Day After Christmas

Today feels more like Christmas than yesterday, because...

We finally have snow!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from Japan!

It is Christmas here already, Christmas afternoon now.  Sadly it is not a white Christmas, although we have had some tiny snow flurries.  I'm hopeful that we will have snow by the end of the day, or maybe tonight.

In the meantime, here's a Christmas picture I took last year of my old Shire, Rose, with her sleigh and jingle bells.  This was in our backyard, back in SD.

As I said last year when I shared the picture on FB: how is she pulling the sleigh with no harness?  Magic.  ;)

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas.

Stablemate Rope Halter

This is something that I've had in mind to do for a few months now.  I had tried a time or two and given up, but day before yesterday I finally pulled it off.

More to come about it later.  I'm still ironing out some details and complications, namely adapting directions for a full scale halter to allow better construction in miniature, but I think I'm really close to being able to make a lot of these - in lots of different colors!

Full Speed Ahead

Yesterday I picked up a couple of things that I needed to move forward with the first Arabian costume.  Today I plan to do quite a bit of work on it, including much braiding and tassel making!

Crafty Tack Day!

Today I worked on several little things, mostly parts of the first costume.

I built a saddle tree - my very first!

The book I'm following says to use polymer clay to build the tree, but I haven't used that yet and didn't feel like trying it today.  So I decided to go with epoxy for my first try.  I then decided to work on a bunch of other small bits of the costume while waiting for tree to harden.

Next up was to build the start of the stirrups,

the stirrup leathers,

and the stirrup bar strap, to be measured and finished when the tree is done.

I also put together the base for the breast collar.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much more I could do, because I need to go get some floss to start on braid work and tassels.  Yes, even with my big collection of floss, I still don't have quite the right colors...

As always, when working with epoxy, I had some left over.  So this guy got part of a neck.

Another little project for today was this, the start of my very first mini scale blanket.  I'm very happy with how it's turning out!

It was a great day!

Expanding the Tiny Forest

My bonsai collection is growing.

Yesterday, during the bonsai class, one of the other students brought a bunch of baby trees to give away and I ended up bringing home several.

Costume - Panel Construction

Today I did a bit more work on my first Arabian costume.

Using the frames I made a couple of days ago, I selected some pieces of fabric to cut out and used a chalk pencil to draw the lines.

Then I applied fray check around the borders.

After the fray check had dried, I cut out all three pieces.

Each piece was glued onto background fabric and a ribbon border put around them.

Finally, the fabric was trimmed, folded over, and glued down as a backing on three sides of each panel.

 As usual, I had to try a quick test fit on my model.  It was exciting to see some real progress!

That's where I left things for this session; I've got the panels being pressed in a book for now.

This whole project is kind of scary for me, it is all new, but it feels good to finally be underway.  I'm not expecting much from this first attempt, but hopefully I'll come out with something halfway decent on the end - and learn what I can improve on.