catching up

Whew, lots going on!

It's not even three weeks now til Draft Horse Classic, I will not be accomplishing all I'd hoped to do by then. Yikes.

I spent Friday at State Fair. I got there around 7am for check-in, and got my one chicken all squared away. I debated napping in the car til opening time but it was already too hot so I wandered around and saw some of the livestock and horses before the fair opened. One of the horses that played Seabiscuit was there, he was a cutie! And the horse that played Shadowfax in LOTR was there too but I have to say he's not nearly as pretty in person. Then again I didn't get a very good view, there were ropes around the stall so I pretty much just saw his head and neck and the top of his backline.

I spent the day with a few poultry friends and wandered the fairgrounds. I may edit in some pics here later. I hardly took any but WL took some pics of me with my drawing on his camera and I think they are better than the ones on my camera (I took the coolpix, yeah the flash still doesn't work, I haven't done a darn thing about it). I had a great time catching up with friends. I had wanted to stay all day and see a lot of the shows but it was over 100 degrees so we all wimped out around 3:30 or so. I did get to see one horse race before I left (a quarter horse race, and had I gone with my initial impression my favorite would have been the winner, but I over-analyzed and picked the 3rd place horse instead. Darn, trust the initial impression! Oh well, I didn't bet anything anyway). And I got the trifecta of fair food: cinnamon roll, corn dog, frosty.

I did not go back in to see judging on Saturday. I heard I got best of class but beyond that I don't know who won what. I just wasn't up for spending more time there.

I hate painting. I don't mean art painting, I mean wall painting. We're painting the kitchen this weekend. Ugh! I think taping is the worst part.

Shylah was all cross canter tonight. Aaaarrrg! This is driving me up the wall. She's been very consistent (at times) under saddle as well as bareback, so I just can't figure out if there's any correlation to anything. Maybe I'll try bareback again tomorrow.

I still want to get the landscape drawing done by DHC. IF I am almost done by the end of the week I'll go ahead and order a frame. Probably the new graphite drawing is something I'll work on while I'm there. The Serama illustrations have been pushed back til after DHC (long story there). Lots of scrim ideas I could work on.

Speaking of scrim... about eight months ago or so, after deciding that if I wanted to be taken seriously I needed to scrim a knife, I bought one on ebay (yeah, jumping the gun a bit!). It was several hundred dollars, which I don't part with too easily, but I realized shortly after buying it that I shouldn't have done that. It's not made by someone who collectors are seeking (in fact it doesn't even have a maker's stamp) so basically it has no resale value. The value of my scrim would FAR exceed that of the knife, and it would be impossible to sell for what my work is worth. It's not a bad looking knife, but it's also not really all that elegant either. I'm in a pickle as to what to do with it:

1) I could resell it as-is (having nothing done to it). I probably would not get what I paid for it. But knowing that if I scrim it I could never sell it anyway, maybe I ought to just unload it.

2) I could go ahead and scrim it. A GREAT idea came to me today. I could either keep it as a sample of what I can do (then again it may not be a good "canvas" for my work as far as showing it to high-end collectors) or I could give it to someone. It would give me the chance to work on mammoth ivory, which I have not yet tried. And then at least I could say I scrimmed a knife. I'd just have to go into it knowing I get NOTHING but personal satisfaction out of it. But do I want to use my great idea on this knife? Would this knife even work for it, hmmm, mammoth ivory is very dark, it might be hard to see the image. My great idea involves a tiny amount of metal engraving, something I have not done. I'd need to learn how to do that to pull this off.

It's going to be a busy week, again.