oooh, cool!

I really do get the most interesting mail sometimes.

So imagine my delight at finding these awaiting me today:

Elk have two teeth that are ivory-- these ones! Glee! I'm so excited! They'll need a good "scale and polish" and I'll be thinking of subject matter for scrimshaw. Thank you B!!!!!!!!!! :-)

My mom took one look and said "that's, um....weird." What can I say, some people just don't understand. ;-)

16 years of horses

All day today and yesterday I kept thinking that April 29 is some sort of important date in my life, but it took me a long time to realize what it is. April 29, 1992 was the day I got my first horse, Thunder. She was a really good horse. We had our occasional disagreements and I know my entire family wasn't overly fond of "the man hater" but I couldn't have asked for a better first horse. :-)


And yes, every horse I've owned (Thunder, Gwen, Shylah) has been fat!

just stuff

It's been hot. Over 90 degrees. It's still April, for crying out loud! Thankfully I think it is going to cool down this week.

The mockingbird nesting outside my window doesn't like it when I look out the window at her....

Another batch of chicks hatched this weekend, I think there are 14 or 15. The hatchability of the Black Rosecombs seems to have improved greatly, so clearly the outcross was a good thing. Though I must say what I spent on the pair was pretty much only for the male! All the black chicks are his. In the last six weeks the female has produced 2 eggs, and neither one hatched. I ended up setting one more small batch of eggs this weekend to try to get some brassy backs (I switched out the male and put a Black male in there, not ideal but kind of a last resort). There were so few eggs last week anyway it wasn't worth trying to sell them. I still think I will end up with under 75 chicks, and that's fine.

I'm spending all my art time on the book cover now, working hard to get that done by deadline (Wednesday!). It's been a bit of a struggle, honestly. Subject, composition... I was having some serious doubts about it yesterday but then left it for a while and came back and saw it under different light and it seemed much better, and I could figure out what to do to really make it "pop." It's popping now, it's really falling into place today and coming together as a scene that works. Still a little work to do on one of the figures and a little more to do on the background. Next up, chicken art.

The question has been asked several times now by several people when will I do a male nude scrimshaw? Well, I guess the short answer is whenever someone wants me to. I know that some of the people who have asked read this blog, so if anyone is a potential buyer of such a scrim subject... what is it that you are looking for? Like how much exposed skin are we talking about here? It's a real quandary for me whether to show these nudes scrims on the blog anyway, and I'd certainly have to be pretty careful with male subjects.... What sort of scrim art would sell? I'm thinking probably not jewelry, but likely display pieces like the other nudes?

State Fair art entries are due in a month. I should enter a bunch of stuff. It just dawned on me I should enter a scrim piece but I can't figure out what category that would go in. Maybe I'd better email and ask, it doesn't look like it fits anywhere. I really wanted to enter the Aragorn painting there but the deadline is before Horse Expo, and if by some miracle it was accepted into State Fair but sold at Horse Expo in the mean time, oh I'd be up dooty creek!

Draft Horse Classic entries are due in about a month too. Crap. I need to order paper for a drawing, and I really want to enter a scrim piece. I have SO MUCH TO DO.

(RP, I will compile that list for you, I am picking up a bunch of work that's been hanging in EG and I need to sorta inventory what would be available to hang at that time. Stay tuned).

Asparagus and UFOs

My day started much earlier than normal for a Saturday. This morning was the bellydance performance at the Stockton Asparagus Festival. It went pretty well over all I would say. I goofed up once that I'm aware of but it was pretty minor, and I'm sure I smiled more this time even if it was a fake smile. I know some of the other dancers goofed up a lot worse than I did. Seemed like a pretty big crowd, and thank you to those who came to visit. :-) It was a pretty toasty day, and lacking anywhere to change clothes we just wandered around for a while in costume (with cover-up) until it was absurdly hot, and then had ice cream for lunch and went home. We sure got some funny looks, but I'd like to think I was checked out for being such a hottie, not just that I was dressed funny with gobs of flowers in my hair...ha ha. Hey, a girl can dream! ;-) If I had been there as a spectator I would have liked to have seen the craft booths but it just wasn't practical to be wandering around in all that garb, even though I shed as much clothing as I could possibly get away with under the cover-up. ;-)

I would imagine the toilets at an Asparagus Festival must be fairly potent. Bleh.

Anyway, I took about a half hour to veg out and unwind when I got home and then plunged in to working on the book cover for most of the rest of day.

