I See Crafty Things, They're Everywhere

On Saturday, we took a road trip.  One of the places we went to was called the Sannai-Maruyama site.  It is a National Historical Site where the remains of a village from the Early-Middle Jomon Period (5,500-4,000 years ago) were found.

I took a bunch of pictures (of course), but after I uploaded them to our server, my computer didn't want to talk to the server.  It turns out Jeff is backing up the server right now...  I was able to get a few pictures and I thought it would be fun to share the crafty type things I saw.

The visitor's center is a large building with a museum, gift shops, workshop areas, and a restaurant.  It is also the entrance to the village site.  Before going outside to the village, there is a big diorama of what is out there, or what was out there.

A closer picture of some interesting looking structures.

And here were those structures outside, full size!

The museum is full of hundreds and hundreds of artifacts that have been found at the site.  All sorts of tools, pottery, jewelry, and these:

Miniature pottery!  I thought they were really cool.


The whole place was really interesting and I'm hoping to share more pictures, once the computers start playing nice together again.

Happy Day

Today we went to a park nearby so that Jeff could get in some "quadrotorin'" and Max could get out and run and play.

As soon as we got there, Max rolled...

and rolled in the grass.  (one of his favorite things to do outside)

Jeff flew his little quadcopter.

There were a few crashes.  Here, Jeff is on his way to recover the tiny craft, while Max gallops over to assist.

The quadrotor is so lightweight, it rarely ever sustains any damage in a crash, especially not in grass.  Jeff just rights it, and tosses it back into the air.

It was a good time had by all.

Max was happy.

Jeff was happy.

 

I was happy.  (no pictures of me, but I took my tassel box, as I've been calling it, and tied a handful of tassels while we were there)

After all of the quadrotor batteries were dead, we went for a walk in the forest nearby and I took this picture of some of the (big) gorgeous trees there.  There are a ton of trees in the area where we are.  It is mostly all either forests and farmland.

Tonight we watched a movie and I made a bunch more tassels, almost an entire skein of purple!  I'll finish them up tomorrow and start on the blue.

It was a fun, easy, happy day today.

Bo in Arizona - Our Last Few Days

Back in March, we took my boy Bo to Arizona where he'll be staying during our time here in Japan.  Well, we took him halfway, before our truck broke down and my friend had to come the rest of the way to get my trailer, Bo, and her three horses we had picked up for her.  The whole thing turned into a giant mess, but in the end everyone arrived in AZ safely.

I had taken a ton of pictures (it's what I do..) and I had meant to share some of them on here.  However, life got even crazier with the move fast approaching, and I was pretty depressed about saying goodbye to my boy.  So the pictures never did get shared.  I found myself looking through them today and I thought I'd share them now!

An interesting thing about where Bo ended up is that his old flame, Leah, is there too.  Once upon a time they had two foals together and Leah has always been his first love.  He had the chance to make googly eyes at her shortly after his arrival, but she was NOT interested.

We turned him out while we shuffled horses around, and he got to check things out.

Handsome, shiny guy.

 Showing off.

Bo says hello to Pink, Leah's filly by another stallion.  I wonder if they remember each other.  I used to turn little Pink out with Bo right after she was weaned, so that she would have some horsey company.  He's always been so kind to babies.

Sort of an artsy shot of Bo doing what I call his "stud prance".  Again, showing off for all of the new horses.

Saying hi to Pink again.

A new favorite picture of my boy.

Later on, I had gone in the house for a while.  When I looked outside, this is usually what I saw: Bo staring right at the back door where I'd gone in.

At one point during our time there, I decided to take him out for a ride in the desert.  We had done a lot of desert riding during our years in the same desert, the Mohave, only a few hours west of here.  When Bo was 2 years old, he was shipped from South Dakota, where he was born, to southern California.  We spent the next several years there.  That's where he was started under saddle and where we did a LOT of riding.  However, this was our first time out and about in the desert in around 7 years.

 It was a beautiful day, only one cloud in the sky.

There were wildflowers everywhere along our ride.  Here the trail, really just a wash, was sprinkled with tiny yellow flowers.

A very welcome sighting for me was the Indian Paintbrush.  This has always been my absolute favorite wildflower.  I remember my Granddad introducing them to me when I was a little girl.  He always thought they were beautiful and so do I.

Beautiful.

We didn't quite make it to our goal, the top of the mountain at the end of the valley.  The terrain suddenly became quite steep and we were both sweaty and getting tired; it was hotter here than South Dakota in  March!  So I stepped down at the top of our ride and we had a bit of a rest.

After a rest, and a good shake, we were ready to head back.

We took a slightly different path coming down the valley and once we hit the flat again, we found ourselves in a field of yellow-orange flowers.  Poppies I think?

They were everywhere in this spot.

That night there was a beautiful desert sunset.

It was so pretty.  That's Bo, down at the bottom of the picture.

Finally, the time came to say goodbye.  I told him to be a good boy and that I'd be back.  :(

I didn't want to go, but eventually we left.

