We Canter All The Time!

 Maybe not every minute of every ride, but we are cantering a whole lot more in the last few weeks.  A year ago, we didn't canter at all under saddle, for various reasons.  Now, canter is even part of our warm up.  Canter departs are almost spot on. Depart left is great.  Depart right we alternate between tension and rushing, or being calm and just popping right into it nice and round. The canter itself is calm, balanced and feels beautiful to ride.

The scary end of the arena is not so very scary anymore, in fact, last week we even cantered (calmly) through it!  Things are finally starting to feel like they did last summer before my knee went wonky.

We're also doing little bits of shoulder in to the left and to the right at the walk.  It's better to the right, and the leg yield off the right leg is also better than to the left.  I need to do some thinking on that--is it my body or is it his?  Most likely mine.  So, so many things boil down to rider position being not spot on.

This week, we're on a short break from riding.  You see, Camaro decided to rip his left front shoe off in his stall on Friday morning.  *sigh*  I'd like to think he was practicing crossing his legs for lateral work and just stepped on himself, but it was most likely a spat of idiocy brought on by the horrendous gale force winds we'd had since the afternoon before.

Shoe, a wee bit bent.

Note chunk of foot still attached to shoe :-(

This is where that chunk of foot came from.

Nice nail tracks, bud. Couldn't you have let those nails slide straight out?

Thankfully (luckily??) he just tore off some wall, and didn't get into anything sensitive.  Also thankfully, although we've been complaining a ton about it, every single turnout is nice gooey mud still, so he's not been sore at all like he might have been if the ground was hard.  He wears front shoes because he's a bit thin soled, so I was pretty worried about having him run around with a shoe off  for a few days.

So far, so good. We're not riding until that shoe goes back on because I don't want to risk making him sore by even walking around with the weight of a rider on his back.

His farrier is due tomorrow for the regularly scheduled 6-week trim and reset, so I was really really hoping we'd make it through without having to put in an emergency call on Easter weekend.  Now the question will be is there enough structure left to get nails back into securely?  We'll find out in the morning. . . 

Sewing & Stitching, April Update

Like knitting, it looks like I managed to get a whole bunch of sewing and stitching done recently!  Work trip for DH, plus Spring Break for the school where DD1 works (so, no babysitting Faline!) and I'm looking super efficient in my crafting lately.

I've made a lot of progress on the Sew by Row counted cross stitch I've been working on on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'm on the next to last motif row and then there's some back stitching work to be done. Quite possibly this will be completed in the coming month.  Definitely by the time the school year ends in early June (and I'll be 'off'' from babysitting for the summer).

In addition to lots of counted cross stitch, I made four quilt blocks for the spring quilt on an internet forum I've belonged to for many years.

9 patch variation

Clover blossom

Big Dipper

 (I altered to make all blocks same colors)

Road to Heaven

All of the instructions, except for the Clover Blossom block, came from this really cool Quilt Builder Card Deck I bought myself as a birthday present last year (hey, when you turn 50, you're allowed to buy yourself a present!).  Check it out here on Amazon; what I love best is that each block pattern has cutting directions for FIVE different sizes of blocks.  How cool is that??  So cool that I have, on preorder, the Quilt Builder Card Deck 2.  

In addition to the quilt blocks, I cut out (from canvas) and stitched up 2 new sets of cornhole bags because the original ones I made 10 or so years ago when DH made our cornhole boards, have gotten frayed and worn.  A few started leaking corn bits last summer.

The new ones are waiting for DH to measure out and put the corn (gleaned from last year's crop) in them before I do the final stitching, and then we'll be ready for a summer of cornhole games with friends and family.

Last, but not least, I made a pillow for using out on the porch swing.  I had gotten the heavy broadcloth fabric last fall, and just this week pulled it out and made a pillow cover (using same instructions as the reading pillows I made the grandkids for Christmas, minus the book pocket and handle).  I'm ready for warm days reading or knitting or stitching on the porch swing this summer!

I think this fox fabric is so cute.  And so does DD2:  she tried to claim the pillow for herself as soon I as I had finished it!

2022's chickens

 Last week, the first batch of broiler chicks for 2022 arrived at this little place here.  Only 4 were lost in shipping (aka DOA), which is waaayyy better than what my experience was last year.  Last year, I almost couldn't deal with raising meat birds, all because of two shipments in a row of chicks that were 95-98% dead on arrival.  The worst shipping fatality rate I'd ever dealt with, and while the USPS tried to blame it on the hatchery, looking up the tracking history of both those shipments told a different story.  You can't hold chicks for 36+ hours in one location, then send them on to two more locations between hatchery and  end destination and have them arrive alive.  Not when they need to hatch, ship, and be received in less than 72 hours.  