I saw a UFO this evening while spending a few minutes in the hammock in the back yard. Okay it wasn't really a UFO (probably) but it was flying and I could not identify it, so...yeah. My best guess is a strangely shaped mylar balloon, REALLY high up. It was bizarre, and just totally mesmerizing. Weird shape, sort of in two parts like two squares joined at the corner, very shiny metallic, rotating at a constant speed (fairly slow) and blowing in an absolutely straight line. So weird. With no context of what it was I could convince myself it was anything from something about the size and altitude of a high flying hawk, to something the size and altitude of an airplane.

Well, I'm über tired and have another busy day tomorrow. I'd better go to bed. The other night I dreamed I was trying to pilot a small airplane and I was distracted while trying to take off and drove it headfirst into someone's pigeon loft, and even though it only screwed up a little bit of the wire the pigeon dude was trying to get me to fix all kinds of other crap too. What the heck?! I have some doozies. Anyway, off I go.

my art at Horse Expo 2008

Woo hoo! "Aragorn at One Year" was juried into the 2008 Western States Horse Expo "Equine Dream Art Show." So you can see it there June 6-8 at Cal Expo in Sacramento. By all means please vote for it for People's Choice! ;-)

I will not have a booth there, I'm merely a spectator and spender of no more money than necessary... (hmm, time to start compiling my shopping list).

April 22 work in progress

Just kidding! There is a work in progress but I can't post pics, per the client's request. It's the book cover project and the author wants to be surprised. And that's okay, because this is so outside my normal realm of work anyway I'm still feeling a little hesitant, but plunging in with a multitude of colored pencils nonetheless. Since I can't show it, I'll just talk about it. Make you all wait, bwahaha! I was having trouble imagining the way that the figures are posed for this scene, so I had my neighbors "model" it for it. Boy was that an entertaining photo shoot, we were all giggling like idiots by the end of it, even though it's a very serious and dramatic scene.

It's very dark, both in theme and scenery, but there's a lot depth, so in order to try to get the right feel I'm using a technique I've only tried once before: layering of translucent paper. The characters and some background will be drawn on the front of the paper. The more distant background will be drawn on the back of the translucent paper. The "underpaper" is black. Not sure if I will need to draw on there or not. Probably a little bit. It's totally weird. :-) I'll probably scan it every day anyway, maybe I can post it up later, just not now.

There is a nest of mockingbirds right under my bedroom window in a rock rose bush. I'm probably in for a heap of noise when those things hatch, but I'm excited about it. One of my favorite birds I ever raised when I was doing wildlife rehab was a mockingbird, he was such a character.

Well, gotta take Olin to the vet for his dental thing tomorrow morning early so I'd better hit the hay.

chicks!

Well, no more of this "I'm not ready to hatch chicks" stuff, because the first batch hatched this weekend. There are 14 of them. Not a great hatch rate but not much I can do about that. The plan is I'm going to hatch for four weeks (so there are three more batches in the incubator due the next three weekends). The only thing that will screw up this plan is that my Brassy Back male is at 0% fertility (uh oh!) and he's the only one I have that color. Same male I used last year and he was great last year. So.... I need to go sit and watch him and see if he's actually doing his job at all. I guess either way I'm going to have to switch roosters, which means putting in a Black male. Ugh, won't get consistent color then so I won't be able to sell eggs from that breeding pen. Bugger! I do need to hatch a few Brassies. I'll have to wait a while to set eggs again though, as I need all chicks to be outdoors and pretty self-sufficient by late June, because I'm going on vacation! (A real honest to goodness vacation with no chicken shows and no family members!) Woo hoo!!!! I'm sooo excited about this. ;-)

Anyway, chicks. There are BBReds, Blacks, and Golden Duckwings (err, maybe?). They are darn cute.

And once again I can't upload the video without some dumb error message, so here's a link.

Click here for cute chicks! >;-)

Scrimshaw done!

Finished last night. This will be for sale on ebay in a week or so (I need to let the ink dry).


Nude #3
scrimshaw on pre-ban elephant ivory
30mm diameter, 4 mm thick
includes clear plastic display case

absolute randomness

I realized this afternoon that I was two days late in submitting a photo to the American Bantam Association for them to print in the yearbook in recognition of my Master Exhibitor award (yay for me woo hoo!). So I dashed outside and grabbed "Pablo" the BBRed Rosecomb rooster (this is the bird that took Reserve of Show in his younger days, and actually he's one of only three chickens that has a name around here!). He's sorta halfway tame. I took a zillion pics but most were pretty cheesy (what can I say, you know how the outstretched arm photos go!). It's quirky, it makes Pablo look enormous. Quirky is good. :-) Hopefully they will still accept the photo!



