Bunny Mittens

It's HOT and WET. Just turned on the weather channel - 95 in Boston, heat index (humidity figured in) 110. Okay, so it's not just me. When it gets like this I am worthless...but have to do something. I can sew while sitting still with the fan on me, but the heat from the light bulb on my hands makes me hotter. I sew anyway, just move the fan closer. Sitting at the computer is not bad, either. What else requires very little activity? Spinning! So I decided to get some angora spun for some bunny mitten kits. I found Mansfield Park, a Jane Austen flick, on the telly and parked my wheel and fan in front of me for a while. Kim Parkinson, of Cornerstone Fibres fame and one of the Canadian fiber artist bunnywomen/llama herder crew, has a whole lot of wonderful angora from her various bunnies. I have mostly German rabbits, but she has all kinds of bunnies of all kinds of colors. Kim brings angora to me at the NY State Sheep and Wool in October and we trade. Kim goes Christmas shopping at my booth and I go home with lots of gorgeous angora to spin. My white German angora always goes into the dyepot, but Kim's colored angora is too nice to dye. I spin it bulky, a sin for angora, but bulky works well for the mittens. Once years ago I was sitting next to a much older lady at a North Country Spinner's meeting. She saw me spinning angora, not even as bulky as I do now, and yanked some of it away from me. She quickly spun a delicate thread of angora with her Ashford traditional and handed it back to me saying, "THIS is how it's supposed to look!!" I smiled politely and thanked her. I still spin it bulky and it blooms amazinglywell when plyed with my wool/mohair blend. Sometimes I spin silk noils in there too, for a neat effect. Whoops, I got out of the fan wind for a few minutes and I am about to faint. I can work all day outside in the cold but the heat is a killer. Matt is working all day outside, up and down the ladder. He claims it doesn't bother him and he loves what he does. I tell him if he sat in the college classroom all the years I did he could have the summer off and work in air conditioned schools, too. He says no way could he do what I do. He's right, I know he would have his hands around a kid's neck and be dragged away by police pretty quick. Maybe he's doing the right thing after all.