7 Pines Abigail Wins 12th Best In Show

 

 

 

 

Deb reports from MN:

"I went to the Itasca rabbit show by myself (Alicia had to work).  However, I showed two of her rabbits for her.  One of them that I showed was 5 year-old 7 Pine's Abigail.  She took her 12th all-breed BIS.   Pretty good for a 5 year-old great grandmother.  The BIS judges were Tiffany Wayne & Dereck Tuntland."


 

Colors of the Bunny Line-Up

 

 

 

From left to right: chocolate tort, black tort, blue tort, black tort and black tort.
Black tort is also the regular tort, the official designation in the Standard of Perfection is "Tort". 

 

 

Three torts.

 

Tort and blue tort.  Blue tort is the dilute version of tort.

Tort  aaB-C-D-ee
Blue tort aaB-C-ddee

The difference is in the D location.   The D shows the dense color and the dd shows the dilute color.

 

Chocolate tort and tort.

Chocolate tort: aabbC-D-ee
Tort aaB-C-D-ee

Both are dense color with the D but the chocolate tort carries two brown genes (brown gene is also called the chocolate gene) while the tort carries at least one black gene.






 

Bunny Lining Up for Photo Op

 

 

 

What?  You want us to line up for photos?  Where is mama?  We want our breakfast!
 

Where is our mama?   We demand breakfast.
 

No way, no breakfast, no photo!
 

OK, now we had our breakfast, we are cool.
 

We'll even let you take another shot of our lining up.





 

Clean Fawn and Sooty Fawn

According to the Angora color guide in the ARBA Standard of Perfection (SOP),  fawn is described as:
"Dorsal wool is to be a clear golden color.  Fawns are to have white eye circles, inside of ears, nostrils, underside of jowls, belly and underside of tail.  White undercolor is allowed and they may have lap spots. Eyes - Brown.
Faults: Any smut, ticking, ear lacking or faint grayish band in wool. 

Some of the fawn Angora is very clean in the face while some has black tips, breeders would refer such as "Clean Fawn" and "Sooty Fawn". 

The description in the SOP is for the "Clean Fawn" while the "Sooty Fawn" is considered a fault.

In tort, the black based tort is considered as "black tort" or "regular tort", the darker the points the better.  The genetic make-up is aaB-C-D-ee.

 The chocolate based tort is called "chocolate tort", the points are golden and the wool is clean and also golden.   The genetic make-up is aabbC-D-ee. 

The genetic coding for fawn is A---C-D-ee   

Unfortunately in fawn, there is no distinction in the SOP concerning whether the fawn is black based or chocolate based, as a result the black based fawn is given the status of being a fault.   (There are only 5 points assigned to color, the deduction should be at minimum).

Black based fawn is A-B-C-D-ee
Chocolate based fawn is A-bbC-D-ee

As you can see the only difference between the torts and fawns is that tort is a self while fawn is an agouti.  The rest are the same.

The two side-by-side photos shows the chocolate based fawn on the left and the black based fawn on the right.   Can you tell the difference?


 

Here are the profile comparison of chocolate based fawn and black based fawn.   The chocolate based fawn has a clean face and brownish ears and the body color is very bright.  The black based fawn has black tips on the face and ears are grayish, the wool color is somewhat subtle comparing to the chocolate based fawn.

These two bunnies are littermates.  It is known that the mother is a chocolate based fawn with the following color genes:  AabbCCDdee

 and the father is a regular tort who carries both the black gene and the chocolate gene:
aaBbCcD-ee

The clean fawn bunny on the left is
AabbC-D-ee

The sooty fawn bunny on the right is
AaBbC-D-ee

 

Neon Dye

 

 

 

 

 

McCormick Neon food color and egg dye is very compatible with Angora yarn.
From right to left, it's purple, pink, blue and green.

The food color does not have acidity, it is necessary to add vinegar when using it to set the dye. 
 

These are four skeins of 100% English Angora yarn spun and dyed by Maureen.   The colors match the order of the color vials on the top photo: purple, pink, blue and green.


 

Dyeing Green Yarn

 

 

 

These two green food colors in the supermarket food color kits give quite a different results.
 

 

The green in the left of the first photo gives a light pastel green.

The Neon green in the right side of the first photo gives a neon green.  This skein is made by Betty, due the sunshine, the neon green is more intense than it is in the shade.

 



Maureen used the same McCormick Neon Green for the above skein, due the shade, the color does not look as intense but it's still quite neon.

 

 The alternative way to make green yarn is to use lemon lime Kool-Aid.   Maureen dyed this skein using the Kool-Aid then added a tablet of Easter egg dye which seems to have a good bit of yellow in it, she then drop dyed neon pink and neon blue food coloring. 

Recycled Art

 

 

 

There is an exhibit at the Morgan Hill Community Center that can best be described as recycled art.

 

 

A very well-lit display case with four "art" objects.

Another display of the similar art objects.

The next eight photos are close-ups of the above displays.  These are priced around $200-300.  What are they?  Go to the last photo to see the vision of the creator.

 

Artist Paul Loughridge explains his concepts of idea and creation.  The major quote of this essay is:

 

"...transforms what most people would consider junk into on-of-kind surreal cyber/steam punk assemblage sculptures."

 

Junk or Art?  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.