Fleegle's Fluff Analysis

Before we embarked on our bunny adventure that culminated in the addition of Rambo to our family, we first had to decide what kind of bunny we wanted. Well, clearly we wanted one with a great personality, but aside from that, I wanted prime angora fiber to spin. So we did some research and you guys get to read all about it. Or not. Harry fell asleep on the "H" key in t*e middle of t*e second paragrap*. I couldn't type muc* until *e woke up.

...................

There are four major rabbit wool breeds: Giant, French, English, and Satin. Germans are a subgroup of Giants, and always white. German rabbits don't shed, so they are shorn about four times a year. The other three types are usually plucked, but I gather that some people shave their bunnies in hot weather. Angora fiber is eight times warmer than wool and I suspect that most of them would faint (or worse) in the summer heat we've had this year.

Germans are always white with red eyes; the rest of the breeds come in a dazzling assortment of colors, many of which have lovely, evocative names--frosted pearl, lilac, silver fox, blue, and my favorite, copper agouti. In reality, there are only four colors--white, black, gray, and brown--with an infinite variety of shades, tones, and markings.

Because I wanted to dye the yarn, we started hunting for white rabbits. But before we actually bought one, I needed to do some fiber testing. I therefore ordered small samples of each breed from Etsy vendors--an inexpensive way to dabble in angora spinning.

Angora staple varies considerably, but should be about 1-3" long for pleasant spinning. The German fiber was neatly machine-carded into top. I don't own any carders, so for the other three samples I pulled handfuls of fiber apart several times until I had a semi-orderly mass.

The first bag I opened was the English fiber. And the first few handfuls were delightful to spin--something like yak, if you've ever handled that fiber. The handfuls were fluffy and soft, spinning into a fairly smooth, thin yarn on my electric spinner with occasional blips of short fiber.

To my dismay, however, the bottom half of the bag was full of matted globs and second cuts too short to spin comfortably. Clearly, the owner of this bunny was a meticulous caretaker, because she first clipped off all the long fiber and then went back over bun-bun a second time to make sure all the matted clumps and fuzzy bits were gone. Too bad she decided to pad her retail fiber with them. Half the bag went into the trash can.

I spun the nicely plucked French fiber on a spindle. French angora is noted for its guard hair, which is not the stiff, scratchy stuff found on some sheep, goats and camelids. It's poofier, soft and very fine. In fact, it's the guard hairs that bloom, making French angora yarn so cuddly (and shed-prone). Despite my best effort, I couldn't get a perfectly smooth yarn from it. It spun a bit thicker than the English, but produced a really lovely result, blips and all.

The incredible German roving spun like whipped cream--there's no other way to  describe it. I dashed back to the Etsy vendor, only to discover that there was no more. It spun into a perfectly smooth yarn; grist didn't seem to matter. This stuff was happy to be spun very thin, very thick, or medium with no complaints.

Alas, the Satin fiber was really too short to spin comfortably. I put the bag away after an hour of painful micro-short-draw. If I ever get a carding machine, I might experiment with it.

I took some photos, but I ended up with an assortment of white/gray fluff and yarn photos with no distinguishing features and I didn't want to bore you with those.

Suffice it to say that my angora research was thorough and I pass on the following bits of wisdom to you:

• If you buy a bag of plucked or shorn fiber from an Etsy vendor you don't know, don't be surprised to find that some of the material is unspinnable.
• Prime angora can be easily spun on just about anything--spindles, e-spinners, charkhas, or your favorite foot-powered wheel.
• If you find any German angora roving, don't buy it. Send me the link immediately.
• Cover your lap with a piece of velvet or other adherent material to catch all the flyaway bits. Do not sneeze around loose angora.
• Undiluted angora yarn is not stretchy and is really, really warm. Such yarn would make an excellent scarf for anyone living in or near the Arctic/Antarctic Circles. Mixing angora with fine wool, such as merino, will produce a sproingier and more temperate result. Add more merino the further south you live. Those folks on the equator probably should skip angora altogether and stick with Vorpal Bunny leg fiber, which often resembles cotton, except for the black variety, whose fiber is indistinguishable from fwooper feathers.

