too much time in the sun today

Ugh. My chickens are having a crowding crisis, so I spent much of the day re-roofing the big aviary coop so that I could finally move the youngsters in there. It took several more hours than I had planned, and ended up being rather complicated. But it worked, and shortly before sundown I managed to move about 30 little pullets out there. There are still a bunch more to move... It's time so separate the pullets and cockerels, so I'll be working on that all through the week. I'm going to auction again next Sunday, so that will help too!

Shylah wore her bit for 4 hours today (tied in the corral) so we'll see if that helps, I'll do that every day. I need to ride EVERY day now, I'm supposed to be taking her trail riding on Saturday, and then spending a week up north with her in mid August. I'm all worried that she's not ready, but I guess the best thing to do is just get her out there and go for it!

It's official... I'M GOING TO INDIANA FOR THE BIG SHOW!!!! :-) No birds, just me. Woo hoo! I'm excited, I didn't think I was going to be able to pull this off. Thank you to everyone who bought eggs, I have put that money to good use. :-)

you know I can't resist

He's just so cute! You wouldn't think this would be comfortable though.

how it all began...

Nineteen years ago upon this very day it all began. I got a pair of Spangled Old English Game Bantams. I named the male "Wilson" after the breeder, and I named the female "July" for obvious reasons. It all started with two birds. Wilson was a mean little booger, he and I never got along all that well. July was such a sweet little thing. She was my showmanship bird at my first show, the Sacramento County Fair in 1988. There were three breeds I had been considering when we went to look at birds: Buff Laced Polish, BBRed Old English, and Spangled Old English. I'd been quite smitten with Polish in pictures, but when I saw them in person I wasn't as thrilled. But the Spangled OE.. there will always be a special place in my heart for Spangled OE! It's hard to believe it's been nineteen years. Let's hope it lasts many many more!

In other news...

I rode Shylah without a bit tonight, just put her in a halter. She was a lot better, no head flinging, and she didn't carry her head quite so high. I think a lot of that must just be her conformation and how she moves. I'm so used to Gwen, who is pretty much completely horizontal. Plus with Shylah being so small, when she puts her neck up I can reach out and pat the top of her head! Very strange. Anyway, she seemed to be more responsive in just a halter. Hmm. I think I'll have her wear the bit around for a while (in the corral, or tied up) and see if just having her deal with it more often might fix the problem (or else make it worse, we'll see).

Stupid spell check still isn't working!

this and that

Well, the weather is finally decent again! Woo hoo! I rode tonight for the first time in about two weeks. Shylah doesn't eat oats, but obviously that doesn't stop her from feeling them! I was glad I lunged her for a while.. She was pretty good today, we did walking, trotting, and LOTS of changing direction, going around imaginary things, etc. She's getting much worse about the bit though, to the point where she's extremely difficult to bridle, yawns all the time when she's wearing it, and pretty much just fusses about it constantly. I'm at a loss as to whether this is "one of those things" they go through, or if there is an actual physical issue. Advice anyone? I think I'm going to ride her with a halter tomorrow and see if she carries herself better. It's strange riding her in the custom saddle. Between the slick seat and her being shorter at the shoulders I feel like I'm slipping off the front. I'm not, but it's an odd sensation that will take a bit of getting used to. I don't know if a build-up pad would help or not. The problem is no longer that she's too narrow for the saddle, it's just her odd conformation... Platform shoes, perhaps...hee hee.

It was brought to my attention the other day that I need to start thinking about Draft Horse Classic. Ugh, not ready! There is a lot to do, gotta get a bunch of new work printed, framed, etc. I'll procrastinate for a while yet before I get too concerned.

At least one of the rats that got away has taken up residence under my meticulously stacked pile of hay bales in the barn. CRAP!!! There is no way I am unstacking those bales.

I need to pick blackberries, I hope they haven't all dried up and turned to fossils. It's quite possible, I haven't been out there to check.

I can never seem to draw the same thing the same way twice. The drawings I finished up a couple days ago (the pair in six days! Yowza! I MUST maintain that pace!!) were Red Pyle Modern Games, and now I'm working on Red Pyle Old English. Same color, different shape, but I seem to be incapable of creating that color the same way twice. It all works out though, only I would know the difference... I should make a note of how I do all this stuff. I tend to count on myself to remember, haha, bad idea...

