Spring Chicks on Golf Course

It's spring, and there are chicks following their wild turkey mama.

The Coyote Creek Golf Course is huge with greens and natural settings, there are many wildlife 
take resident at the location.   

Wild turkey is just one of the species that appears regularly at the golf course.
There are plenty of Canadian Geese, there are even sightings of Bobcats and Moutain Lions.

The chicks following their mama into the more natural area at the golf course.

We may not be spring chicks anymore, but these are for sure spring chicks!

 

Knitting Bunnies?

The knitting of the fingerless mittens inspired me to knit up a cat.  It seems that the cats are a bit easier to knit than the rabbits.  Why? The ears!   When knitting a cat, the ears are a part of the head, it does not require separate parts to be attached to the head.   I found these cute knitted rabbits on line to be my inspirations.  Their ears are all erect, looks like they were all made separately then attached to the head.  It will be my goal to use my handspun Angora yarn to knit a few rabbits.  Look at these photos, then imagine them being as fluffy as our beloved Angoras.  Hopefully you'll see my creations of fluffy knitted rabbits not too far from now.

 

Knitting a Kitty

After knitting so many pairs of fingerless mittens, I feel like to make a change.  The knitting of a pocket animal is very similar to the idea of the fingerless mittens.  These both could be knitted in round or in flat.  I use the round method and make it into a cat shape.

This is my first attempt in making a cat, not sure how it'll turn out, I used regular commercial yarn to be an experiement.

I think it turns out to be quite cute.   Of course there could be improvements, such as using handspun Angora yarn instead of the commercial yarn.    It’s my intention and goal to create more knitted pocket animals using my handspun Angora yarns in the near future.

 

Knitting Fingerless Gloves

I took an hiatus from showing for 6 weeks.  Got lots of things caught up then I started knitting.
Here are two pairs of fingerless mittens with my handspun fawn French Angora yarn.

Here are two pairs of fingerless mittens in natural colors. 

Two pairs of handspun hand dyed green English Angora yarn in the fingerless mittens. 

And two more pairs of handspun hand dyed purple English Angora yarn in the fingerless mittens.

 

Blower Repair and Service

Us Angora show people use blowers on a regular basis, a good blower is a must for successful grooming and showing.

In 2010 I bought a pink blower, the second of the same brand though my first one in 1989 was blue color as blue was the only color available at the time. 
 See:  Northern California Angora Guild: Pretty In Pink

This is what the brand new pink blower, the Mini-Circ, looked like after assembled in 2010.   Mini-Circ is the same model as the Mini K9, produced by the same manufacturer Electric Cleaner Company in Wisconsin.   When the Angora breeders discovered the blowing method to handle the wool in the late 1980s, this company was the only one that produced animal groom blowers, now there are hundreds of different brands. 

The entire unit is made of metal, you can unscrew and open the unit to view the interior of the blower.
The two orange strips shown in the picture are "machine brushes". In early 2025, this pink blower was intermittenly working and not working, so hubby opened it up to see what went wrong. 

When the blowing is going on, the machine brush causes sparks.  If you notice there are sparks toward the upper right of the left brush.    If the both machine brushes were in good shape, there should be sparks showing next to both brushes but in this case the brush on the right side was used up thus no more sparks.

These are the brushes that are used to the bare bone minimum, they need to be replaced.

These brand new machine brushes are purchased from Amazon, around $10-15 a pair.  
Instead of throwing away a blower that is not working, open it up and see whether it's the machine brushes that need replacements.    Another possibility of a blower not working is the switch.   When we turn the blower on and off over and over, that could cause the switch to malfunction, check it if your blower has issues with the on/off switch.    

Most of the metal blowers are made in the US, in addition to the Electric Cleaner Company's offerings, there is another US maker called MatroVac, short for The Metropolitan Vacuum Cleaner Comapany that is based in New Jersey.   Though there are many colors, their original color for the blowers was orange thus we usually called it the orange blower.    See:
Northern California Angora Guild: Pink vs Orange   Because these "Airforce" orange blowers are also made of metal, you can open up the unit to clean and to repair.     The metal blowers are usually priced over $200 and could go as high as into the $1,000 for large animals.    

If you go on the internet you can find blowers as little as $50.   These lower end ones are effective in blow grooming Angoras, but these are made of plastics.   The interior are molded into one plastic unit.   You can open it to change filter and clean but the mechnical elements are not visible thus it's next to impossible to make repairs.   If it stops working, it goes into the landfill!

 

Carolyn's Most Recent Kimekomi Doll

This is Carolyn Sawai's most recent Kimekomi doll, it is a child doll.

Carolyn has completed all requirements to be a certified Kimekomi doll teacher, she now can choose what she wants to make.

Being a rabbit lover, she chooses the fabric with rabbits to be used to make the kid doll's outfit.

 

Flowers Love Spring

Beautiful flowers at Carolyn Sawai's place.