Rambo--A Fleegle Fractured Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, on a typical summer day, I was peacefully carving a voodoo doll of my former employer out of a radish, when Harry blew in the door, scrabbling across the floor so quickly that he left a small sonic boom in his wake. He informed me, in a terrified sqeak, that we had a visitor, and the visitor, was, well, pretty scary. So scary in fact, that Harry scuttled under the refrigerator without his bagpipes, smoking jacket, or box of Lindt truffles.

I carefully parked the paring knife in the radish's midsection, wandered to the front door, and recoiled in horror. Lounging atop a camo duffel bag was a furry white rabbit wearing killer shades and camo fatigues. Leaning against the duffel was a well-used backpack with a bunch of carrots lashed to the side and K-Bar knife dangling from the webbing pocket.

"Hello, ma'am" said this nightmarish vision.

"Erm, hello." I replied. "Can I, um, help you?"

"Looking for a spider named Harry. About so big." The rabbit held his paws about eight inches apart. "Wears sissy clothes and totes a set of bagpipes. You seen him?"

I cleared my throat. "Well, yes. He's currently under my refrigerator. He lives here when he isn't on a karaoke tour or off on one of his Terrorize the Tourist gigs."

"I'll wait."

The rabbit slid off the duffel and opened a side zipper, extracting a lethal-looking weapon and a cleaning kit. He propped the duffel and backpack against the porch rail, made himself comfortable, and proceeded to meticulously disassemble the weapon.

I retreated to the kitchen, fumbled for the phone, and called Roy.

....beep beep boop beeep beep booop beep...

"Hello?" queried the voice of sanity.

"Sweetheart, there's a Force Recon Rabbit named Rambo sitting on the porch cleaning a gun." (I deduced his name and service from the name tag rakishly embroidered on his flak vest).

Roy has lived with me for a long time, so instead of wasting time questioning my sanity or what I had to drink at lunchtime, he merely asked me what sort of  gun was being handled by those fluffy little paws.

"Just a second." I put down the phone and peeped out the door.

"Excuse me," I said. My husband wants to know what kind of gun you have there." I omitted any reference to fluffy little paws.

"M4A1 Close Quarters Battle Weapon (CQBW) with a Special Operations Peculiar Modification (SOPMOD) M4A1 kit."


I picked up the phone and repeated the gobblydegook of acronyms.


"Cool," said Roy. "I'll pick up some parsley nibbles at the grocery store and be right home."


Roy spent most of the afternoon on the porch sharing beers and swapping war stories with Rambo, while I pleaded with Harry to come out from under the refrigerator. He adamantly refused, even when I lovingly assembled a bowl of freshly picked raspberries topped with his favorite organic whipped cream.


When Roy finally wandered in the door (with carrot crumbles and splotches of gun oil on his t-shirt), he explained how we ended up with a ferocious fluff ball reconnoitering the front door.

Apparently Rambo had hopped all the way from Fort Bragg, where he works as a tracking rabbit for Force Recon. Having taken a few vacation days, he opted to spend part of his leave time hunting down the spider who snitched his custom-designed carrot peeler (scrimshaw shaft, glove-leather holster) after stiffing him for $100 in a poker game last year.

 "Uh oh," I said. What do we do now? Call his commanding officer? Call the police? Hire a hit fox?"

Roy thought about it a minute. "Maybe we can just return the peeler and the money and hope he hops on to his vacation destination." Rambo apparently was on his way to compete in a San Shou kickboxing championship.

I peered around the corner and noticed that, although the equipment was still piled up on the porch, there wasn't a single whisker to be seen anywhere in the vicinity.

"Uh oh again," I said to Roy while walking back into the kitchen. "Where did he go?"

Roy pointed to our meager vegetable garden. "He's out there kicking the tomato plants." Cherry tomatoes were popping down into Rambo's outstretched paws. When he had finished stripping the tomatoes, he picked off the miniature eggplants, pulled up a few radishes, and calmly proceeded to wash his paws and face in the pond. He then hopped back to the porch, picked up his weapon, and began perimeter patrol.