It was a good week. I am back in touch with an old friend I never thought I would see again (if you're reading this, "hi!!") :-) Small world.

I've still been thinking about making more miniature drawings and selling them online. I'd like to have a few more ready to go before I do anything though, and I think I need to head into town and see what's available in terms of really small frames that aren't ultra-cutesy, as that won't work well with game roosters... Most people don't want to mess around with framing though, so if I can do it reasonably myself I think that would be best. Probably means I'll need to change the size of the mini drawings though, so I'll hold off on that for now. What am I thinking anyway? Criminy, I have to get this Standard stuff done. Indiana and Insanity are right around the corner!

On that note, I'll put in a bit more drawing, but I'm not going to last long tonight. *yawn*

art pricing

I've been looking around the internet at other artist's price lists, out of curiosity. I have a set price list (or I should say I will once I publish it again...haven't done so yet because the Standard thing is sort of never-ending and I haven't taken on extra work anyway). But I've come to the conclusion that the other artists of the world either must work MUCH faster than I do (this is quite possible, I am absurdly slow even when I am working as fast as I can), or the other artists of the world are SEVERELY underselling themselves, and in the process dragging prices down for those of us who actually would like to make a living at this. I'm seeing HUGE art priced in the very very very low hundreds. What's up with that? Consider the hours, the time, the effort, how much is that per hour? Not much, I will bet you. It's not doing anybody any favors to work for peanuts, and it just reinforces that stupid notion that because artists enjoy what we do that we really don't need to get paid very much for it. That notion ought to get flushed down the toilet. I guess my price list might drop a few jaws when it's out there again, but I know the time I spend, and I know what I need to make per hour, and I'm not going to be willing to settle for less anymore.

Yes, I'm feeling feisty today! >;-)

Horses and Watermelon!

Ok, it's a bit hard to film this AND feed the ravenous sharks, but I did my best. These are pretty big quicktime movies, you probably will only want to open these if you have a high speed connection.

Mmm, horse drool!

More watermelon please!

ACEO - Game Fowl #2

Edited: I think we can all live with this now. :-)

I did this one at midnight last night.

"Game Fowl #2"
2.5" x 3.5"
colored pencil and graphite on gray Rising Stonehenge paper
for sale

ACEO - Game Fowl #1

It's 88.7 right now. High of 115, low of 80. I am questioning the wisdom of biking tomorrow morning, but I'll see how it is at the time.

Strangely, there isn't any hot water tonight...hmm.

I had to empty out the horse water troughs today, the water was actually HOT. It usually gets warm during the days in the summer, but it was HOT. Ugh, that's not fun at all, I think the 117 degree time was when I was out there doing that! Hopefully I'm not going to have to do that every day, it's a pain. Maybe I can just siphon out most of the water if I need to, so that I don't have to mess around with trying to catch all the mosquito fish (if you don't know what those are, they're little fish that eat mosquito larvae, and whatever else ends up in the water).

Today is my annual "remember your first horse" day, in memory of Thunder. You know, she and Gwen probably would have hated each other. Hard to believe it's been 7 years....

I had a very productive weekend on the artistic front, got a lot of Standard stuff done.

Recently I read about these things called "ACEO's" which stands for "Art Cards, Editions and Originals." Apparently they are quite the thing and a lot of people are crazy about collecting them. I guess it's like a trading card. They are 2.5 by 3.5 inches, some are original artwork and some I guess must be prints of originals. Obviously I know very little about these things. But I had a little time on my hands this afternoon. It was a gazillion outside and I was awaiting feedback/answers on several Standard-related questions, so rather than twiddle my thumbs I figured I'd do a quickie art project. It's really quite nice to create something where I don't have to check with anybody or get it approved or anything! You'd think I'd draw something other than a chicken, like *anything* other than a chicken...but no. I keep thinking I need to get into the game fowl stuff a bit, I think that would be a lucrative market.

So, here we have my first ACEO, which is pretty much just a small drawing and will be priced as such.

"Game Fowl #1"
2.5" x 3.5"
colored pencil and graphite on gray Rising Stonehenge paper
(why the incised lines? Just seemed interesting..)
for sale

the weather, what else is there?!

It is 93 degrees right now. It got up to 115 today. It only went down to 79 last night. The swimming pool feels like bath water.

