Willie is a Disappoving Rabbit!

I submitted a picture of Willie to the people at the Disapproving Rabbits website last week and today they featured him as "Dust Bunny's Revenge". I'm pretty excited about it, but Willie couldn't care less, as usual. In fact I'm pretty sure that he is now actually disapproving of his "fifteen minutes of fame".

The picture is a result of my trying to catch him taking a nap by the vacuum cleaner. Unfortunately, I woke him up and got a steely-eyed bunny glare instead of the extreme cuteness I was going for. He was all like, "How dare you disturb my bunny slumber! Now your vacuum cleaner must pay...again." In truth, I think most of the chewing was done by Gidget, but we all know he backs her up on everything.

Bunnies Know What They Like

We've been gone all weekend again and had to have a friend come in to take care of the bunnies. She's a good bunny-sitter, but they always seem happy to see us back. Very happy...if you know what I mean.

Usually we have a bag of cilantro or other leafy herbs in the fridge for her to give to the bunnies, but I forgot to get any from the store and so they had to do without this time. There is a head of Romaine lettuce in there, but I didn't think anything about it. Apparently she fed they lettuce because there were wilted leaves in the garbage can. This isn't really a problem, except Willie and Gidget do not like lettuce of any kind. Go figure. I just shrugged and forgot about it when I went to feed them. When I opened the office door I was greeted by Gidget who ran over to the food dish and stomped at me and grumbled. Willie was no where in sight.


She sat there as I put pellets in the dish and Willie poked his head out from the cage and waited for her to get her fill first. He's such a little gentleman. I coaxed him out with some dried papaya and what did I find? When he came over, he had lettuce clinging to his butt! The little guy had been laying on it and it was wilted with his body heat into a lettuce "puddle" on the bottom of the cage. Yuck!

I should have known they would never eat something that good for them. They eat everything else known to man. Cabinet doors, electrical cords of all types, crumbs and anything else we might accidentally drop, even plaster have disappeared down their little maws. It's the things that you'd think a bunny would be happy to chew on that don't even get a single nibble. Well, at least they're cute.

Bunnies say "Feed Me"

Being a bunny momma is a big responsibility. Every day starts out much the same, with the opening of the office door.

"Hello babies! How are my little sweeties?"

This is usually greeted with a mad dash towards the food dish and then a lap or two around my legs. I've heard that in nature animals have certain ways of letting their will be known. For instance bees do an intricate dance allowing other bees to find the nectar stash. Perhaps this little daily bunny ritual is really a mind game they play with me so I can remember where the food dish is. Sometimes I hold it over their heads so they will play with me for a few minutes.

Next it escalates to more of a feeding frenzy.

"Wow! Gidget, get off Willie. Geez, it's not like you're wasting away to nothing!"

She has a habit of pushing his nose away so he can't get at the food. At nine pounds, she's twice his size so sometimes she just drapes herself over him and eats while he wiggles around trying to free himself. I should keep a camera in there and get a picture sometime. It's actually kind of funny.

Having sated their appetites for the time being, they head into the rest of the house to pillage and murder some unfortunate electrical appliance I have failed to sufficiently protect. Once they climbed up on a plant stand and nibbled an African Violet to the nubbies. It turns out that African Violets are not toxic to bunnies. On a good day I rescue a book or two, on a bad day we splice together the sound system, again.

"Oh man! Not again!"

Sometimes I wonder if they're getting enough to eat. They've eaten bookcases, cabinet doors, the legs to the couch and plaster pillars. When I open the fridge Willie is right there begging for a handout. We do the actual feeding ritual twice a day, and yet they still poke around for more. It's almost as if they know I'm holding out on them. Somewhere there is a grape or a dried papaya fragment that should be in their belly.

They have the ultimate weapon, extreme lethal cuteness. One nose bump or binky and I melt like putty in their little bunny paws. I am the faithful bringer of the food and the remover of the poop. They have me right where they want me and it shows. So tonight when my husband and I herd them back into the office and observe the dance, we know what they really mean.

"Feed Me!"

And we will.

Etsy, Ravelry, Twitter and Me

For months now my dear hubby has suggested I start one of these blog things about my fiber projects. More specifically, my spinning of yarn, which I am currently obsessed with. These suggestions were normally put off with, "I'm too busy right now, what would I write about anyway?" Hmm. Apparently the "powers that be" were listening and I find myself with quite a bit of time lately due to losing my job. Sigh...no really, it's OK. Here's why.

Since September I've been spinning yarn on a Babe Double Treadle Spinning Wheel I picked up secondhand at a fiber festival. It's great, and I'm "in love" with it, but now there is a small mountain of fiber and fiber projects in my minuscule living room with nowhere to go. So what is a hot young fiber-holic to do? Why turn some of that effort into cash of course! Not to support the family you see, but to fund the addiction. Off to find some fiber-challenged enablers!

A friend suggested that I check out Etsy.com, which I did and subsequently spent two full weeks submerged in "research" of other people's shops. Several hundred dollars later and in danger of having to go without clean clothes, I finally opened my own little shop called Handmade Sunshine. So far in a month I've managed to have 2 sales and about 300 views. Not too bad for a first month.


I joined a few fiber-related teams on Etsy that keep blogs as well. A new fledgling team is Create Crochet! and is headed by a real sweetheart named Kristen. She is always looking for new ideas by people who are passionate about crochet and crochet supplies. She also makes some pretty amazing greeting cards which you should really check out.

Etsy FAST which stands for Fiber Arts Street Team, is a more established group interested in the promotion of fiber arts of all kinds from paper to yarn and everything in between. They have monthly challenges where fiber artists compete to create an item that best embodies the current theme. For instance, February the topic is "emotions" and several people have already listed their item in their shops. One example is the "That Warm and Fuzzy Feeling Scarflette"

Etsy has some amazing articles on how to promote a shop and that's how I found out about Twitter.com and got addicted to a brand new thing. Well, at least for me micro-blogging is new. So far I've been on for almost a week and have 39 followers. Not that I ever say much on there that is enlightening, but the voyeurism is rather fun. Usually the background is set to show off a new yarn listed in my shop. My hubby now teases me about being "such a geek" which I take in stride since he's an even bigger one. It's the whole, "it takes one to know one" kind of mentality that we have come to expect in our relationship. (Contented sigh, giggle, "I love him")

Earlier this year one of my friends had told me about Ravelry.com which is an wonderful reference tool for knitters and crocheters and unfortunately requires an invitation to log on. It's still in the Beta testing phase and so you submit a request for an invite and the moderator sends one out easy-peasy in about 4 days. Hey, they're young, they're hip, and extremely cool so it's totally worth the wait. Even bunny-loving spinners like me can find a niche on there. They have places to keep track of yarns, projects and books that you have pileing up around the house, forums where you can find the answere to every fiber question imagineable, and a nifty message center to keep track of new friends. Sweet!

So where does that leave little ole yours truely? Glued to the computer between spinning up batches of yarn and trying to maintain basic physical hygine requirements, that's where. I think I'm busier now than I ever was when employed. Every-once-in-a-while the bunnies come by and sit on my feet to remind me to feed them; either that or they're busy plotting the demise of my computer again. I should have never passed up that stock with the electrical tape company.

Here's to wishing all of you a happy and productive weekend! I've got some yarn to spin.