While working on the archeological excavation today I found some of my favorite lecture notes from college. Actually I found ALL of them (seriously why on earth do I need my chemistry lecture notes, I'd croak if I had to do chem again, out they go! I am keeping some of the avian science notes though). Anyway.. I was a good student. Very good. Graduated college in the top 5%, only missed a handful of classes, only deliberately cut class twice (once to go to Berkeley for the day (hi REJ!) and once because I knew I'd just fall asleep anyway). I did oversleep once though, set my alarm for PM instead of AM, oops!

I had a horrible problem with falling asleep in art history classes though. And I had to take a lot of them as requirements for the major. For the most part, I didn't find them all that exciting, but I think it was more about the entire class being taught in the dark (slides and movies) and just being chronically exhausted in college.

I took this class called history of photography one quarter, and actually a lot of that stuff interested me, not to mention I had a huge crush on the professor, but I'll be darned if I could stay awake. It was a 4-6pm lecture class, always dark, and I nodded off at least once EVERY class except one. And it was hugely embarrassing because I tended to sit up front in hopes of staying awake, and also to better ogle the prof. I always hoped he didn't take it personally that I fell asleep.

So anyway the thing is when I fall asleep while writing, I actually keep writing. I mean I assume if I was out cold I'd stop, but if I nod off, the hand keeps going! But my writing will get super messy and starts migrating upward. It's really funny. And I write some totally random crap on there that has NOTHING to do with the lecture. As an example, I am posting up the lecture notes from 5/17/00 which are probably the most stellar example of this unique (weird) little trait. I had to read through these and make sure there was nothing embarrassing, like "I (heart) so and so" For all I know there could be, there's a bunch of stuff I can't read. The red text is all what I photoshopped on there tonight. What a dork!






Do any of my local friends need some spiral notebooks? I have a pile of them, most of which were less than half used and I ripped all the old notes out. I can't imagine needing them all, seeing as how I do the bulk of my writing right here (or in long winded emails). Free to good home.

April 16 work in progress

Okay first of all, a couple shoutouts:

yesterday: HAPPY BIRTHDAY JP!!!!!
today: HAPPY BIRTHDAY BM!!!!!

This is kind of an odd place to stop on the scrim tonight but I'm tired and don't want to mess something up.



I am formulating some plans for my summer. Mostly that means staying home and busting my butt to pay for the times when I'm not staying home. No art shows til September (that I know of, I'm not inclined to do some of the local ones because they are outdoors and it's hotter than blazes here in the summer). No poultry shows til at least October (and as late as I am hatching chicks I'm going to say the fall shows are iffy for me). There will be a bit of travel though. To quote the Beach Boys, "can't wait for June." ;-) Dang plane tickets are expensive!

stuff

Yes, really, I'm going to talk about stuff.

I am not the tidiest of people....a trait you will find in other members of my family too... And I also accumulate things.

Ever since my waterbed went kablooey I've been in the process of sorting through the entire contents of my room and closet, just slowly picking away at it like an archeologist looking for dinosaur bones (haven't found any yet but I'm not done). I took the old bed out and rearranged furniture and put my twin bed from college (which had been wrapped in tarps and suspended from the garage rafters) in there. That's good, other than I still roll over and whack my head on the wall pretty often (because it's way narrower than I'm used to, and I didn't used to sleep in the corner against the wall). On the bright side it opens up some floor space which was previously unheard of because my room is about 10x10 feet. Really. I kid you not. It's ridiculous.

Anyway, when we moved here I don't think I did much sorting of "stuff," I just packed it up and brought it here and there are a lot of boxes in my closet that just have stuff I never unpacked. Stuff, just stuff. I mean, considering the timing and circumstances of the move I think that's pretty normal, but in my effort to simplify things lately I am trying to whittle back the accumulation of useless crap. And I keep finding things that make me think "why do I have this?" Like my oldest brother's "Shamu Crew" membership card from Sea World when he was six years old (um, the year I was born!). Ummm, seriously, why on earth would that be in one of the dresser drawers?? I'm going to mail it to him.

I did find a penny from 1939 though. Actually there's a whole coffee can full of spare change that's been building up for a few years. That'll be fun to dump into the Coin Star machine, after I pick out all the neat old ones of course.

