Dancing Crow

foggy woods

While the afternoons have been bright and sunny and hot, the mornings have been close and mysterious and foggy. Not quite so foggy I feel I should install a foghorn on my van, but enough that I go carefully. This morning I rode Nuada out into the foggy woods. I felt like a phantom, gray horse, gray day, slipping through the trees and fog.

catkins

The pussy willows are out in force and going from their soft silver to spikier yellow gold and green.

Google says it is the first day of spring. Going by our weather today, and the forecast for the week, it feels more like summer. Fistfuls of horse hair are shedding off all the horses at the barn, and with the ground unfrozen and good for rolling they are all looking their most disreputable. Even the very fancy horse we call the George Clooney horse (because he is such a superstar) is dusty, shedding and itchy.

copper beech tree

Beech trees always look like elephant legs to me; thick and gray and sturdy and wrinkly.Tree bark, I've noticed, is very seldom brown. It is shades of gray, and wildly variegated textures, and thus perfect for the March circles. So I am reassured that even with the snow gone, I can sitll find monochrome things to depict.

Kaboose and I went out for a long trail ride today with a younger, more worried horse and his older, more worried rider. She did very well stomping along being reassuring. It didn't warm up until we got back, and then Red Kate dragged me out for a walk which was lovely. It feels like summer. It feels (says a gloomy New Englander) like we're getting away with something.

two circles and a rosette

For todays circle I was thinking about the beautiful curl inside your ears where you actually hear things. Where secrets go. Where music goes. All the other noises go too, like jackhammers and farting buses, but I was trying to be poetical. 

I was at an awards dinner last night, which was raucous fun. It was the end-of-year awards for Xenophon Farm, and as well as the high point scorers for various levels of dressage, there were also essays on why the author should get an award even though they didn't ride in three shows and/or get decent scores.

To my astonishment, I won the high point award for Training level Seniors. That was fun. But cheering for the people who were talking about having to halt because the screws in their broken leg were coming unscrewed was better. Or the bold kid who is getting used to a new pony and their scores are dreadful, but they keep on working. 

So I did finish this circle yesterday, but then I had to bolt to get to dinner on time. I was thinking about red blood cells, carrying oxygen around so we can move and think, but more of them look like roses than blood cells.  I don't know why all these ideas about cells in my body turn into roses. There must be a metaphor in there somewhere. Or a joke. 

leaf redux

So I made the background from a dramatically different set of colors, both darker and farther away from the pinks of the leaf on the color wheel. The leaf is also a deeper color, but that isn't so noticable. I am very pleased with this one!

I like working with wool, a great deal. It takes steam, flattens when necessary, stitches easily, and has a nice hand. 

Kaboose and I went out today with a big gray mare who fidgets and worries. We walked everywhere the sun was shining, avoided the shadows because they were icy, and turned around any time the footing was vile. We were out for almost an hour, wandering around. The gray horse finally settled down, Kaboose was fine; we had a nice time. 

three nines are twenty-seven

I rode two horses this morning. The weather made me grateful to have access to an indoor arena, because the rain was pelting down. It got noisy. Kaboose and I had a peaceful hour all to ourselves in the area, working on trotting and cantering steadily and without flinging her head in the air or curling up like a snail. We did well. I rode Nuada only long enough to get him going evenly both ways; he is a stiff old man and weather like this is hard on his joints.

And then I ran 64 errands and picked up two sets of kids from three different families at two different schools and delivered them home and made supper and finished a circle, and now I intend to sit still and knit. And be warm. For 40F it felt incredibly cold! 

Els - you asked what I was going to do with these. The local arts group is having a local exhibit of things people did every day in January. I thought I'd stitch these circles to a long red ribbon and bring them along to drape or hang or something. For subsequent months I am not at all sure what will do with them. If you want one in particular, email me and we'll talk. 

twenty-two (degrees and circles)

It was absurdly cold this morning -  about 5F when I got up, and 17F when I left the house for the barn. Kaboose and I were invited out on a trail ride, before the next round of dreadful weather shows up and renders the world a skating rink. We went out into the bright cold and fresh snow, and it was so lovely. The snow creaked under the horses' feet in the cold, and Scout snorted at monsters all the way. My toes froze. I might actually need winter boots. 

Yesterday I declared I was Done With Foil. Today I have stars of gold mylar thread (Sulky Sliver) which is somehow less annoying to me than the whole ironing/fusing/gluing process. Thread I can deal with. Thread follows the needle, until it breaks, and I have pretty good control over the needle. 

when the clocks strike thirteen

Timna - you can see all the new reds you gave me yesterday in this one. Well, all the reds except the cowgirls. 

I do not know why I thought of clock faces on the thirteenth instead of the twelfth. Although I do like the star in the center. And I am pleased with the different sizes of stars. 

I took my sewing machine out to Pumpkin Patch Quilts in Lee (a town I am predisposed to like) and after some prodding we decided it needed more work that he could apply to it with me standing there. So I left it (and had to call Al from the parking lot because I was suffering from separation anxiety) and they will call me when it is working properly again. 

Today was a two horse day. Kaboose was very... spicy, having not been ridden for a day. Plus the snow was sliding off the roof of the indoor ring, which makes a noise most horses hate. It is a loud and startling noise, and I don't like it much myself, but when I don't like a noise I flinch. When Kaboose doesn't like a noise, she leaps sideways and makes snorting noises. I managed to stay on through a series of those and then dismounted of my own volition in between noises. It was exciting. 

GO! (four)

For a short while, Alice counted "one, two, three, go, four." Later she had a better grip on numbers until they got large. She asked Al how old he was on one birthday, and then laughed and laughed, telling him there was no such number as 43. 

It was brutally cold last night, into the single (farenheit) digits. The horses were all standing carefully on the frozen ground, all their visible coat standing out to hold in as much heat as possible. Kaboose is one of the few who is not routinely blanketed; she has a serious coat, courtesy of her Quebecois childhood, but even she was wearing a windproof sheet to keep in an extra layer of warmth. 

oof. horse blankets and chicken ornaments

Well I did kind of drop off the map! I am simultaneously recuperating from the last Craft Fair, prepping for another Craft Fair (in a friend's living room, which seems like a brilliant idea!) and getting a horse organized to go live at a different barn. Which involves a lot of blanket trying-on.

There was a giant (GIANT!!) pile of blankets in the closet in the garage, and I was looking through it for a couple things for Kaboose, until I realized that I couldn't go by size on the blanket I'd have to try them all on. So I put her in a stall, and dragged all the blankets out, and started putting them on and taking them off, just like being in a dressing room with a large toddler. She had the same look too: mildly interested in the cookies I was bribing her with, but really yearning to be free.

The trying on results looked like a toddler too - some things barely made it over her rump, but the vast majority were from a Very Large Horse and they hung over her tail and well down her legs in amusing ways. We found most of what we'll need, and we can borrow the last thing as necessary. Which, along with leaving all the rest of the blankets inventoried, folded and stacked neatly, makes me feel very virtuous.

I am working on a handful of chicken ornaments for the Sunday craft fair ina  living room. Pictures of those when they are photographable.