Was it my fault those poor birds croaked before they really got to live?  NO.  18 years of getting chicks through the mail with a very very low loss rate (something like a dozen birds out of HUNDREDS) told me that I wasn't to blame.  But still, those needless deaths weighed heavy on my conscience.  

Not only was it depressing at the time, it also resulted in not enough chicken in the freezer to get through until this summer.  Even though I ended up finally getting replacement chicks that the USPS didn't hold in transit and actually arrived alive in July last year, it wasn't enough and I had to (try) to buy chicken from the grocery store over the winter

Did I mention it was depressing and guilt inducing? I was very hesitant to order chicks this year.  However, grocery store chicken just wasn't going to be acceptable. The quality, the prices, the taste, the texture, the inconsistent supply. . . 

So in February I said a prayer, reminded myself that I (and the hatchery) hadn't done anything wrong, and ordered two batches of broilers.  One to arrive in early April and be butchered before our annual Grandkids Week vacation, and the other to arrive in late July, after Grandkids Week is over and I've had a chance to recover from it.  LOL.

April's birds are here!  Other than the 4 who didn't survive the journey (refund is in processing from the hatchery for those; awesome customer service), they are healthy and growing rapidly.

After getting them settled into the brooder on the morning they arrived, and then going to work at the horse farm, I stopped at the farm store to see what they might have in the way of pullet chicks.  I wanted to get just 4 to raise up to be next fall and winter's egg layers for me. Because of the troubles I'd had with April chick orders in 2021, I'd decided to get my pullet chicks from whatever the farm store offered rather than ordering specific ones with my broiler chicks.  Just in case. At least that way I was guaranteed live egg layer chicks in time for them to mature and be laying by fall.

Luck had it that the farm store had also received batches of chicks that day, and I was able to not only get 4 pullet chicks (2 Ameracuna and 2 Blue Plymouth Rock), but also purchase 4 Cornish cross broiler chicks.  So my count of birds for the freezer in June isn't down afterall.

2022 is off to a way better start, chicken-wise, than 2021 was.  Hooray!

Knitting Update, April

 There has been much knitting.  I can't quite believe how much knitting.  I guess when DH is out of town (he had two trips in March, totaling 10 days), I get a whole lot more crafting done than when he's home.  Then again, when he's gone, I tend to eat leftovers instead of cooking a new meal each day, so there's quite a bit of time savings for me both in cooking and in dish washing.

First, I finished the rick rack socks I have been making for Mother-in-Law. The bottom picture has more true colors than the top one.

Then, I whipped up some fingerless gloves for myself using yarn and a pattern than my Mom had given me as a thank you for making her socks this winter.  The pattern is called Drops of Spring Mitts and the yarn is the called for yarn, but not all the exact same colors.  They were really fast and easy to knit up, although I have to say the palette is not what I would usually choose for myself.  (And again, the picture doesn't come close to being accurate for color representation.)

I had these mitts sitting on the cedar chest in my living room last week when Faline stopped over to play for a little bit. She took to them immediately, very proudly putting them on herself.  She was a little surprised when her little fingers popped out the ends and exclaimed "UH-OH!" apparently thinking those mittens were broken!

My current knitting project is a pair of Destination Unknown socks from verybusymonkey.  This was her mystery sock pattern for 2020, and I am just now getting to it.  I love her patterns.  They are so easy to follow that you make a complicated looking sock very quickly.  I started these last week and have all ready finished the charted portion for Clue 3.

There were quite a few books read in the last month also.  

Home Made by Liz Hauck, was an interesting read.  Thought provoking, and also tear jerking in spots, it is a non-fiction book.

Across the Bridge by Kristin Neva is the third book of her Copper Island trilogy.  It's a quick, light read and I enjoyed going back to some of the places I am familiar with (in real life) from that part of the Upper Peninsula.

The Gates to Brilliance by Robert Dover.  WOW.  I had been waiting and waiting to get this book from the library, and it was not really what I had expected.  Not in a bad way, but WOW!  This memoir of an Olympic dressage rider that I have watched, in my lifetime, have an illustrious career covered so much more than just the horse aspects of his life.  Reading it was almost like reliving my teen and adult years, but in a parallel universe where what I experienced wasn't the entire reality.  

Shamed by Linda Castillo is another great Kate Burkholder mystery.  I ate this one up in just a few days.

The Rider's Balance by Sylvia Loch has great descriptions and photographs of how to properly distribute your weight when riding different movements in dressage.  I really liked this book; I think I'm going to buy a copy for myself (this one I borrowed from the library).

