weekend

This was a pretty fun weekend!

My friends CS, AC, and TC all came over and brought their puppies. This was handy place to meet for a "puppy play date" (they are a month apart, about 4 and 5 months old, so cute!) The puppies played the WHOLE time. CS and TC also brought their drums and we all sat out in the yard and they worked on some rhythms that could be used for dancing. I attempted to join in on the zills but as we all know my musical skills are pretty much non-existent.

I went riding after they left. I just focused on roundpen/arena stuff. I was curious to see if Shylah's canter would improve if she wasn't wearing a saddle. So I just put the bareback pad on her. It was interesting. Didn't help her canter at all, it's still crazy bouncy (and of course it didn't help that I'm trying to stick on there thinking "oh crap this is going to be bouncy"). Oh well. I'm relieved it's not the saddle (either one of mine) causing problems, and I know I can't entirely blame it on my big butt, since everyone who's ridden her has vouched that is it a strange canter, even my fly-weight teenage neighbor (the first person who ever cantered her).

I must say though that her trot is just exquisite. I could trot around all day, and it's lovely in a bareback pad. She is so sensitive to leg cues, it's just fantastic. It was easier to cue those bareback, so I was pretty pleased that I was able to get her to do all sorts of turns and zig-zags and circles with only leg cues, no rein whatsoever.. at least for a little while til her brain went elsewhere.

It was a warm day so both horses got their first baths of the season. Shampoo and everything! They are so sweaty and gross and the hair is just falling out like crazy. They practically beg for back rubs and belly rubs.

Saturday evening I baked a carrot cake (yum!) and got everything all vacuumed and ready for the brunch today, and worked on scrimshaw.

We had a nice little crowd over today for brunch, and that was fun. :-)

I started collecting eggs for hatching today (eep!), spent a bunch of time with the horses, and put in several hours this evening on the latest scrimshaw piece... another nude.

So about these nude scrims, I'd kinda debated whether to post up pics like usual, or just post links, not wanting to offend anyone. Well, I concluded that I'm going to post pics as usual, and I really can't imagine anyone being offended anyway. It's art, and I'm VERY picky about what sort of reference material I use, because I really want to keep things classy. So I'm not going to censor anything. We're all naked under our clothes anyway. ;-)

So this started out with just a faint outline.

And then this is all I got done tonight (which took quite a while, despite not looking like much. I figured I'd get her dark colored shirt over with first, since expanses of dark area are quite tedious! If you're totally confused by the image, it'll be a lot more obvious as I get farther along!