Traveling Show Bunnies....

My first demonstration this year was at the Hennipen County Fair in Corcoran, Minnesota last weekend. A lovely little fair with nice people running it and showing their pets and stock and craft projects.

This fair has the best petting zoo I have ever found, yes, better than Cummerfords!  The people running it are very friendly and nice, they have several sheep and goat breeds, milking cows to pet, long horn cattle, yaks and a few exotic creatures. Chickens, ducks and turkeys wander around free. Baby chicks are hatching.

You can pay an extra dollar and go behind the curtainto meet Big John, a Belgian horse, 21 hands, 84" (a hand is 4") tall at the withers (the bony top of the shoulder we like to lean on when riding bareback). He is very sweet and comes over and bows his head for you to scratch his ears. I got to see him in the pasture early each morning, and next to the Shetlands and yak, he is a giant.  You can also pay to see the little horse, also runs free every morning between the chickens and ducks in the petting zoo. And, the giant pig, a nice old fella whose name I cannot pronounce.

Anyway, Roger and I were set up next to the 4-H group. The youngsters had rabbits. I went over to see the rabbit races and games, where rabbits on leash and harness were taken though their paces on a course of jumps, tunnels and ramps.  Some did it quite enthusiastically, some fell asleep in the tunnel.  I had been talking to one of Rogers neighbors from back home and she and her daughter found out I wanted an angora rabbit. Well, she haled me over after the rabbit trials, and said Zander had two bunnies he wanted to give away. Free is always a good price. Of course I fell in love with the fuzzy bundles handed to me. With the temptation of free bunnies and a bag of food, I carried them back to my tent to show Roger.

Roger was a little skeptical about traveling with baby bunnies, but I think he is already growing to love the fuzzy bundles of joy.  We got a small dog carrier, I made a skirt for the bottom so they won't scatter the wood shavings (wood shavings are part of Rogers business so I have plenty of those.

This weekend we took them on their first outing. A five hour drive up the coast of lake Superior to the small town of Grand Marais.  It was hot when we left Minneapolis, so I was worried about heat stroke.  I found help on the internet that says a bottle of ice in their cage helps to keep them cool in warm weather, so I think they are going to be fine traveling companions. 

We let them out of their crate in the trailer a couple of times a day to do some "binking" (hopping, twisting and dancing for pure joy).  They attracted lots of attention at Rogers bowl turning demo. I sat next to them in Rogers booth and wove on the tape loom and explained to the Boat Festivals guests about angora wool and weaving.

Did I mention they are Angora bunnies?  Well, sort of. Zander said they were a mix of Angora and Lions Head I think.  But they are incredibly fluffy and people can't resist them.  I plan to take them to my sheep and wool festivals throughout the year. I am hoping people will love them even if they are mongrels.

I have named them Sabastian on the left and Oscar on the right, they are brothers, 7 weeks old, but am thinking of changing their names to something more... Norwegian... Lars?

German pottery roots in Blue.

I shall tell you the tale.... Once upon a time, a Rhineland potter thought he had enough wood for one last firing before having to head out into the forest, with his wagon and ax, to do all the hard labor of cutting, splitting, and hauling the wood back to his pottery. Besides, his merchant friend wanted his latest pots ready to ship in four days; it would take longer than that just to replenish his woodshed.

He stacked his kiln and started the firing. Dark red, cherry red, red-orange, orange, then yellow glowed the kiln. But, disaster! He was out of wood, with the kiln almost to temperature, but not all the way. If he stopped the firing now, his efforts would be wasted; he would have to start the firing all over again once he chopped more wood. And worse, the pots wouldn't be ready for his friend, and friend or not, merchants dealt first with the potters who could supply them on time.

What to do? Desperate, the potter scraped the woodshed floor and scrounged the last few splinters there. He then charged into the house and flustered his wife greatly. Wildly, he looked about the place. "Wood! I must have wood!" His wife, eyes wide, pointed to the storeroom.

Throwing open the door, the potter rummaged through their household stores. There! In the back! His thrifty wife had saved some old sauerkraut barrels!

