"The Stuff of Fairy Tales"

"The Stuff of Fairy Tales"

(Lia, Gypsy Horse mare)

graphite and charcoal on velour

6.5 by 18 inches

© 2012 Katherine Plumer

This piece is currently available.  Please inquire.  Eventually I will get around to updating my website...

"Maddie" dog drawing

"Maddie"

colored pencil and graphite on white Stonehenge paper

6.75 by 5 inches

© 2012 Katherine Plumer

sold, custom commission

ps- I do custom work, hint hint hint...  ;-)

dog drawing, "Missy"

"Missy"

colored pencil and graphite on gray Stonehenge paper

6 by 6.75 inches

© 2012 Katherine Plumer

sold, custom commission

ps- I do custom work, hint hint...

Draft Horse Classic recap

Okay, well, let's just come right out and say it: this was a pretty bad year at the show.

By some strange miracle, I'd had a really GOOD show last year, so this year seems extra ouchie in comparison to that.  Frickin' economy.

Having gotten that out of the way, let me clarify that I absolutely love this show, so having a bad year doesn't change anything.  I'll be back, and I have a lot of really good ideas!  It's like I've stumbled into some serious art mojo all of a sudden.

I was up in Grass Valley from Wednesday through Sunday.  The booth looked particularly nice this year.  Since the number of exhibitors was down, we were able to spread out a bit, so what's normally a 10x10' cube got to stretch out to about a 10x13' booth, with open arms just waiting to embrace all those customers...  I know I can't count on that in future years, but it looks nice opened up a bit!

It was great to see my artist friends.  I miss the ones who couldn't make it.  It was great to see some of my friends who came to visit too!

I did well in the show.  "Gwen in the Late Fall" won an Honorable Mention in the pencil category, and "Tundra Elegance" got second place in the Miniatures category.

As always, thank goodness for note cards and chicken art!

So I've been away for a while now, I'm FINALLY heading back to Oak Run tomorrow.  I stayed in Wilton a little longer than planned, family stuff...  It sure seems strange that Gwen's not here, sigh...

I'm really pleased with how the birds look, probably the next time I'm down will be to pick them up!  Gotta get that new chicken coop done...

Okay, I'm supposed to be sorting through some old stuff here at Mom's house, I'd better go do that before I get hollered at again.  ;-)

come to the Draft Horse Classic!

It's that time again, time for my favorite art show, the Art at the Classic at the Draft Horse Classic!!!

I know I've totally fallen off the blogging bandwagon.  I'm down in Wilton now prepping for the show.  I have soo much I've been meaning to post, but of course I forgot to upload all the pics and they are on my other computer, I don't have access to them on the laptop, oh well...  Just means a lot to catch up later, right?

So I know I'm really pestering people to come visit me at the show...  I miss my friends!  So come visit me!!!

Show location: Nevada County Fairgrounds, Grass Valley, CA.  The art show is in the big red barn close to the Lot 1 parking area.  If you find the cinnamon roll stand, you're near it!

Art show hours:
Thursday September 20: noon til 5:30pm
Friday September 21: noon til 8pm
Saturday September 22: 9am til 8pm
Sunday September 23: 9am til 5pm

For more information about the horse shows and other events, check the website!

Come visit me, you'll make my day!  :-)

Shylah pics

Okay let's try to get something a little cheery on here before I write any more depressing stuff, shall we?

I gave Shylah a bath and took some photos recently.  She's going GREAT up here!  She's good buddies with her two roommates, and it's absolutely amazing to me to see her having normal horse interaction (Gwen always beat her up).  And I seriously can't tell you how much I love this horse out on the trail.  Non-horsey friends who come visit... she's one you can ride if you want.  :-)

Gwen

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was a story about a horse who became a unicorn when he died.  It's something that always stuck with me, and somewhere within me I'd like to believe that's what really happens when a horse dies.  Gwen became a unicorn last night.

Gwen

1987(?) - September 5, 2012

I bought Gwen in March of 2000.  I was in college, and my first horse Thunder had died eight months before that.  Gwen was about 15 hands of feisty attitude, and to say we had some issues right out of the gate would be an understatement.  She immediately went off for professional training, and returned with a vastly improved outlook.

Foot problems kept her from being the trail horse that I'd expected, but we enjoyed our flatland rides.  She retired, so to speak, at the age of about 18, when I was starting to train my young horse Shylah for riding.  And it was in her last few years that I really grew to love Gwen.  She mellowed, she softened, she was better with Shylah, and she finally seemed to really enjoy the company of people.  I could climb on her back as she stood in the corral next to the fence, and I didn't worry about her taking off.  She was perfectly happy to just stand still and get a back scratch, or if she did amble around the pasture I felt I could finally trust her.  That wasn't a bond we had early on in knowing each other.  In her late years, she was particularly good with kids, and packed around quite a few of them in little jaunts around the corral.  But she was still terrible with other horses (other than Shylah), to the point of being unsafe.  She was a bitchy old mare, but she was my bitchy old mare, and I loved her in spite of that.  Or maybe even because of that.

She had health problems, and more than once in the last couple years I wondered if her time might be coming to an end, but she always bounced back.  I worried a lot about what to do with her when I moved.  If I had been able to find the right home for her, I would have rehomed her, but I didn't find one, and bringing her with me wasn't a good option.  So she stayed in Wilton, in the pastures where she'd spent the last twelve years, and in hindsight I'm so glad she was able to live out her life there.  A few months ago, I didn't know she only had a few months left.

When I saw her a few weeks ago I was disturbed by her appearance, she was starting to decline.  I made the decision at that time that I would have her put to sleep before winter.  In the last week, she had multiple bouts of colic, all relatively minor.  Of course this was all relayed via phone call, my mom was taking care of her.  It sounded like maybe the end was going to come faster than I thought, and I couldn't deal emotionally with trying to figure out what to do from 200 miles away.  It was probably time, but should I go say goodbye or would that make things worse, and was I sure it was time, did I need to call my vet, etc...  I gave it a night to sleep on it, and yesterday I felt that I absolutely HAD to get down there, right away.  So I did, and thank goodness I did, because I arrived to find her in pretty serious distress.  It was time, there was no doubt.  I had maybe a half an hour with her before my vet arrived, and it gave me time to say goodbye.  I sat on the ground with her and put my hands on her, and it was the first time since I'd gotten there that she stopped rolling and thrashing, and was still... calm... peaceful.  I told her I loved her, and I told her goodbye, and I told her what was about to happen and that soon she would stop hurting.  I know the words don't mean anything to animal, but on some level I'm sure she understood.

I stayed until my vet arrived, and then I had to leave.  I couldn't watch when Thunder was put to sleep, and I couldn't watch Gwen either.  As she was already flat on the ground, I know she went easy and just slipped away.

Losing an animal you love is a terrible painful experience, and I think losing a horse may be worst of all.  It breaks my heart that she is gone, I am crying writing this, but there is also a tremendous sense of relief that she's no longer hurting and I no longer have to wonder when the time would be right.

So I have two unicorns in that great pasture in the sky now, Gwen and Thunder.  I miss them both, I always will.

I haven't been blogging because...

I have fifty million photos to show you (okay slight exaggeration) but my web host is having issues.  I have not yet sat down and figured out how to use Dreamweaver, and I haven't bothered to download a freestanding FTP application, so until I do one of those things, or until they fix their web FTP software, it's hard to show you much.  I know I could upload pics right into blogger, I guess, that's an option, but I prefer hosting them myself.

Not looking for any technical advice, just telling you what's up.