I fell on my knees in front of the refrigerator and explained the situation to Harry.

"Harry, you've got to return his peeler. And his hundred dollars. And maybe throw in a bouquet of squash blossoms or something. He's picking our garden clean! And scaring the turtles in the pond!"

A tiny whimper was heard from the sub-fridge.

In the meantime, our usually placid cat, Laptop, spied Rambo marching over our basil plants, and gave herself a quick lick-and-wash. She sashayed over to the rabbit, introduced herself with a small giggle, and offered to show him around the neighborhood. Then she twitched her whiskers in a deplorable display of flirtation, wrapping her tail around Rambo's rather impressive lats. So much for any help from the feline contingent.

Let's summarize the current situation. Harry's incommunicado. Roy's plinking at the dahlias with the M4A1. Laptop's playing fur games with a military lagomorph.

Taking matters firmly into my own hands. I pulled out Harry's drawer apartment and sifted through the contents. Among a vast assortment of items that I won't bother to recount, I found my engagement ring, a skein of quviuk lace yarn, a set of nude black-widow-spider cocktail sticks, two containers of truffled pate, and finally, underneath a rather impressive collection of Chocolate Frog cards, the carrot peeler and a wrinkled hundred-dollar bill.


I pilfered the latter two items (and my ring and yarn) and exited the back door.

"Excuse me," I said to Rambo. "I, erm, found your missing items and would like to return them to you with our heartfelt apologies. Sometimes Harry gets a bit, frisky, and er, forgets himself."

"Thank you, ma'am. I do appreciate your honorable behavior. Rambo gave me a breezy salute by folding over one ear and smartly tapping his forehead.

"If it's not too much to ask, I'd like to camp in your garden this evening. Laptop said she would provide some vegetarian MREs and entertainment. I'll make sure the yard is safe from meercats tonight." He chambered a round and sighted in on the last remaining cherry tomato.

"Right. Good, Hate it when those meercats attack." I mumbled as I cautiously backed away, a bit horrified at the sight of our last cherry tomato splattering over an annoyed-looking petunia plant.

The next morning, Rambo, along with his camouflage equipment, was gone.
......


Harry crept out from under the refrigerator. Roy pouted. Laptop received suggestive postcards from in-country locations.  I returned to my voodoo doll carving. A year passed.

.........
  Another typical summer's day. The doorbell rang. I stuck a final pin into my He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-in-This Blog-for-Fear-of-Lawsuits durian-fruit voodoo carving and answered the door. There stood Rambo, resplendent in freshly pressed BDUs, bearing a frothy bouquet of catnip.

"Hello, Ma'am," said Rambo politely. "Laptop around?"

A furry mass shot between my legs and, in a totally unseemly manner, leapt into Rambo's waiting arms. The two of them overbalanced, rolled down the front path in a breathtaking display of revolving whiskers and fur, coming to rest in a patch of outraged day lilies. We didn't see either of them again for several hours.

When the two of them finally emerged from their flowery bower, they carefully groomed each other before wandering into the kitchen, paw in paw. Over a platter of carrot canapes, Rambo related a series of fur-raising escapades from the previous year and then announced that he would be teaching a Wilderness Survival course and Escape and Evasion at the Ranger camp in the next town.

"I must be getting soft," Rambo said bashfully. "I'd sure like a place to stay off-base. Those army-issue burrows are cramped and noisy. And the lettuce/timothy hay MREs leave a lot to be desired."

Laptop gave us her patented Irresistible Pleading Cat Expression That Causes Instant Human Capitulation.


We struck a deal. In exchange for joining the fleegle team here in Georgia, he'll get fresh lettuce, wireless internet, and a custom-built hutch. In return, Rambo has agreed to provide us with companionship, a comprehensive perimeter patrol schedule and, of course, his gorgeous angora fur.


Bet you were wondering if I would ever tie this story into fiber arts, right?

And so we all lived happily ever after, except for Harry, who spends a lot of time under the fridge playing mournful tunes on his bagpipes.

 

The End