Two Bunnies

Within the past 6 months, Anjo and I have adopted two [fixed] house-bunnies through Bunny Buddies in Houston: Luna and Neville. 

Luna was adopted on August 2, 2014, and at the time we had no plans to adopt a second housebunny. She is a Californian but was nearly all white with light grey points. Awww, isn't she a cutie? We named her Luna because of how beautifully light her fur is AND her light grey points reminded me of  bassalt-rich outcroppings found on the moon. Moon = Luna. 

What a gorgeous bunny! The previous picture shows her in the warm, Texas summer. Once the weather started cooling, she went through a molt, and her points came back much darker. It is hard to imagine, but this is the same bunny, just 6 months apart. 

Californian rabbits get darker in winter and lighter in summer because the mutated gene that causes their albinism is temperature sensitive. The cooler it is, the darker the fur. To put it more scientifically, the mutated color blocking gene cannot function in lower temperatures, which frees the dark fur genes, that had been suppressed, to work their magic. The points are only visible because the ears, nose, feet, and tail are the coolest places on a bunny.

Oh, yeah! I started this post with the mention of TWO bunnies. Let's get back to that.

A few months into our life with Luna, we started to notice that she might be needing a companion. On January 25, 2015, we found ourselves, with Luna, at a Bunny Buddies adoption event looking for another bunny. She met four rabbits that day, and got along as well as could be expected with three of them. She even groomed two of them, which left the ultimate decision up to us. We decided on this little fella, and named him Neville, because he is sort of awkward. He is fully grown, but small (half Luna's size) and he has huge feet that he trips over.

He also has ambidextrous ears! Sometimes they are up, sometimes they are down. What a cutie patootie!

If you are a Harry Potter fan, you will understand the names. Even though JK Rowling did not decide to have Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom marry each other, we felt that they were meant to be together in SOME way. As to what extent that is, we have no idea yet. They are not exactly on friendly terms now that we are back at Luna's home. She is a territorial little bun! They have gotten in a few squabbles, so we are taking it easy and letting them live in separate houses. Fingers crossed for an eventual friendship between the two of them. 

Big and Little Finishes

First off, I finished the quilt for my college roommate and her boyfriend! Woot! They just bought their first house together. You might not be able to tell, but the binding alternates between the dark turquoise and black fabrics. The background is actually made up of 4 different neutrals (hence the random bright square that I love!) because I mostly worked from my stash.


This is their band! Katie is the bass player (right) and her boyfriend is on guitar (left).


I also finished up a mini quilt inspired by Fibonacci's number/golden spiral. I made this for my former teacher and professor. I did FMQ in matching thread for each square, then hand stitched the black spiral in perle cotton.


When she did her student teaching, I was one of her first grade students. Then she was my math teacher in fourth grade. Years later, she was my professor when I was in graduate school. I guess you could say I will be her student for life! This was my first time to make a real, stitched label for a quilt. Please don't laugh at my horrible stitching.


If I am in my sewing room working, and Luna [Devourer of Worlds] aka our bunny is free, I have the door closed so she can't escape the sewing room. It occurred to me the other day that this meant my water glass was stuck in another room because there are no coasters in my sewing room. Most people would just grab a coaster from the other room, but not me. No. I set out to make myself a coaster that would match my room, and here it is! I found the paper pieced pattern over here and reduced it to make it into a 4" finished block.


This week I also received the first of four quilts from my aunt. They were pieced by her grandmother, but never finished. The other three are finished fronts, but this one isn't altogether yet. All the blocks are hand stitched, and about 3/4 of the rows are assembled and stitched together. The rest are either individual blocks or rows that need to be attached. I have never done any hand stitching, so the poor quilt is going to have to deal with some machine stitching.


I leave you with Luna helping out in the sewing room.


She was licking the back of the Fibonacci mini and biting off (chewing on?) loose threads. I'm not sure the licking was actually helpful, but the thread snipping definitely saved me some time!


Thanks, Luna!

Busy

I have been busy: Busy teaching, busy sewing, busy cooking, busy bunny wrangling, busy getting engaged, busy traveling (went to Germany for Oktoberfest with my boyfriend fiance), busy writing my first pattern! Eeeeeeeek!!! So many exciting things!

This is the quilt I'm writing a pattern for. I'm hoping to have it for sale online in the next week. It is all paper pieced, which gives you the really sharp tree points.

I have been working on a quilt that requires lots of tiny stars.

Most are Lemoyne stars, one is paper pieced.

I finished making all the blocks for the quilt I started planning over here.

And I picked a layout for them and have them stitched into rows,

I picked more fabric for my Sew Sew Modern swap.

As for cooking, here are some rolls from scratch filled with elk sausage and onions sauteed in beer.

Then we have cous cous with Brussels sprouts.

And a bunny who was very sad that I was cooking the Brussels sprouts and not just feeding them to her. She was so mad that she went to eat my plants.

She also discovered the window in the back door!

The Bunny Quilt: Front

Luna is a wonderful house bunny. She even helps me in the sewing room. Here she is in my scrap bins picking out fabric for me.


What she didn't know was that she was picking fabric for a quilt that will be hers. Now I know that making a quilt for my bunny sounds ridiculous but hear me out. We keep her condo in my sewing room and have the bottom lined with a blanket so she can't chew on the carpet. Here is her condo.


Up until now we have been using fleece blankets, but they are flimsy and she keeps biting holes into them so a sturdier option has to be found. Andrew suggested trying a drop cloth, which seemed to work. So I had the clever idea to make a quilt and back it in drop cloth material and leave it face down (so she won't chew on the pretty fabric). This was the focal block I came up with.


I had been wanting to try reverse applique, so I decided to give it a try.


This was the little bunny I came up with.


I had also wanted to try the strawberry paper pieced pattern from Sew Ichigo, so I made a couple of those.


And Luna loves eating flowers! So I made some of those too. I modified the pattern to make the stems taller and have them growing right out of the ground instead of a pot.


Actually I made three, but forgot to take a picture of the third one on its own.


And Luna's favorite thing to nibble on has to be greens, so I made her some leaves.


So then I set about organizing these blocks into a quilt front, and here it is! Now I just need to work on building up the courage to quilt this with drop cloth material on the back.