The two big egg-layer hens died today from the heat. :-( I make the rounds a couple times a day now to check the birds and water down anything that looks too hot. Well, they all look too hot, but everybody seemed to be holding up. But the next time I went out, they had died. :-( I feel terrible about it, like I should have brought those two in the house maybe. The big birds don't handle the heat as well as the bantams. The Rosecombs are all okay so far. I caught one Blue Brassy hen on the verge of overheating, but I put her in some cool water and she came around pretty quickly and I think she will be okay. *sigh* It's such a hard thing, it happens so fast. They are all out there panting like mad, even if I do water them down, and it sure doesn't take long for a bird to go from looking fine to being dead.

It's forecast to be over 100 through the end of next week. This is horrible! I was considering taking Shylah to a playday next weekend but I think I'll need to skip it. I don't want to be out all day in the heat, and I'd also planned on doing a lot more riding than I've been able to do.

On the bright side, the art work is coming along at a pretty good pace lately.

oppressive

It's about 9pm, and it's 92 degrees outside. It's awful.

That pretty much sums up the week. Get up early and feed everything, work inside all day, make the rounds in the afternoon to check the birds, don't go out again til evening feeding time. I haven't done any horse work for over a week. Hopefully Shylah won't be too exciting next time I'm in the saddle...

I saw "The Devil Wears Prada" today, it was excellent.

Not much to talk about...too hot...brain melting...

hot hot hot

There really isn't a whole lot to say, but I thought I'd check in. It's been HOT here. I know I know, "at least it's a dry heat" but ugh I am not liking it! Looks like I won't be doing any horse work this week, I just don't feel right asking them to exert themselves (plus I'm not too keen on wearing jeans and boots in 100+ degree weather).

I'm trying to think of something else to talk about but I can't. I think my brain might have cooked. :-)

yet another exciting Saturday

Or not, I might have been a bit sarcastic about that.

I did get to sort through all the chickens this evening, since tomorrow is auction day. I'm taking about 70 birds, but I don't know the exact number. Mostly youngsters, about 2/3 of them are males. At this point I'm focusing more on getting rid of obviously-bad birds, rather than paying much attention to the good ones. That comes later. Right now I look at combs, ear lobes, feather color, and leg color. I ended up culling out six REALLY nice colored BBRed pullets that all have inverted spikes. UGH!! It just kills me to do that, since good colored BBReds are few and far between, but I now have a zero-tolerance policy on inverted spikes. Even if they do pop out when they get older, I don't want those genes getting passed along. I've been told I'm too harsh about that, but... c'est la vie, as they say. Anyway, I'll still have WAY too many chickens and will definitely be taking a whole lot more to auction in August, but this will definitely help ease the crowding!

I narrowed the Crele birds down to five: two males and three females. But I'm still leaning toward scrapping the whole Crele thing. I'll give them a little more time to feather out and grow, but they are huge, poorly colored, and I'm just not sure I'm up for that much of a challenge, and I don't think I have the coop space to work on three new colors plus the ones I already have. The Cuckoos have somewhat more potential, but I'm not even sure yet I can make that color work. They are large but not as huge as the Creles, and also poorly colored. The youngest of the Silvers are not feathered out yet so it's hard to tell much about them, but dang those Blue Silver pullets are cute!

I'm starting to think seriously about going to the Nationals in Indiana this November. I'm 99% sure I would not take birds (don't want that hassle or added expense, and it's unlikely I'm going to have a whole lot of birds finished out by then anyway) but I hate the idea of missing what could be one of the last BIG shows. You know, "everybody" is going to be there. Shouldn't that include me?! ;-) We'll see, definitely nothing set in stone yet, but I really would like to be there. I wouldn't take art stuff for sale either, that's such a hassle, and enormously expensive.

Horse pictures

And now, for your viewing pleasure, some horse photographs I've taken in the last couple days.

Remember Sampson? He says hi. He's HUGE.

And the little filly Sugar has grown so much!

Last night I went to see the Lipizzaner show down in Stockton. I'd never seen it before. How cool! We had great seats, fairly close to the front. I took a million pics. Most are at least somewhat blurry. I was shooting without a flash in order to capture the lighting. Shutter speeds were between 1/30 and 1/125 of a second, all other settings were automatic. It's a really hard thing to photograph, because it's a moving subject in extremely low light (the arena is dark, the horses are in a spotlight. So a moving subject should use a short shutter speed, but then that doesn't let in much light! These are a few of the best. There are many many more, and even the slightly blurred ones are useful to me as art references.







