Going down literal rabbit holes...

kind of.

I have two main things I care about doing in life. Those two things are:

nurturing life

making things from scratch

This might seem simplistic. It is not simplistic. These things, these activities, encompass a whole heckin lot. And they go deep.

So... nurturing life. I like pets. I like animal husbandry. I had a betta fish when I was eight and it threw me off the deep end of fish genetics. I delved deep into fish husbandry and care and now twenty years later I have another betta fish. I still have to fight the urge to go out and buy a breeding setup occasionally. I just don't have the time to be Fish Tinder, alas.

And then there's making things. I don't want to just make things. I don't want to follow a kit, I want to MAKE something. Mittens? I want to crochet them. I want to spin the yarn. I want to dye the fiber. I want to harvest the fiber. I want to bring the creature that will create the wool for those mittens kicking and screaming into glorious life so that it can make me some mittens.

You can see the central point where these ideals mingle, right? I want to create in the most distilled, down-to-the-core way.

Anyways, I was planning my permaculture garden the other day, and trying to figure out how much flax I needed to grow to have enough linen fibres for a single shirt. Yes, really, yes I've already bought the seeds (and yes I bought the kind of flax that makes linen-fiber not tummy-fiber). It was at the point that I was looking into how to grow cotton from seed that I realised I had a problem.

The problem being that you can't really grow cotton from seed in the Scottish highlands! I know, right? And I don't have the greenhouse space to make it work. Though I still bought a packet of seeds... er. Yeah. So I thought, there has to be a simpler way to get soft, fluffy fibre for spinning, weaving, cutting and sewing into a lovely homemade garment!

And there is. And it tickles the silly part of my brain in both directions: Wool-bearing livestock! Specifically, Angora rabbits.

I've wanted a pair of Angora rabbits ever since I saw someone at a fibre festival spinning yarn right from a bunny's haunches. And I have a house now! With no landlord! All I have is a husband (who will surely acquiese when I explain that a bun smells less than chickens, which I also want) and, more detrimentally, a cocker spaniel mix. The dog is the most dubious part of this plan, because I don't want to have a rabbit who lives in a terrifying version of Big Brother where the thing always watching you also wants to eat you. Clearly the solution is to give the rabbits a bedroom where they can live safe and free... but I digress. I think?

So... yeah. If anyone has advice for keeping rabbits alongside a murderbeast of a dog, please reach out at jaimielblack@outlook.com. In the meantime... well, I do have a blanket to finish...

Email (normal): JaimieLBlack@outlook.com

Email (author stuff): author@rosalindwulf.com

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