.

 I bought two copies – one for myself and sent the other to my Brother, the Marine.

 But then I didn’t really sit down and read it.  Real life got in the way and it languished on my book shelf.  I’d pick it up every now and then and read a few paragraphs about weapons or clothing and then put it back.

 Then the ice storm hit… and we were without power for 18 days.  I was bored to tears and had a constant headache from the kerosene fumes… and I saw the book.  So I picked it up, flashlight in hand, and curled up in bed under 3 layers of clothes and 4 comforters.

 Let me just say that reading about Zombies when there’s no lights anywhere and you can’t see the neighbor’s house 20 feet from your own, there’s no phone or cell service (because they can’t keep fuel for the generators), and the only radio station you can get is a static-y country station from the next county… not my best idea!

 This book is so detailed and it really takes a down and dirty, ‘this could happen’ realistic tone – it raised the hair on the back of my neck.  Then too, all the advice inside makes logical sense, and he provides you all the information you would need to make good decisions in an impossible situation.

 It’s a great scary read – even if you’re not a Z-Day enthusiast.

 So – Step 1 in the Zombie Preparedness Plan – purchase and read Max Book’s Zombie Survival Guide.

 Step 2 – Make sure to rescue someone you can’t stand from the initial incursion… that way you can kneecap him later to facilitate your own escape.  Remember – you don’t have to be fast to escape the Zombies, you just have to be faster than someone else…

I’m going to post about my garden on this crafty, creative site because frankly, you can make some nifty things from naturals. Gourds are nearly unlimited in their craft-ability, native americans used to make teething rings out of Job’s tears, ornamental corn kernals can be made into jewelry. Plus growing your own dye plants, drying flowers, pressing leaves and blooms, and on and on.

So my garden is going pretty well.  I’m in the process of mulching the thing, which would be easier if it weren’t so frickin HOT! And of course, being Summer in Kentucky, when it’s not too hot to breathe, it’s raining!  I can proudly say, though, that my garden was 3 weeks earlier then my neighbor’s and I have much fewer grass and weeds… of course that’s more than likely because of my crap soil condition… but I love denial! This is the first year there’s been anything on that lot besides lawn and, of course, I didn’t do any soil prep.

We got a late start (thank you Ice Storm From Hell and a month and half of down pours), and several of my seedlings starved to death in their little starter trays – note to self, use bigger starter pots if you refuse to transplant before you can get them in the ground.  But the tomatoes have finally taken off and while the eggplants are really trying, something keeps eating them – and, oh yeah, cutworms need to die, die, die! Those little buggers helped kill of several off the tomato plants that made it through the seed tray debacle.

I ordered all my tomato seeds from Amishland seeds – see the Garden Links for the site. I also ordered some Ground Cherries and Job’s Tears which I really, really, really need to get into the ground.  Everything else came from the old standby of Lowe’s and Rural King.  Oh yeah – since I lost a bunch of tomatoes to the cut worms I had to fill in with some Rutgers seedlings purchsed from Rural King.  They came in a bunch of 20 for like $3.95 – I couldn’t pass that up.

We’ll probably have all kinds of cross pollination and wind up with a bunch of mutant veggies but it’s my first garden so…

I’m waitng till late to plant my turnips, carrots, radishes and golden beets. My attempt at a fall crop? (I have no idea what I’m doing!)

We want to turn our entire landscape into either edible, or at the very least useful.  We have 4 oak trees around the house that are going to come down at some point this year (old argument between hubby and I – I said they were too big for our lot, he said they shaded the house, ice storm came and big branch ripped the electrical meter off the side of the house, hubby says their too big for the lot – ), and we’re going to put semi-dwarf fruit trees in their place.  We ripped out all the boxwoods and holly’s from the front and one side of the house, the ones around the air conditioner will stay until next year.  There are 3 nandinas that I’m going to dig up and move closer to the pool, right around the water spigot.  The nandina, the wysteria tree, and the 2 stonecrops will be the only non-usefuls.

Close to the nandinas will be my rose garden, running down the left side of the house.  I count them as a useful because I have a recipe to make beads out of the flowers – supposedly the beads keep their scent! Yummy rose beads!  I’ll post about that experiment next summer. (Although I should go raid Mom’s rose garden so I can blog about it this year… mwahahahaha!)

Anyway… here’s the diagram, there’s still a few empty places I need to plant but I haven’t decided what to put there - I’ll keep you posted – And just wait until I try to figure out how to can it all!

So! Welcome to the Paper Fox Craft Collective website!

As it says on our ‘About’ page, we are a small group of creative folks who get together and do (hopefully) creative things.  This is our place to document the goings on and link to the saleable final product.

In this first post I want to tell you about ME! Because I’m awesome…

So I’m Judy B and I’m the one you’ll be seeing the most of as I do all the updating around here… well me and my wonderful, awesome, superfantabulous Webmaster Eric D.

 So this is my big Introduction to the site and to myself as a crafter.  For myself you can read my blurb in the About section.  I pretty much do (or at least attempt to do) any craft that takes my fancy.  Whether or not I stick to it is another story…

 Currently I mostly knit.  I’m going to learn to spin in a few weeks (when I’m a little less broke) and up until a few weeks ago when I knocked my camera around I was busily taking photos of anything that would sit still long enough. 

And on a side note I can no longer bad mouth Bestbuy (and the failed attempt to purchase a computer from them) because yesterday they exchanged my camera no questions asked.  I just wanted to send the lens off for repair but they exchanged the body and lens on the spot! Of course I forgot to take the battery out but buying a new battery is sooo much cheaper than replacing that lens would have been… I’m still going to try to retrieve the battery but I’m not going to make a fuss over it.

But I digress… (fancy word! And I even know what it means!)

I am an equal opportunity crafter and will try just about anything at least once.  My studio (ahem… super stifling hot attic) is stuffed floor to ceiling with bits and bobs (and an Earl I’m sure, buried under it all).  My rent-to-own husband keeps saying he’s going to put his foot down about me collecting things for yet another project, but so far he hasn’t and I just keep collecting more stuff. I love stuff.

Hoarding? Moi?

Besides knitting, my major areas of interest include Jewelry, Scrapbooking, Terrain (miniature landscapes for fantasy/scifi wargames – like Warhammer 40K), and smaller assemblage pieces – if you’re not sure what that means, don’t worry, I don’t either. I like sticking things together, dang it!

Anyway… I guess that’s enough about me for now… for future ease of use each entry will be tagged with a category – like this one is an ‘introduction’ and a ‘judy b’.  Since there are so many things we’ll talk about here, and posts from multiple people, each will be categorized.  So if you only want to read my posts about my rabbits, just click that category.  I’ll have to talk with Eric D. about multiple categories, like selecting only ‘judy b’s’ ‘knitting’ and not everybody’s knitting… hmmm….