The Secret Life of Anna Blanc by Jennifer Kincheloe is what I am currently reading.  I'm only a few chapters into it (started it last night), but it's entertaining and a fun read that has me hooked.

A New Old High Chair

 Way back when my kids were babies, I wanted an old fashioned wooden high chair.  But, such things were a) hard to find, and b) out of my budget.  Besides, I'd been gifted a nice new high chair at the baby shower that was thrown for me when I was pregnant with DS1.  So, a wooden high chair just wasn't in the cards.

Fast forward many, many years.  More than thirty, in fact.  Toward the end of her pregnancy with Faline, DD1 sent me a text with a picture of what looked like a 1950s wooden high chair.  It was followed with a text that read "$15, are you interested? It's just down the road from me, I'll go get it."

She had a modern high chair all ready for Faline, but knew that I still wanted a wooden high chair to use at this little place here when grandkids visit.

I jumped on the offer, telling her that if it was sturdy and in usable shape, to please get it. So she did.  And I'm so happy she saw it, because it's in great shape.

The finish had worn off the tray, most likely from years of use, but the rest of it just needed a wash.

When I was staining the porch swing last summer (talked about in this post), I also refinished the high chair tray.  I put on two coats of the same stain/sealant as the swing, and the tray looked good as new.

The stain almost matches the original color on the high chair.  I thought about maybe sanding down the rest of the chair and refinishing it too, so that it all is the exact same shade, but that would be about impossible without damaging the cute rabbit decal that is on it.  So, I left the rest alone.  Under most lighting, you can barely tell that the tray isn't a perfect match.

And that is how I finally got my wooden high chair.  It is missing the identifying plaque that once upon a time was on the footrest, so I don't know when it was made, or who manufactured it.  Searching the internet tells me it could be as old as the 1940s, or as young as the 1960s.  Either way, it's worth way more than the $15 I paid for it.  But, to me, the value is in it's usability.  Like the vast majority of the other antique items in my possession, it's purpose is utilitarian rather than decorative.

Faline totally approves.

Horse Update, March

 

 

The weather this month has been something like this:  blue sky and warm. Two days later, cold, windy, and snow.  Several days later, blue sky and warm.  A couple days later, wind, cold, and snow.

But, we're getting there.  Camaro is shedding more and more.  He's getting a lot of scrubbing this month, both because of all the loose hair, and because he's delighting in rolling around in the mud while wearing his new 'spring jacket'.  In the picture above, he'd been wearing it less than 48 hours, and I'd all ready taken a rice root brush to it to get the caked on mud off. . . 

Riding is picking up.  I'm trying my darnedest to stick to a M-W-F riding schedule (since Tues and Thurs are babysit Faline days and I have to be done with all barn related things by noon on the dot).  So far, so good. Even the weather has cooperated with that plan, not being too windy and gusty on those days.  

I feel that progress is being made more rapidly.  We're doing better on the scary door end of the arena, and on the non-scary end, we canter both directions nearly every ride.  Left canter depart is great, to the point that he's starting to anticipate it and I don't need to prep him quite so many steps ahead of where I want the depart to occur.  To the right, some days are smooth and natural, others are a bit tense and rushy.

Meanwhile, when we're not cantering, we do quite a bit of walk work schooling leg yield in both directions,  introducing shoulder in, playing with shortening and lengthening stride at the walk, and just general responsiveness and suppling.  Especially suppling and responsiveness approaching that horse eating door area.

In terms of trot, if we're not concentrating on staying.  on.  the.  bit.   when going towards and through the scary end (while NOT trying to fall through the inside shoulder to avoid the door), we're doing lots of 10 meter circles, changes of direction through the diagonal, stretchy trot and , especially to the right, alternating between rising and sitting trot because he still thinks sitting trot means that we are going to canter any second and gets really flat and rushy to the right.

Will we be ready to show Intro C (with it's canter circles) in two months???  I'm hoping so.  At least this door nonsense is giving me lots of practice in keeping my cool and position and enforcing to Camaro that he needs to concentrate on me and listen to my aids no matter what is going on.

Sewing & Stitching Update, March

 As far as sewing goes, there's been a whole lot more thinking than sewing (or quilting) going on.  The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.  Or, rather, the brain is guiltily thinking about all the sewing that is NOT getting done.

Stitching, though, has been happening on Tuesday and Thursdays--the days I babysit Faline in the afternoons--and I am feeling like there's progress being made there.  I am working on the Sew By Row pattern from Lori Holt (that I bought early last year? Or late 2020? and finally pulled out to work on).  This will be a project that I will keep for myself, to hang in the (hopefully actually created this summer) sewing/crafting room down in the basement.