Last winter I was given a Foster Rabbit, a lovely grey angora rabbit whose original owner was moving to Thailand and needed an interim home for him until I could locate a more appropriate permanent location. My husband Joe promptly named him Stewart and, since rabbits have no verbal skills at all, the bunny didn't seem to mind the threatening overtones (think rabbit stew).

You need to comb an angora rabbit every week at minimum to keep them from swallowing a lot of indigestable hair whilst grooming themselves. So Stewart was dutifully combed by me while Devan held him for the next two months until I found him a wonderful rabbit mother in Cape Elizabeth with a fenced in garden for Stewart's enjoyment and a spinning wheel for her own. I was left with fond memories of Stewart and about 8 ounces of lovely grey angora. I also had some pink angora that I had dyed and rather overdone it on the color since it was a bright, Barbie doll pink. And I had some periwinkle kid mohair that I had dyed with more success. Angora, as you may already know, is difficult to spin and extremely, extremely warm and fuzzy to wear. If you didn't know, be forewarned. But I also had some grey Jacobs wool that I had gotten from my friend Beatrice's sheep. So, thinking that the grey would tone down the Barbie Doll Pink I blended about 70% Jacobs wool with 10% Pink Angora, 10% Grey Angora and 10% Blue Kid Mohair by guessing at the amounts and hand carding. The results was a tweedy blend of colors that spun easily, albeit not that smoothly, and resulted in a lovely soft lavendar grey color that haloed nicely without being overdone. Here's a closeup picture of the knitted fabric that resulted.

Then I had to design a sweater. I was thinking something feminine but simple in shape because the fluffiness factor was already a little.....theatrical. The result is this angoraish sweater that vaguely resembles a sweatshirt in shape. I used a simple Feather and Fan stitch for the bottom of the sweater for about 4 inches, and I also used it to make the cuffs of the sleeves which increase above the cuff by simply keeping the Yarn Overs and omitting the Knit 2 togethers. I used Elizabeth Zimmerman's percentage system to do the decreasing for the neck and shoulders and ran completely out of yarn shortly before the end of the sweater. (Literally I had 3 inches left). So I used some pure white angora that I had spun up to finish off the neck, which went from being a last minute save as a result of bad planning to being a Fortunate Design Element, which is my favorite kind of mistake. A picture of me in the sweater is below. It is lovely and warm, and becomes fluffier with each wearing. Devan refers to it as the Cupcake Sweater.