Way out of focus but you get the idea... capriole:


This one's an Andalusian!

Heh heh

Some day I need to shoot a little video of the horses eating watermelon rinds. It's hilarious. You would not believe the drool.

the rat hunt

Well that was just all kinds of exciting! (should I admit that?) J came over this morning and hooked his pickup to the coop (it's about a 4x8' coop) and dragged it off its present location. I was expecting maybe 8 rats underneath, since I'd seen 6 babies the other night and knew there would be a few adults. Well.......

Between three people and two dogs, I'm guessing about 18 rats were killed. I have to guess because toward the end of it Jessie and Nellie decided that since the action was slowing down they would go ahead and eat a couple rats each (gross!!!). So there was a pile of 10 dead, plus whatever they ate, which could have easily been 8 more. No pics, it was WAY too disgusting. J brought his two dogs too but I don't think either one caught anything. One wanted nothing to do with it, and the other just lacked experience.

Unfortunately 3 adults did get away. I'm hoping the dogs will get them later, or that they will just move onward. There's a lot of work to be done to the coop, probably going to put a thin pad of cement underneath, but it's really stinkin hot outside now.

Whee!! Let's hope we don't have to do that again!

Edit: add two more to the total!

Edit: and another two...

I have really bad aim

I wasted some perfectly good ammunition tonight trying to shoot rats in the chicken coop. There is one coop that has been absolutely plagued by rats. They won't allow themselves to get trapped, they won't touch poison, they are sneaky buggers. I killed one last week (not by shooting it) and tonight I went out after dark and tried again. Yeah, I really shouldn't bother. If there was a family of hyenas living under there I probably still wouldn't be able to hit one, so a rat is out of the question. Thursday though will be the end of the rat family. We are going to drag the coop off that location (it's one of the moveable ones, they are under plywood floor) and the dogs and I are going to do what needs to be done. I'll post up a pic of my bounty if I can. I've been warned not to blog about this (it's not ladylike, you'll all think I'm a freak) but hey, it's what makes life interesting and I'm sure you've already all figured out I'm a little weird anyway. I'll just make sure to leave "killing rats" out of my list of hobbies in any personal ads or anything! ;-) Then again...

Pictures Today

I like it when other people post photos, so hopefully people who read my blog like it when I post photos.

What to do on a hot day... Jessie says find a shady patch of sidewalk!

Nellie says look for some mud...

This BBRed cockerel has a fantastic showy attitude, but I suspect he's going to end being excessively red in his black areas. *sigh*

One of the many Cuckoo chicks, this one is F1xF1, therefore only half Rosecomb (half Dominique).

Two of the crele boys, I'm still quite undecided whether to pursue this color or not.

An interesting photo, these are some of the oldest youngsters. That black pullet is not a pure black Rosecomb, she's out of the Cuckoo breeding pen.

Well looky here, the two single comb cuckoo boys in the same photo (KL this one's for you!) Although they come from the F1xF1 (cuckoo X cuckoo) breeding pen they really aren't that much better colored than the Cuckoo X Black birds. Definitely lacking barring on the wings and tail...

the last of the chicks

The last chicks hatched about two weeks ago, I just never got around to posting numbers. So here they are:

Batch 8

B/BBRed: BBRed male X Brown Red females= 2 BBRed, 3 Brown Red
T6/Silver: Silver Duckwing OE male X Black RC females= 1 Silver Duckwing
T7/BBRed: Brown Red male X BBRed females= 1 BBRed, 1 Brown Red
N3/Black: Black X Black=5 Black
N4/Black: Black X Black= 1 Black
N5/Black: Black X Black= 5 Black

Batch 9

T6/Silver: Silver Duckwing OE male X Black RC females: 1 Silver Duckwing, 1 Black w/ slight pale stippling (don't know what this is)
N3/Black: Black X Black: 3 Black
N4/Black: Black X Black: 1 Black

And that's it! No more! All done! Remind me not to hatch so many next year. I can't wait for the next auction, I'd like to take about half of them...

Woo hoo!

