Volume 5, Issue 1 - Februrary 2005

Volunteer Angoras Spread Good Will in Grand County
by Sandy Roberts

Eastern Grand County is home to Winter Park, Fraser, Granby, Grand Lake, and Hot Sulphur Springs. Partly because this area is rural agricultural, we have a strong wool spinning & weaving community here.

My assistant Christie Bowcutt is one of the area weavers. Leaders in the weaving community are Marv and Linda Dewey, owners of the Lonesome Stone yarn and gift shop in Fraser. When Christie told Linda about the recent angora rabbit rescue in Park County, Linda displayed posters in the Lonesome Stone advertising that these wonderful wool producers were available for adoption. Linda and Christie talked about having some volunteer angoras come to the store for a spinning demonstration, Nancy LaRoche agreed to do a presentation, and soon we had a full-fledged bunny fur-spinning workshop planned!

There was a good deal of build-up for the “bunny day” at the Stone. Linda advertised the class and the local paper ran an article in “What’s Up.” On Saturday, December 11, the angoras, Cotton Ball (CB) and Q-Tip (QT), along with Nancy, myself, and mini-lop Josie Roberts, made the trip to Fraser. CB and QT were wonderful bunny ambassadors! Nancy gave an informative talk about rabbit parenting and demonstrated wool harvesting. A local weaver, Susan Whitefeather, used wool from CB and QT to spin angora yarn. Josie worked the crowd by being cute and having several people ask to adopt her!

This sparked an interest in rabbits, and in particular, angoras, their wool, and their potential to be wonderful family members. But the best part of the story is, Linda fell in love with Cotton Ball and Q-Tip! These beautiful white bunns now have a forever home at the Lonesome Stone. Now CB and QT are ambassadors for wool producing bunnies and house rabbits alike. Marv and Linda have made provisions to disseminate Colorado HRS information, and I have already talked to three families who want to adopt house rabbits because they met CB and QT at Lonesome Stone.

The “bunny day” at the Stone has had the best of all possible outcomes: CB and QT are in a loving home, they have lots of admirers, and hopefully more shelter rabbits will find good homes due to CB and QT’s presence in the store. Thank you Nancy, Christie, Linda, Marv, and most especially, Cotton Ball, Q-Tip, and Josie! We will soon have a thriving community of house rabbit families in Grand County.