A lot of the stuff has sentimental value for me though, I have a hard time parting with things that have a story behind them (so I don't). I can see why people get those nice glass fronted curio cabinets, to display the sentimental stuff. I guess for now I should just try to condense it into fewer boxes of things I can't seem to make myself live without.

I should photograph my collection of horse figurines, it's pretty impressive and ever-expanding. I will have to get at least one new one at Horse Expo. :-) I should find out in about a week and a half or so whether the painting I entered was accepted into the art show there. Cross your fingers!

April 12 work in progress

It was downright hot today. I had planned on riding today but totally lost interest and ended up doing artsy fartsy stuff most the day.

One week til the first batch of chicks hatches.. Oh golly I'm not ready!

Olin has to get his teeth cleaned. Never had a cat that needed dental work before! :-/ We took him to a different vet today for a second opinion on it, and their high estimate was lower than the low estimate from the previous vet. Hmm, time to switch vet clinics! I'll keep the horses at the old place though, I like the vet who has been out to see them. Sheesh!

I have 300 something songs on the iPod so far and still a zillion more CDs to go through. Plus there's some stuff I want to download. As much as I like classic rock and oldies, I really don't own any! Anyway I'm greatly enjoying it. I mostly have country, soundtracks, and bellydance music, lol!

Oh! That reminds me. The next bellydance performance is Saturday April 26th at the Stockton Asparagus Festival. We will be on the DeCarli stage some time between 11am and noon (for a ~15 minute slot) but I won't know the exact time until it gets closer. I'll post more info as I get it. Come visit! :-)

I spent the evening working on scrim. I keep debating just waiting to post this when its done, but what the heck. If I haven't already officially left PG-rated territory, I am now!


Nude #3 (blonde, not vintage, and more exposed; this ought to please a few people)
scrimshaw on pre ban elephant ivory
30mm round (same size as a half-dollar coin)
for sale, price TBD

bear cub scrimshaw pendant

This piece was done as a "sketch" for an upcoming much larger piece. I was originally going to do a background, but when I realized that the fur technique I used here is not the way I want to do the larger piece, I just kinda went experimental with it. Cute, but lacks the fine detail I could have gotten had I done it entirely with dots. Hence the lower price.


black bear cub
color (well a little, okay mostly black and white) scrimshaw on pre-ban elephant ivory cabochon
18x25mm

$175 mounted in 14/20 gold filled mount, with your choice of 14/20 gold filled chain or black leather cord (precious metal pricing is through the roof right now) I could also do a sterling mount for a slightly lesser price but it really looks better in gold
$125 with pin back (for tie tack or brooch)
includes shipping
does not include 7.75% CA sales tax
CANNOT ship outside the US

It got up to 87 today, too hot too soon, noooo!!! Heck of a day for me to have to make an ice cream cake. :-0

thinking out loud

Taxes suck! Paperwork sucks! I miss the 1040EZ!

*ahem*

Anyway.

So I just got this interesting book cover illustration commission (well it's not contracted yet but the author is a friend I've known for a gazillion years so I'm not too worried). :-) It's completely different than anything I've ever done, and therefore extremely challenging! I don't have time to start on it til next week but I've just been thinking about the composition and wondering how I'm going to attempt to portray a scene that someone else has imagined. There will be two characters, one human and one not (it's a fantasy novel) in a dark forest setting. Figuring out composition and light source and how to create the appropriate level of drama between the characters, well let's just say I really need to stretch my brain for this one since I don't get to rely on photo references!

For the three of you waiting on chicken art, this does push you back. Sorry, I don't usually take rush jobs but there is the occasional exception, and having known me for 22 years is one of those exceptions.

The list of the moment, not really in order because there will be some simultaneous art action going on. (scrim & colored pencil, scrim & graphite, maybe all three...yeah, I can do that).

-client H.E., fantasy book cover, 6x7.5" color, deadline end of April
-client A.M., Vichi rooster, 5x7" color
-client A,M., Caligo rooster, 5x7" color
-client B.M, two illustrated mat boards, varied size, color
-client D.M., hen and chicks, 7x9.5" color
-for sale, nude scrim # 3, in progress
-for sale, bear scrim pendant, in progress
-for sale, large bear scrim, sketch in progress
-for Draft Horse Classic, large graphite piece, deadline mid May (yipes!) not started
-for Draft Horse Classic, scrimshaw ?, deadline mid May, not started
-client W.G., website (need to do ASAP)

Gotta get these stupid taxes done so I can start cracking the whip and get these things done.

cast and crew

I've been slogging away at taxes and housework lately, so I haven't had much to say. I do have some works in progress but they are just not at a good "stopping point" so I haven't scanned any of them.