I have missed my boy terribly ever since we left Arizona and the next four years seem like far too long a wait to see him again.  I'm hoping to at least be able to visit in between now and then.  Until we see each other again, I'll picture him like this, watching and waiting for me.

Another Arabian

Yesterday, I talked about how I've gotten the ball rolling on my first Arabian tack project.

I've decided that my first piece of tack will be for Darkness Falls, my little Classic Black Stallion.  Today, it dawned on me that I have another favorite Arabian in my collection (okay, I actually have several...) and she is Classic scale as well.

There is a Vintage Model Horse Customs group on Facebook.  hey have been sharing a ton of lvely pictures and stories on there lately and today I shared "Ashley" with them.  She is signed as having been created in 1989 and I bought her many years ago after falling in love with her when she was in someone else's herd.  They later offered to sell her to me and I jumped at the chance to have her.  I don't remember her original name, but when I got back into showing late last year, I thought Ashley was a pretty name for her.

She's made some appearances in my blog before, at the last several shows since my "comeback" last October.  Despite being 26-year-old custom model, she's still a good little show horse, having won two NAN cards 6 months ago at the last two shows I went to before our move to Japan.

I think she should have her own piece of fancy Arabian tack too.  :)

Now... what color(s) should I use?  Ugh.  (haha)

The Start of a Tack Project

A few days ago, I made a couple of origami boxes.  I've already found a fantastic use for more of them!

I'm pretty much done with my epic embroidery floss organization project.  Along the way, I decided that my next floss project would be to start making some tassels, with an eye on making some Arabian tack.

Over the last couple of days, I've been cranking out green tassels.  Last night it dawned on me that I could use a few of the little origami boxes to keep my tassels neat and organized!

Behold!

I found that three of the boxes fit perfectly in the long compartment of the bead/floss boxes.  (the size of paper to use, if anyone wants to try this, is a 4x4" piece of paper to start with for the box)

It also turns out that the tassels I've been making fit perfectly in the boxes, so that should keep them nice and tidy.

Here are several of the first tassels that I made.  I'm leaving them long for now, until I decide what length I want them to be for whichever project they end up being a part of.

I started tying them off with another intact piece of floss, but - after doing a bunch of them - I decided that was just too bulky looking.  So I decided to unravel a piece of floss and just use one of the strands instead.  That looked MUCH better.

New look on left, old look on the right, sleeping cat in the back.  (haha)

A closer look at the difference (with no distracting cat):

Of course I'd already made a bunch of tassels using a whole strand to tie them off...  but since I hate wasting stuff, I decided to redo them with the single strand.

I've now made a bunch more tassels, in brown and today I just started a batch in golden yellow.  I'm enjoying making them and that's probably a good thing since I'll need to make hundreds in order to actually build a costume.

I've been doing a lot of research and pouring through my reference pictures, trying to decide where to start on making some model Arabian costumes.  Making an entire costume seems a bit daunting right now, so I've already decided that my first bit of Arabian tack will something a little more manageable.  I'm going to make a presentation set for this guy:

He is Darkness Falls, my little stallion who won the Overall Champion OF Breyer at the Black Hills Model Horse Show last year.  I'd say he's earned a piece of pretty Arabian tack.  ;)

How about the color?  My favorite color is royal blue and it looks great on a black horse.  I also like royal purple - it is so... "royal" and that would match with his show winnings.  I'm undecided at the moment between those two colors; I may use both of them.  I just made a few "test tassels" today to try and help me decide.

All along so far I've been using only two strands of floss (doubled over) in my tassels.  Here they are for a color test:

I did make one of each color in a slightly heavier, three strand (doubled) tassel as well.

I think I like the two strand design the best on a classic scale model.  I'm still undecided on color(s), but I'm thinking an alternating blue and purple would be pretty.  It seems, in looking at reference pictures, that red is a very popular color for these presentation sets, but I have seen a few in royal blue as well.  I'll probably just keep cranking out tassels in various colors while I deliberate.  ;)

Oh and to be fair, the horse modeling the tassels is not Darkness Falls; my little Champion is still safely packed away.  Many big stars have a stand-in (haha) and here is his for these pictures.

I'm excited to be working on this new project and as soon as I make a final decision on a color, I'll start work on the headstall and collar, in addition to making MOAR tassels.

Popsicle Progress

A little while ago, I made my first attempt at an "earthquake proof" model horse holder.  I called it my "popsicle stick prototype", since that's what it was made from.

In the time since, I picked up some more supplies, namely several long pieces of wood, about the same dimensions, to use for my idea.

A few days ago, I measured one of the shelves and cut a couple of the long pieces to fit in there.

The next step was to cut up some more popsicle sticks for uprights and a couple of horizontals to see how things might look.  Here are the results, showing the outer frame on the shelf.

I still have to make all of the dividers and I'm thinking the final rack will be all glued together for added stability, even though the notch system I've been doing holds things together fairly well.

I'm thinking I'll be able to fit 15 horses per shelf, doing the setup this way.

Here's another view, with the original prototype below.

There is a lot more popsicle stick cutting and notching to come in my future with this project!

After I get the minis squared away, I'll have to decide on a setup for the big horses.