Taking a new spin on the blog.

If you've read the first several posts on this blog, you'll know that they're disorganized ramblings written either late at night or while being hyper--in other words, it's horrid. I'm taking those posts down and taking a new spin on the blog. It's going to be more focused on horses, model horses, and writing. Well, along with the occasional personal update.

So please just take a note of that. I think that's going to be all for today seeing as I shouldn't be writing this right now--rather applications. Expect the next post Friday-Sunday at the latest.

And just to add a little interest, here's a picture of my horse Jones. I don't think I have any up about him yet.

Doing his favorite thing--eating. I love him. 

Drawing myself deeper into "The Hobby," otherwise known as the fiscal deep end.

And on $8 a week, too. Not that I'm complaining about my allowance! It's one of the higher allowances out there, not to mention that I get one at all. No-- it's just that somehow or other I can't seem to 1) save it very well or 2) bring myself to sacrifice procrastination time in order to babysit. Imagine my dilemma.

Obviously (or not obviously, I don't think I mentioned it much on here), I can make model horse tack and sell it to others who have gone off the fiscal deep end with me. Unfortunately, until you dig deeper into The Hobby, you might be under the impression that my tack could sell for much more than it does. That impression is so egregiously incorrect that I might... well, I have no idea what I might do. The point is, my tack is very beginner-looking and will not sell for much--or at all, in fact. So as a source of income to keep some pocket-money firmly in my pocket at all times, that isn't great.

I could, I suppose, babysit. There are two things preventing me from that, though. Or maybe three. The first is that I don't want to give up my procrastination time. The second is that my procrastination time is also my barely viable source of income, and probably not a good thing to give up. The third and probably most valid is that I have a ridiculously busy schedule. I'm tutoring Esme on Mondays, riding on Tuesdays, doing homework while my parents go out on Wednesdays, procrastinating on Thursdays, and riding again on Fridays. And my weekends are generally packed, as well. Sometimes I ride, sometimes I sleep, sometimes we go to the lake. On Sundays I'm back for my Spanish discussion group (which sadly, deviates farther and farther from Spanish every time we meet). Then I have to do homework on Sunday evening--speaking of which, I should be doing right now. But it's not much, so if I spend 15 minutes or less on this I should be fine.

Since I talked about model horse tack, I might as well give a few updates. I've been working on (yet another!) pattern for blankets. This most recent has a lower-cut neckline and straighter sides, in order to sufficiently cover the horse's butt. So far it's worked very well. The only blankets I've made with it so far are two show scrim sheets, both in plaid. One is green and black, the other red and black, both with white trim. The sewing on the edging is... well... let's just not talk about it. You can see for yourself, I'm going to post photos. The thing I like is that I finally managed to incorporate a dart right above the tail so the blanket naturally curves around it. And I've put in a different mechanism for closing the blanket in the front which is so much better than having to sew on Velcro.

Here's the green blanket. I rather like it on this horse--thanks again to Zoe for him for my birthday.

And the dart.

The red blanket:

I love the mold this horse is on. It's so majestic and beautiful. I kind of want to have a conga of them, but I'm afraid it would be rather expensive.

Speaking of this mold, Breyer released the Diamond Jubilee model. It's on this mold (which you now know I love) but the color is, well, repulsive. There are two reasons I would buy the horse. One, it's on my favorite mold. Two, it holds the key to a competition which I would love to enter. It's a writing contest. Basically you buy the horse, write your favorite memory about Breyer horses, and send it in with the receipt. And the prize? Well, first prize is a factory custom from Breyer worth $1000.

Aannddd I was just looking over on Model Horse Blab and found out that the receipt has to be dated from before December 1st. Now I don't have to say any more, other than DARN IT!

Some other news. I've changed the name of the model horse tack thing from The Model Horse Tack Shop (yay, imagination!) to Queen's Gate Saddlery. I love it, except for the fact that I don't actually make saddles. But it sounds better than Queen's Gate Tack Shop, and I do hope to start making English saddles soon. Then I can get a stamp and stamp QGS on there. And if I do start making saddles, then maybe I'll be able to make some money off  of this.

Also, I started making leather longe lines now that I have crimp beads. The one pictured is made out of really thick leather lace, though, so when I order from Rio Rondo again I need to get some of that.

And now I really do have to go, so there'll be more next week.

At last, a post.

Yes. The world must be coming to a close. I'm actually posting.

Anytime anything interesting happens in my life I usually plan to write a post--but then I forget, or procrastinate until I don't have time, or make an excuse not to. I do write a ton in my journal every day (how strange to have both a blog and a journal, right?).

So, since I last wrote 5 zillion years ago, I won the End-Of-Year Championship in Open Hunter on the TSSA circuit. Which is the schooling circuit, and therefore the class is very small, and thus it's not as big an achievement as it sounds. We missed one of the shows before the EOY show because Jones had a bit of a colic scare, but he's back to normal and doing great.

We also went to the CTHJA EOY show and rode in Youth/Non-Pro and Modified Child/Adult Hunter. I believe we won one ribbon if I remember correctly--a 6th in the Modified Under Saddle. The class was huge--35 people-- so we were pretty lucky to pin at all. Also, Jones's original owner told me it was hard to get him to do well in the hack, so I'm very pleased. Our jumping rounds went very well also, thanks to the addition of roller spurs along with a crop. Since we started using them Jones has seemed to like moving rather more quickly than normal, though admittedly he still goes pretty slow.

There was something else I wanted to say but I forgot...

Oh yeah! Debbie's been introducing us to the first full off season Jones and I will have (and the last, since I'm probably going away next year). This entails not only jumping, but also flat work. LOTS of flat work. Without stirrups. We've only had one flat lesson so far, in which all Jones had to do was to jog around lazily and bend to the corners while I strained to post without stirrups. At my old barn I trotted stirrupless every day, but I've been getting lazy. In other words, it was painful.

Thankfully, at our next jumping lesson and all lessons after that, I've finally been "introduced to the corners" as Debbie would say. We've really been improving this year... makes me want to take Jones to the north-east next year. But it's too expensive and besides, who knows if I'll have enough time for him? Of course I could take him and lease him out... maybe do a quarter lease or something... but transporting horses is pretty hazardous as well as costly.

On another tack, I didn't fail my SSAT. I actually did pretty darn well: 98th percentile overall. I got an 800 on the Verbal section but actually did worse point-wise on the Reading section than I did on the math. Percentile-wise, I got a 96th on Reading and 88th on Math. So many of the answers in the Reading section were so arbitrary, though, and since each person's mind operates differently, isn't it to the advantage of people with certain mindsets to have such questions? I think Reading on a test like this should be eliminated--it's just not fair for people with very different outlooks to have to take a test like that.

One final point. I'm hoping to get a cell phone soon. Which is the reason I'm leaving off this post. Because my mom agreed to discuss getting one tomorrow IF I get my room and rather disused but still messy "lair" here in the basement cleaned up by 7:30 and all the litter boxes are cleaned by that point as well. And I should probably get my (very dull) homework done, too.

I promise to try and post more!