There are an average of 40 people per day who read this blog (versus about 150 per day who ogle the chicken coops pages, hmm I need to link the blog over there, I pretty much totally neglect rosecomb.com these days). I have no idea who everyone is (by all means, introduce yourselves!) but for those of you who don't actually know me and are among the new readers, this post is just to introduce the characters of my world.

First off there's me. There are already a zillion pics of me on here so I won't post another.. I'm... twentysomething and staying there. I'm an artist/scrimshander, who is not happy with the economy. I tend to write a lot more than I talk, but saying that pretty much guarantees I will find myself in the midst of half a dozen long winded phone calls tomorrow. It never fails. I live in a "small town" in north central California, the sort of place that still thinks of itself as a cow town but really is getting so populated with rich yuppies that people drive like maniacs and gawk if they see someone on a horse. But it's still the sort of place where people know their neighbors, and you can drive down the road and recognize everyone who is driving in the opposite direction (that actually happened the other night, I saw two cars and I knew both people!) There aren't any stop lights yet, but the way Sacramento keeps creeping south it's only a matter of time.

I live on a 5 acre "ranchette" (I think that's the yuppie word) with my mom, and she'd probably have a cow if I put up a pic of her so I won't. I grew up on a big ranch, so this place seems tiny, and I don't have any place good to ride anymore.

The people I mention by initials are my friends and family, and I thought about explaining who people are but I'd probably just leave someone out and then I'd feel bad.

The critters that inhabit my universe:


Guinevere, aka Gwen, is a Morgan/Shire mare, somewhere in the ball park of 20 years old. She's 15hh. She's extraordinarily grumpy, and has no use for other horses or animals other than sort of a weird over-protective bond she has with Shylah (except when she's attempting to kick the snot out of Shylah). She was a good solid trail horse but always had sort of a sneaky side that concerned me. She is retired now due to foot problems caused by a condition called founder. She's had some bad times and seems prone to getting depressed but she seems well lately. I pretty much ask nothing of her except that she mind her manners. :-)


Shylah is an almost 5 year old purebred but unregistered Canadian Horse (also spelled Canadien, either way is ok). She's about 14.2hh. I imported her from Canada when she was about 6 months old, she was one of those Premarin (PMU) horses. Shylah is the sort of horse who would be perfectly content to come right on in the house, I can totally imagine her hanging out in here (probably in the kitchen). She's been easy to train, a pleasure to be around, calm and level headed, and just an all around really great sweet horse other than she's got this funky bouncy canter that is not the most pleasant thing in the world.


Jessie the black labrador is 13 years old, and is the quintessential "good dog." She was a hunting dog in her younger days, and the sort of dog who is generally pretty nice to be around. She has this funny bark when someone is here, it's always been nice to know whether she's just barking or if it's the "someone's here" bark. She's about 99.9% deaf these days, so she doesn't hear much to bark at. She has bad arthritis, and is having a lot of trouble getting around. It wasn't very long ago I didn't think she would last more than a few more days, but she's really perked up again and is eating well. In the grand scheme of things though, I don't know how long Jessie will be around.


Nellie the yellow lab is Jessie's 12 year old full sister, and I have to say it's a good thing she's cute and photogenic (despite the warty thing on her head) because she really is probably the most annoying dog ever. I've always been pretty convinced that her head is filled not with brain-matter, but rather with styrofoam packing peanuts. She's very clingy, and a compulsive eater. She has mastered that guilty labrador look, for sure! Only recently has Nellie turned into the top dog, as Jessie's health declines. That has been startling to watch happen.


Homer is 8 years old (geez!). My mom found him in the parking lot at Home Depot, which is how he got his name, and when nobody claimed him he got to stick around. He's huge, and quite friendly, but also a big wimp and tends to spray in the house which gripes me to no end. He and Olin are good buddies and like to wrestle and groom each other, and let me say that two cats and one human on a twin bed is a tight fit (they grace me with their presence in the morning). Homer also likes to express his affection and dominance over Nellie, ha ha!



Olin, wow, I guess that means he's 7 years old. Still seems like a kitten. He was my birthday present one year (best gift EVER). Technically "a kitten" was my gift and I could pick any. I went to a local shelter and looked at three orange kittens and it was love at first sight with Olin, no doubt about it, he was mine. He's sweet and just completely adorable and sleeps a lot. Like if there was ever a competition for falling asleep fastest in the strangest places, he would win. Then again, might be a tossup between him and my grandpa.

