December insanity

Wow, what is happening to the time lately? The day starts and then *poof* it's all done. Still poking along the Phoenix sketches, making tiny revisions. I think they'll be approved shortly, and then I'll do the final drawings. The composition of these four is quite awful. They are long horizontal birds that must be drawn in a vertical space, so they end up being REALLY small, with horrible amounts of background around them. I'm going to have to come up with something creative to fill the space, and unfortunately I won't be able to get the same level of detail on these simply because of size.

I've also been working a lot on two large paintings, which I can't post on line til after Christmas. I think it's all coming back to me, how to paint, but it seems pretty weird, not having picked up a paintbrush for about a year.

It's also that time of year to make fattening foods. Yummmmy.... so not good for me, but oh well. I did a batch of fudge on Tuesday, a new recipe of chocolate-peppermint fudge today (not sure it'll turn out), and I might make the buckeye balls tonight. Or tomorrow. And I promised to bring cookies to an art show reception on Saturday, so... gotta fit those in tomorrow too. There's one particular chocolate chip recipe I want to make. It uses lots of walnuts, and I have a big bag of whole walnuts that's been sitting on the kitchen floor for about a month, and I really need to crack them out and roast them because I think that will be amazingly good. Hmm, when to fit that in..

I spent some time outside sitting with the birds today, I haven't had a chance to do that for a while. Some of the pullets are molting. Um, that's strange. These are birds that are not even a year old. Could it be the weather? I don't know. This happened last year too. I hope to have some halfway decent birds to show by the time the shows start up in a little over a month, but it's hard to say. One might surprise me but overall I think they were better last year. I am thinking about cutting back but not sure what to let go.

Still working on trying to get the right gait from Dusty the Tennessee Walker. I ride almost every day, and it's just not clicking. Who'd have thought you'd have to teach a gaited horse how to gait. Well, I suppose not all of them need that.. I can get him to do it sometimes, a little bit, but he doesn't sustain it or do it consistently enough for it to be any sort of useful skill. I'm not sure what to do about that, not sure I'm capable of getting it right. I can usually get one pretty good attempt from him and then he just starts fighting me. He's also getting more fidgety about being saddled. Saddle fit problem? Eager to get going? He doesn't seem mad, just moves around a lot. Maybe I'll put a few pads on him and use my saddle, or try him bareback or something just to see if I can pinpoint what's going on. Seems like sometimes when you work with horses things get worse before they get better. I wish I had more time right now.

It's hard to complain about the gorgeous weather but we need rain. The pasture's hardly have any grass. Same problem as last year, and then I look at pics from two years ago and it was lush, green, and several inches tall already.

Okay, gotta go draw, or paint, or bake, or clone myself so I can do all three.