The potter and his wife hurriedly hauled the sauerkraut barrels back to the kiln, where the potter promptly broke them apart and began pitching them into the firebox. He saw the salty crust of dried up brine on the inside of the barrels, but thought little of it at the time.

The kiln was fired to temperature, fed on the salt-encrusted staves. When the kiln cooled and he unloaded it for his merchant friend, the pottery within was coated with a magical, glossy frosting of glaze. And thus, German potters discovered salt glazing.

The blue on pottery is Cobalt, a mineral found in many countries including the USA and in Connecticut.

And Cobalt Blue?...

A kobold is a small, goblin-like spirit who can be both helpful and mischievous. He often helps with household chores, but sometimes hides tools and implements. His favorite prank is to kick over stooping people.

He can get very angry if he is not fed properly. He also loves to sing to children. There is an expression "to laugh like a kobold" because they are often pictured with their mouth open laughing.

Some kobolds are believed to be spirits dwelling in caves and mines. Other kobolds have specific names, like Hodeken or Goldemar.


The name of the color Cobalt Blue comes from the kobold. Miners blamed the tricky kobold for accidents in the mines. They also accused the malicious goblin of stealing precious silver and leaving behind worthless rock that looked as though it contained metal but didn't. They mockingly called the false ore Kobold. The name stuck even when the stone was found to be useful as, among other things, a blue pigment.


Kobolds can be found in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland. The word kobold comes from the German word kobalt or kobold meaning "evil spirit", and is often translated in English as goblin. Kobold is often used in German to translate the word 'Leprechaun', a type of Irish fairy goblin.

It is possible to catch a kobold spirit by going into the woods at midsummer and finding a bird on an anthill. This will be the kobold in disguise. You will then have to talk to the bird and when you lulled him to a false sense of security, catch him and put him in a bag to carry him home.

As mine fairies, they take pleasure in frustrating miners' work. If they are neglected or insulted, they become malignant, however, they will sometimes take a particular miner under their wings and direct him to a rich seam of ore. In centuries past if a man was seen to find more seams or possess more skills than his fellow miners, it was said that he was "under the protection of kobolds".

Kobolds in the home are very loyal if they feel wanted and welcome. Some kobolds will follow a favorite family to a new home. When the kobold first settles into a home, he tests the disposition of the family by bringing saw-dust into the house, and throwing dirt into the milk vessels. If the master of the house takes care that the chips are not scattered about, and that the dirt is left in the vessels, and the milk drunk out of them, the kobold will stay in the house as long as there is one of the family alive.

Kobolds are usually depicted as very ugly beings; around two feet tall (60 cm), with dark green or grey skin. They also have hairy feet instead of hands. They wear conical shaped hats, pointed shoes, and dress in red or green. Mine kobolds are more similar in appearance to the gnome.

Variants: kobolde, kobalt, koblernigh (welsh), coblynau (welsh).

Spodumene and the Food Safe Controversy

My real job is making pottery.  Over the years now, 30 or something, I have been traveling down different clay paths.  I liked yellow ware pots, so I worked out the formulas and fit to make that type of ware and sold a lot of wholesale. Yellow ware is a historical pottery, made in England in the late 1700s and here in the USA till around 1920.  Some of us can't ever get enough history, so I also learned about red wares and since I am from New England, mostly red clay is found here... a lot, I got interested in bricks, and old red ware. 

Potters have known for a long time about lead (a bad word). Potters use lead because it is a great flux. It lowers the melting point and flows into a soft shinny coating on a piece of low fired pottery.  A glaze is basically a coating of glass, melted onto a clay vessel to hold liquids and to look nice. Glass (silica sand) melts at a higher temperature than red clay, so a flux must be added to the mix so it will melt onto the clay pot without melting the pot itself. A red clay pot fired high enough to melt the silica sand without a flux, and you would have a molted mess.

So anyway, we use wood ashes, sodium, potassium, lithium, boron, calcium, magnsium, barium, strontium, lead, zinc and iron. These minerals lower the melting point of the glaze and also have different effects.. gloss, matt, etc.

We now avoid lead.