The chickens! Obviously I didn't feel like photographing all 38 of them, but here's a selection. They are Rosecomb bantams, assorted colors. I've been raising and showing birds since 1987 (geez!) and as you already know, I've cut back this year. They really are lovely birds, and one my favorite things is just to sit out there and watch them. First batch of chicks is due on the 20th.. I probably won't set more than 4 batches of eggs this year.

These are the Brassies and Blue Brassies:


Eddie now lives outdoors again full time. Here he is with his new lady friends (he's very happy!):

spicy chickens

I can't imagine I'll have anything else of interest to blog about by the end of the day (cleaning house, paperwork, worked Shylah) so I'll just write now!

So Mom has these two "feed store" type egg layer hens. The only two generic birds in the flock of otherwise small and colorful chickens. Several months ago they stopped laying eggs. Well, not really. They actually just started eating their own eggs, so we were getting no eggs from them. This is not uncommon in chickens, and it's darn near impossible to break them of doing it. It was also possible that they had stopped laying over winter. Some do. But when they didn't re-start this spring, I was sure they were eating their eggs. Thing is, they don't leave any trace that an egg was ever there. You'd think there would be a shell, or some mess. But it was all gone. They were in with my Brassy Back flock, and when those birds "weren't laying yet" I had more reason to believe the big hens were eating eggs.

So I tried glass eggs, rocks, everything that is supposed to deter them and fool them into thinking eggs aren't good to eat. Didn't work. I moved them to a different pen thinking perhaps they needed a change of scenery. Didn't work, but on the bright side I suddenly started getting 2-3 eggs a day from the flock of Brassies.

I called a couple local friends to see if anyone had extra brown egg layers to sell me, and was told repeatedly that the sure-fire cure for egg-eating was to prepare a hot pepper egg and give that to the hens. Supposedly they can't stand hot pepper and after one bite they won't touch it, and will never eat another egg.

Well... I donned a pair of latex gloves (I don't do spicy!) and found a sacrificial bantam egg in the fridge. I doused it quite thoroughly in tabasco sauce, and then rolled it in cayenne powder. It was QUITE covered. Then just for good measure I poked a hole in it and dumped some tabasco inside too. I was afraid to even pick it up for fear it might spontaneously burst into flame.

Gleefully imagining these two hens clutching at their throats while smoke poured out of their ears and they ran for the water dish, I went outside and set the egg down in their pen and stood back to watch. They were on it in a flash. Each pecked it and stood up like "hmm, that's different" and then, I kid you not, in a matter of seconds devoured the ENTIRE EGG. Shell and all. Tabasco and cayenne and all. And they didn't look the least bit perturbed. In fact they looked pretty darn happy, like "thanks, we really like the new seasoning!" I was absolutely horrified.

Needless to say, I am considering these birds a lost cause, and will be taking them to auction tomorrow along with the 5 extra roosters that are out there in the aviary pen (which means, drum roll please, Eddie can finally move back outside!).

Stupid birds!

April 4 work in progress

Yup, another one.

just stuff

It's late so I'll make this short.


I happened to be in the right place at the right time with my camera in reach when I saw a female wood duck perched atop the kestrel box out in the pasture. The male was on the fence below her, but out of the frame of the photo unfortunately. As far as I can tell this box is currently in use by a pair of kestrels, so this was really a strange thing for me to see! I don't think the kestrel box in the corral is in use, although I'm sure I'll have to start wreaking havoc on the evil starlings pretty soon, no doubt they will move in if they haven't already. I've seen tree swallows scoping out at least one of the smaller boxes, and even saw a bluebird out in the roundpen the other day.

I've been offered an incredible deal on a breeding to that Canadian stallion I talked about a few postings back. I have to give this some serious thought. Although the temptation is to say absolutely yes it would produce another great horse (aside from the canter issue, Shylah is a super duper fantastic horse and is SO easy to work with), the logical side is telling me to be very concerned about the long-term expense, particularly when business isn't exactly going "boom" and my car could go "boom" any day. I've asked for a few months to mull this over. I've always figured to have Shylah bred some day when I'm ready for another horse, but I didn't really figure that opportunity would present itself right now.

Time will tell. It always does.

my new toy!

Woo hoo!!!! Look what I finally have!!! I have to be good and not spend any time playing with it for a while though, I have more pressing matters that demand my time, namely... *cough* hack, ick, taxes.


Many thanks again to BK and the P family for the Amazon cards. I put them to good use. :-)!!!