Bunny (left) and Alpaca (right)

This has been a really fun, busy week with the Alpaca Bunny Smackdown going on. We’ve had lots of giveaways. (there’s still time to enter). Everyone has been waiting, with baited breath, to find out who the winner is. The Bunny Or The Alpaca. Our esteemed judge reminds us that this contest was actually on softness alone. It was not so much for the “best” fiber, but the softest.

(Drumroll Please)…..

And the winner is……

“The Bunny – by a Hare.” You really have to read the judge’s thoughtful remarks here. Our judge is a wonderful guy and the pressure of the Smackdown may have been more than he bargained for. But now he can retire to his new Etsy shop where we will all bombard him and buy out his shop. Right, readers? Let’s give Vtknitboy some love! (Applause & Cheers!!!)

Alpaca fans – do not dismay. Read Chris’ remarks. The scientific nature of angora is that it comes in 10-13 microns. It is rare for alpacas to have that fineness. Next week I will post a recap of the alpaca-bunny smackdown. For now, I must label 100 school supplies and meet a dozen teachers. Basically, both Alpaca and Angora ROCK! And they work perfectly TOGETHER! So it’s really all about alpaca/bunny luv. But that’s another series altogether. Onto Fiber Arts Friday! While we’ve been Smacking Down, what have you been up to this week?

Fiber Arts Friday Blog Carnival!

To participate:

1. Add the permalink to a specific blog post that features something Fiber Art related, rather than your general blog address and not your Etsy store. (Please DO put a link in your blog post that takes us to your store though.)
2. Link back to Fiber Arts Friday from your post so that your readers can come and see everyone else’s projects! Use the button or a text link to http://www.alpacafarmgirl.com.
3. Visit as many of the other participants as possible and leave comments! That’s what helps us all connect!

Angora Rabbit

Welcome to the Alpaca Bunny Smackdown. In the Bunny corner, the contributing bunny – Nougat! (applause, WOOTS, & cheering!) who is pictured below right. Weighing in at a feathery 3.5 lbs., Nougat’s favorite hobby is trying to hump the doe in the next cage. He likes chewing wooden blocks and dislikes having his belly groomed. Turn-ons: Well, he’s a rabbit. Everything turns him on.

Nougat’s owner, Lynn tells us about her rabbits:

Angora rabbits are kept for their luxurious fiber, as show animals, and for their pleasant personalities. Many people keep them as pets, sheared in a poodle cut. They come in a wide variety of colors such as white, fawn, black, chocolate, lilac, chinchilla, red, chestnut, agouti, tortes, broken, and more. There are satin, French, English, and giant german angoras and each have a slightly different texture. I chose to raise angoras for several reasons. Their fiber may be plucked or sheared and can be spun raw without further processing. Plucking the naturally shed wool is time consuming but it guarantees a minimum of guard hair and creates a higher quality fiber because there are no blunt shorn ends to itch you.

Nougat & Peter

The wool has a micron count of 10-13 and lends itself to very fine spinning. It is easy to spin lace-weight on a drop spindle or wheel. In rabbits there isn’t an obvious divide in fiber quality like there is on other fiber animals but some breeders may divide between the back and side fiber, and belly and leg fiber. Angora felts easily and felted bits on the rabbit are sheared and discarded, or cut up and spread outside for birds to use in nesting.

There are many uses for angora rabbit wool. It is six to eight times warmer than wool and can be blended into other fibers at 10-30% for added warmth and softness. It is often spun straight by itself for use in infant knitted products. Because it felts easily it is ideal for needle felting or fulled items.

Items knit from the fiber often have a fuzzy halo to it. Blending the fiber can reduce this as well as reduce shedding and pilling in the finished garment.

These delightful animals are growing in popularity. I truly enjoy working with them and their fiber and sharing their beauty with others.