Spodumene also crops up in glaze formulas.  I have some glazes that use spodumene in the formula. Spodumene is a lithium flux. Someone I know, has brought up spodumene many times in conversations, so when we recently went back to the Connecticut Antique Machinery Museum in Kent, I saw that they had samples of many rocks from our area including Spodumene. This got me interested in learning more about the mining and uses of Spodumene in my pottery.

It seems it is a controversal subject about food safety too. Here is an interesting article I found...

http://www.potters.org/subject63360.htm

History. It's always interesting and you never know what you will turn up when you start looking into things.

Duck Pin Bowling in Connecticut

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duckpin_bowling

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Laurel-Lanes-Winsted-CT/

Laurel Lanes, the town’s duckpin bowling hall  owner George Noel and his crew made many improvements to the facility.



The lanes have been in Noel’s family for more than 60 years. Noel’s great-uncle, Angelo DeSanti operated the lanes until he was 82 years old, and Noel said that is when the decision was made to close. “He kept the place open for as long as he could,” Noel said.


We had a great time. It's like a blast from the past. Go back to the 50's and 60's, a great place to bring the kids.

And... it has a 2 cool ladies room toilets!

Here we are leaving on a late sunny spring evening... but we will be back!

A friendly place to hang out some evening instead of watching the tube or wandering in the computer!

The Chancellors Sheep and Wool Showcase

Last Saturday, the weather turned out nice for the Sheep and Wool Showcase at Clermont State Historic Site in Germantown NY.  I brought my new book on Tape Loom Weaving... and  some samples along with looms and accessories.

Such a pretty spot on the Hudson River... and it did not rain!


There were some critters...



Lots of folks showed up for the fun...

There were flowers too, along with yarn, roving, woven articles, knit products, and lots of other wool related stuff.

And spinners, weavers and knitters all had a nice day.

Come to our next festival this coming weekend, April 27th at the Tolland Agricultural Center for the Connecticut Sheep, Wool and Fiber Festival 2013!

Buy some wool and knit or weave something special!

My new book from instantpublisher.com

Its here!

Finally!  I have been working on this book for over a year.   It's amazing how hard it is to do a simple how-to book.  I had to do research on the history of the loom and tape loom weaving, not only in the USA, but around the world. Tapes and bands were woven around the globe for thousands of years.  People needed narrow bands of cloth, and it would be silly to warp a big loom.  So some people just invented the tool they needed to accomplish this.

Proof reading... you can never go over the spelling, punctuation and grammar enough. How many times have you found spelling errors when reading a novel?  It all becomes a blur as you go over and over your copy.

The folks at instantpublishers.com did a wonderful job. They were courteous, got back to me right away when I had questions and were very helpful.

The proof came overnight, the printing took less than a week. In a flash I received my books and they look just as I ordered.  They look quite pretty if I do say so myself.

And I am already selling them, mostly to weavers who have inkle looms and are interested in rediscovering the small loom and the wonderful things you can achieve on them. A new challenge. And now they can weave on vacation with a loom so small, so adaptable they can throw it and a ball of yarn into their suitcase or purse and off they go.

The reason I went with  instantpublishers was because I wanted full control over the look and content of my book. I had worked in printing companies years ago and I enjoyed setting up my own graphics. 

And it was so quick and easy with instantpublishers. I just uploaded my copy, they have a PDF converter. And you can change and reload if you need to make changes.

I had a good experience with them, and hopefully will be able to reorder more books very soon!

publish your own book!... instantpublishers.com

Tape Loom Weaving project

Make a Pin Keep...

Yes, this is a pin cushion, but I found an old one on a web site and thought it would be nice with one of my woven tape samples wrapped around it.  It works very well.

I used an old wool blanket, but you could use batting, or a piece of felt.

Cut the wool  24" long, 3" on one end and 4" on other end. I cut a 4" circle of flannel for the bottom.

Fold in half and roll up tightly starting with the 4" folded end and cut edges on the bottom. attach circle as shown. Sew on your new tape 1"-1 1/2" wide, sew both edges.

Finished keep is about 3" diameter and 1 1/2" high.

Happy Weaving!

Miss the book?  Check out www.eastknollpottery.com    Tape Loom pages!