Good news! I just found out that both my entries for Draft Horse Classic (The First of Spring and Oregon Wade) were accepted, and that I have been accepted for a booth as well. Yay! I really enjoy that show, and I'm so honored to be a part of it again.

We had a couple days of decent weather but it's 103 right now, and that's pretty indecent as far as I am concerned. Looks like the horses will get the day off, and maybe more... Shylah's been doing quite well over all. She's definitely getting more responsive. E cantered her for the first time the day before yesterday, and then got a much more sustained canter last night (several laps around the round pen each direction). Shylah throws her head around quite a bit though, she's pretty obviously irritated about this whole forward motion thing, but then she seems to realize that head-tossing isn't going to do the trick and then she settles down and moves more nicely. She does go through some hard-headed annoying phases though, and she's in one of them now. Last night she refused to walk into the barn (she's only been in there a million times). I think it's her work-avoidance plan, like if I can't get her into the cross ties then perhaps I won't be able to saddle her up and make her move. Well... since forward wasn't working well, I turned her around and backed her into the barn. After about 20 feet of that she was standing in the cross ties and you could just tell her expression was "oh crap, that didn't work." I took her back out and tried again. No problem. :-) I'm not too concerned about any of this stuff, she's made SOO much progress overall. After the serious riding we take Shylah and Gwen out and just ride around the pastures for a bit. I've been riding Gwen while E rides Shylah (or vice versa). Seems to inspire forward motion a bit to have Gwen in there working too. No riding tonight though, too hot.

Shylah is pretty good at untying herself too. Ugh. Gotta be careful tying her with a slip knot. B.H. was here this morning to trim/shoe the horses and while he was working on Gwen I realized Shylah had untied herself. I fastened her to the fence more securely, and a few minutes later I noticed that the tail of the lead rope was in her mouth. Gah! So now the cool leather poppers on my EXPENSIVE 14' lead rope are all chewed up. Great... To Shylah, everything is edible... I'm not sure how she did that, she's chewed up poppers on another rope so I now make sure they are hanging well out of her reach. She must have somehow pulled up all the slack til she got to the end. She's got talent, gotta give her that.

I hung artwork at a dentist office in Sacramento earlier this week. The work will hang for two months. It's part of a program that the Elk Grove Artist club does, hanging work at local businesses. I've never sold a piece doing this (I wonder if anyone has) but oh well at least it gets it out there.

Ok, back to drawing, or anything else that keeps me in the air conditioning til much later today!

Interesting Things

And now for the June installment of "keywords that lead people to one of my domains!"

"what should i do with my chicken if its scared" Stop whatever is scaring it.
"hot drawings" Hmm, I've done a few of those, I don't post them on line though... ;-)
"oh my gosh you scared my insides song" Oh my gosh I'm so sorry (what?!?!)
"rubber blanket germany offset printing" I know what this means but it makes me want to say "rubber baby buggy bumpers"
"abused chicks for sale and where to get them" Criminy, that just sounds awful.
"chicken party pic" Heh heh, a spy? What happens at the chicken parties stays at the chicken parties! :-)
"fly lady work sheets" No idea...
"what did the first impala look like" I could tell you but I'd have to kill you.
"show me chicken wire"
"show me ornamental poultry"
"tell me the history of bantam chickens" Geez, demanding aren't we??
"chicken man" Ah yes, if you find one with the right qualifications please do send him my way, okay?
"are ducks white" Only the white ones.

pyrotechnics

Hope you all had a great 4th of July! I experimented with photographing the fireworks this year, it went well. Shutter speeds between 1/30 second and 1/8 second worked best, and it varied depending how "sparky" the fireworks were. All the other camera settings were on automatic, and I was not using a tripod or timer.

Oh I'm going to sleep well tonight!

I'm absolutely exhausted. I left here at 10:15am on Friday, and drove up to Eureka for the annual "summer fun" poultry show. I know I keep saying I'm going to the last show of the season. Well, that really was it. No more. State Fair will be in early September, and then the open show season starts up in mid/late October. But in early July, when the Sacramento valley is approximately a million degrees, it's soooooo nice to head north and hang out on the coast for a weekend, where the daytime highs are lower than our nighttime lows!