This post contributed by Lynn who blogs as FiberMama and Tweets as @SheepMama. She lives on a small farm in southern Ohio with her husband, three sons, kitten, Icelandic sheep, chickens, and of course, angora rabbits. In her spare time she enjoys spinning, knitting, needle felting, and the occasional healthy competition.

They decided that they would settle the matter once and for all by having an impartial judge, master spinner @vtknitboy, spin a sample of both fibers. Each participant sent a sample to Chris (@vtknitboy who blogs here) for him to spin. They also sent samples to each other so they could spin the others’ fiber and comment on it. I begged them to let me post the results on Fiber Arts Friday and they agreed. I think they felt sorry for me because they know I feel pitiful because I can’t spin.

[If you are wondering what all the weird names with the @ sign in front of them are, those are their Twitter handles, and you really oughtta get one.]

Read Kathryn’s take on the smackdown here and Lynn’s here. We are awaiting our Celebrity Judge Chris’ results and his account of the Alpaca Bunny Smackdown this Friday. I admit to stalking him contacting him in order to get inside scoop. He’s not talking so bugging him to death asking him about it won’t work.

This week on AlpacaFarmgirl we will be celebrating both alpacas and bunnies, the animals and their fiber. We will hear from both the rabbit camp and the alpaca camp. Since we are an alpaca-based blog, the bunny will go first. In addition, we will have several giveaways this week! We’ll be giving away fiber and yarn so check with us each day this week. Tune in Friday for the unveiling of the judges results on the Fiber Arts Friday Blog Carnival, where you can also link your own fiber-related blog posts. We want to see what YOU’ve been up to with your knitting, weaving, quilting, spinning, felting, etc. projects.

New Developments will be archived here on the Alpaca Bunny Smackdown post.

The Bunny – Angora Rabbit

Alpaca/Angora Batt Giveaway

Angora Giveaway

In the Alpaca Corner – Alpaca Fiber

Alpaca Yarn Giveaway

Fiber Arts Friday – Smackdown Edition (results)

photo by Jonathan Hokklo

My husband is an artist. We have spent numerous hours working on public arts projects. In fact, 90% of the art he does would be considered public art. (He’s a sculptor who creates bronze monuments.) So when I saw knitting and public art in the same sentence I almost fainted from joy!

There is a remarkable group of knitters who do public installations. There name is “Knitta Please” – isn’t that fabulous? The above project involved 69 parking meter cozies in Brooklyn Heights, NY.

“You see the streetscape as being hard and forbidding, but the contrast with this soft, fuzzy, colorful yarn is inherently charming,” said Chelsea Mauldin, the executive director of the Montague Street Business Improvement District, which commissioned the project through Magda Sayeg, an artist whose claims to fame include covering an entire Mexican bus with her knitting. ~ from New York Times article.

One of our Fiber Arts Friday Participants knitted two cozies for this project and brought it to my attention. In a technical glitch, all the FAF particpants from that week have been lost from Mr. Linky. @*&!!?#! So, if the wonderful Knitta who told me about this would please let me know, I would love to post one of your pics of your cozies & tell everyone about your contribution. Email me at katy (at) alpacafarmgirl.com. or tweet me at @AlpacaFarmgirl.

If you know of other public Fiber Arts installations, please leave a comment. Stay tuned next week for the Alpaca-Bunny Smackdown. While there is a competition involved, we will be celebrating alpaca and rabbit fiber with posts and GIVEAWAYS! It all starts Monday. On to this week’s Fiber Arts Friday.

Fiber Arts Friday Blog Carnival!

To participate:

1. Add the permalink to a specific blog post that features something Fiber Art related, rather than your general blog address and not your Etsy store. (Please DO put a link in your blog post that takes us to your store though.)
2. Link back to Fiber Arts Friday from your post so that your readers can come and see everyone else’s projects! Use the button or a text link to http://www.alpacafarmgirl.com.
3. Visit as many of the other participants as possible and leave comments! That’s what helps us all connect!