wendy house

Happy New Chinese Year of the Rabbit!

Mumsie bought this card in Hong Kong, in 1990, as a pressie for me. Before then I was completely oblivious to the fact that I was born in the Year of the Rabbit (1963).  This year is also the year of the Rabbit. Evidently this is very auspicious for me, as a Rabbit. Hooray, I do love a liberal dose of auspiciousness. Previous Rabbit years have indeed included major, positive, life changing things

1975 - Started secondary school, won a beauty contest, had a crush on Greg Lake, had a crew-cut, made my flared jeans into drainpipes with the aid of mumsies sewing maching. Met Tiger who is still one of my bestest friends today

1987 - Started dating one of the nicest chaps I’ve ever known, I’ve subsequently been to both his weddings and we’re still friends

1999 - left my job of 5 years as a Senior University Lecturer, left University life. Later accepted a job in Seattle and applied for a USA work permit that arrived in 2000

I wonder what auspicious goings-on I’ll be able to dig up in 2011…

Trevor Bayliss is an inventor of   heroic proportions  here in the UK.   He invented the wind-up radio.   Portable and with no need for chemically based, environmentally damaging, batteries.

My fabulous hand-crank radio also includes a solar panel.   I’ve never yet had to wind it up because the light in the Wendy House conservatory keeps it going longer than any duracell battery would….    

I do occassionally wind it up because, like the gravity-powered exit,  the action is very pleasing.   Pleasing is more than the ‘satisfactory’ experience required to establish conformance with usability standards.

I tried to complete a ‘System Usability Scale’   (SUS) for my fabulous radio    incase I meet and usability people that would like to know,   in numbers, exactly how fabulous it is.    Unfortunately I was  unable to complete the SUS because  I don’t know what ‘integrated functionality’ is and am confused by the concept of an ‘inconsistent’ product,   so I couldn’t answer questions that included  these things.      I’ll just tell the usability people its a 7000 on the SUS scale,   they’ll get the general idea.

Hittavainen, the Karelian god of hares has turned up in the Wendy House garden.

According to the BBC Hares crop up in Mythology all over the place and are associated with the Moon, the celestial skies and the Sun, with fertility, the dawn, cunning and bravery.

This one is associated with pebbles purloined from beaches all over the world.

A family of biddies and the bunnies (SylvaC).   I really must put a cap on the bunny habit,   before I am lured into the church of the cosmic bunny,   or the odd hare that creeps  in  for a quick box while gazing at the moon.  

A fleeting moment where  one of these men may be cross with the other,    or one man crossed the other.     The presence of a cross design in the forground seemed a subtle suggestion and reinforcement of their possible relationship.  

Segue from Cross to Easter.  

All websites that I found descrbing the origins of the Easter rituals superficially refer to pre-christian religiouns citing fertility and birth making the  connection with eggs and bunnies.      This website is exceptional because it provides more  and plausible details of some of the pre-christian  influences on our current Easter practices and words.     For example the link to the word “East”,   where the sun is reborn.   Here’s a relevant paragraph:

The festival of Eastre was celebrated by the Pagans on the vernal equinox, the first day of spring. The Goddess was said to take the form of a Hare, so effigies of these animals were made to worship her, the origin of the good old Easter Bunny. The Goddess Eastre, the Teutonic Goddess of Fertility is in her aspect of mother to be. Her symbol is the egg, symbolizing fertility in nature and rebirth from the long winter months and the symbol of rebirth since ancient times. The Egyptians and Greeks would bury eggs in the tombs of the dead as a sign of resurrection, and the egg was especially important in the Pagan Eastre festival as a symbol of nature being reborn over again. Therefore, real eggs would be decorated and given as gifts on this day. The Goddess is fertile, rich with promise and potential life. (It is from the word “oestre” that we get the word “oestrogen” / “estrogen” – the female hormone). To the Saxons she was Ostara, in myth she is said to have amused children by turning her bird into a rabbit, the rabbit then laid colored eggs much to the delight of the children.

First  in a  monthly (moon cycle) series of posts that detail ways to  reduce overt mood related  PMT (USA = PMS) symptoms.  

PMT treatment #1:   bunny bounce balancing

1. find cute small soft plushy,   in this example its the Easter bunny.
2. balance said plushy on foot.
3. jiggle foot to produce plushy-balance challenges (and baffle nearby cats).
4. jump up-and-down to make plushy-balancing even more challenging.    Push yourself to the absolute plushy-balancing limits.   This could be the birth of an extreme sport…..
5. attempt to photograph wobbling plushy mid-bounce.
6. blog about the  experience.

It works….

Introducing Sylvac specialist Chris Bateson:

I have collected sylvac for over 20 years and during this time have come across many finishes and colour variants. I am also good at spotting fakes, sadly there a quite a few of these about now.

Happy to answer any questions I will try and send you some photos of the more unusual colours in due course. I am looking now for just a few bunnies in the rarer colours to make up sets.

There were 8 sizes of rabbit in the early colours but from late 50s onwards this was reduced to just 5

Mould 1027 ceased in the 1940s. The 1400 tiny, 1065 and 1027 were not made in the later colours like primrose yellow, torquoise, gloss burnt orange,purple and mustard yellow

contact me at:  sylvacfinder@hotmail.co.uk

Wendy’s original geeky-ish scribble:

These original mold SylvaC Bunnies were produced Circa 1930 (thru to 1970). There are many ‘fakes’ on the Market judging by e-bay listings of what counts as a SylvaC bunny. A lot of the sellers don’t appear to know the legitimate mold numbers or the original colour-schemes. It is easy for someone with a copy of the original catalog (me) to spot the fakes.

A lot of buyers don’t appear to realize that SylvaC ceased trading in 1982. In the 1970′s SylvaC introduced a line of gloss-glazed rabbits and some new molds. I’ve seen sellers have either accidentally or knowingly misrepresented a post-1970 Bunny as Vintage. Maybe post 1970 is vintage?

The fakes are actually quite interesting in their own right. I’m thinking of extending my collecting strategy to explicitly collect the fakes. Provenance of the fakes is more difficult to trace. That makes them intriguing.

A catalog entry:

So cute!

All my bunnies have at least one partner except the big blue one,   1028. The big blue bunny was owned by my grandmother. It was searching for a partner for this one that kick started my collection. They are so cute!. But big blue is still in the company of all the little-ones and no partner

According to one e-bay advertisement Mould #1027 was only in use up to 1940… building of rumours and legends online…

Sweet bunny-hopping dreams