I only took two birds, Diva and Luna (Black Rosecomb hens). They are in miraculously good shape for this time of year, and I hope they hold out for State Fair. I may even get to show them as two-year olds. I'm impressed, birds tend to get pretty ragged during breeding season. I took 22 other birds though that were pre-sold to A.R. and D.W. and this time of year when I'm overrun with chickens it's certainly nice to get rid of a bunch! :-) The only roosters were a couple of 8-week olds, so it was a quiet ride. The youngsters were chatty the whole time, but that's a very pleasant sound.

I had a really good time up there, got to spend some time with friends and it's just a really "mellow" show so I managed to do plenty of relaxing too. It's far away... yes. It's just over 300 miles. I also brought up two framed Standard drawings for one of the sponsors who lives up there, and it totally thrills me how happy he was with them. Sometimes the politics and various "issues" of that job really start to drag me down, but when a sponsor is that happy it's like "ahh, so THAT's why I'm doing this!" :-)

Oh, and Luna won Reserve Grand Champion! It was a very small show, but I'm quite pleased nonetheless!

So here I am leaving the flat valley and heading into them thar hills on hwy 20 just outside Williams:

Clear Lake itself really isn't crooked, the camera was! Clear Lake is very large, and very pretty, and I would have had to pull over to get a good pic but I was on the wrong side of the road:

Highway 101. It looks like this for much of the drive and then it gets into the redwoods:

Redwoods on the "Avenue of the Giants" which is a scenic alternate route. Slower, but pretty. Everybody should walk/drive/ride through a redwood forest at some point in their lives, it's magnificent:

Do I have pictures of the birds? Nope, you've seen them... didn't get around to taking bird pics. And once again I have no photos of my chicken buddies because I'm a total dork about taking photos and seem to only be capable of taking photos of scenery and animals. I actually do hang out with humans from time to time, I just don't have photo proof! ;-)

I had originally planned to head out to the beach right after the lunch on Saturday when it was sunny and nice, but I was pretty quickly morphing into sleep-deprived-zombie mode so I decided napping actually made more sense. That may not have been the wisest move, because by the time I did get out to the beach that evening after dinner it was overcast, windy, and downright cold by the water. Nevertheless, I did go, so...goal achieved. The little strip of orange is as much of a sunset as I got!

Starfish on the rocks, there were a whole lot of these:

To my reluctant tour-guide, thank you for going with me. :-) This one's for you:

Instead of going straight home afterwards, I had decided to take a different route and head over past Redding to visit J.C. and D.C. again. So instead of going back down 101 I took 299 east. 299 is very very pretty, but it's hard to spend much time actually looking at it, because I have to focus pretty hard on not driving off a cliff or something. The road winds around quite a bit, to say the least. Winding roads are a foreign concept around here, so it's always an adventure to drive on them. A friend of mine once told me that one of the first drives he ever did shortly after getting his license was to haul a load of horses over 299 on a rainy night. I think I would probably die if I tried that. No way would I drive that road in the dark!

Anyway, I left Eureka just after 9:30am on Sunday. It was 55 degrees and overcast:

Yay for scenic vista points! I pulled over and took a couple pics overlooking a big valley. There was a scary looking hippie dude up there blasting music out of his vw van and dancing around... needless to say I made sure to park on the opposite end of the vista thing.


4 hours later I arrived at my destination, and it was right around 100 degrees. Ugh, I wanted to go back to the coast! We sat in the air conditioning and watched movies until it was cool enough to go outside after dinner. I got to meet the buckskin Azteca filly this time, she wasn't born yet last time I was there. Boy is she a looker!

And friendly!

I was hoping she would turn around toward me, but this ended up being an interesting photo anyway:

I left there this morning, got home around lunchtime, and have been desperately wanting to take a nap ever since then but I haven't had time, too much work to do. This evening I figured I'd better work Shylah, since I knew I wouldn't have time tomorrow or Thursday. She's really quite good at the walk, and she's improving on her responses to rein and leg pressure. Holy moly she's a lazy little thing though. I asked her for a trot today (I was out there alone, nobody doing groundwork today, just me riding). She didn't want to move, but once I asked for it I knew I had to get it, and that took a lot of kicking! I think partly there's the issue of her not totally understanding yet, but there's no doubt she's quite lazy and I think that's more the problem right now. She did finally trot, and got slightly better about responding by the end of the lesson, but it's going to be a miracle if I can actually move tomorrow....