Ridiculous Cat is Ridiculous

Today was one of those days where I feel like a lot of things got done, but I also feel more tired than I think I should for the amount of stuff that got done...

On the subject of tired, I present Loki.  Two years ago, he was a feral barn cat kitten who came with this place.  Since then, he has come to appreciate things like laps, couches, blankets, and king size beds.  Oh, and ham.

The thing I most often say about him is that he is ridiculous.  He, maybe even more than some other cats, seems to have perfected the art of relaxing.  These were all taken this morning.

Loki is ridiculous.  Ridiculously cute, that is.  

Model Horse Monday

At the tail end of this model horse Monday, I present: my view from bed. 

My studio is small, this is the smallest one I've had, and now it has a bed right in the middle of the chaos.  It's a bit of a story how that came about and the story is still unfolding.  For now I will say... I like it.  I go to bed and wake up surrounded by things that are pretty and inspiring to me.  That's pretty cool.  This is a temporary situation, hopefully, but I've been enjoying it.  

(I hope you are enjoying my sputtering attempts to get back on the blog train!)

Late to the Red Dead Party

There's a little video game that came out a while back, you might have heard of it: Red Dead Redemption 2.  I had been somewhat interested in the game (Old West, outlaws, horses, what's not to love?), but I also thought it would just be a bunch of shootouts, train robberies, and so on.  Oh, it does have those things, but also SO much more.

In August, while visiting a friend, I was able to try out the game on their PlayStation 4.  Playing with a controller was not something I'm used to.  I'm a keyboard and mouse PC gamer - far from a good one, haha, but that's what I am used to.

Controller unfamiliarity aside, I got hooked on the game right away.  I wanted to play it again as soon as I got home from that trip, but decided to wait and see if it would go on sale, maybe around the holidays.  Another friend, who also plays it on console, surprised me by buying me a PC copy for my birthday in September!

I haven't played it a LOT, but enough to start getting familiar with things and, no surprise: start collecting horses.

Sadly, it seems you can only have a few horses in the game.  I've already had to sell some that I liked, to make room for others.

I have already found a couple of the rare horses in the game, one by accident and one on purpose. 

The splash white American Paint is apparently a rare horse.  I stumbled across her while out riding around.  I didn't even know she was rare at the time, but I had to get her.

The next one is the "warped brindle" Arabian.  Found in the wild, I was SUPER excited to find and capture this guy.  He immediately made me think of Josie, from this year's BreyerFest.

You can see my other horse there, too.  He is a liver chestnut Morgan and I love the red mane and tail they put on him.  I think most of the horse colors are actually well done and the horses are SO neat.

Not shown here is my current 4th horse, a big black Shire stallion that shows up early in the game.  He is huge and awesome.

The model horse connection here is that I think I want to paint some of these horses.  ;-)  Or something similar anyway.  Also, I have found myself inspired to make tack after playing.  It's good inspiration all around for a horse-related hobby I think.  

Bit of Bonanzaville

Today was a spontaneous trip to Fargo and it included an equally spontaneous stop at a place called Bonanzaville.  It is a museum of North Dakota and regional history.  As it turned out, it is the off season now and they are on "winter hours".  So most of the exhibits and buildings full of things to see were closed for the year.  Admission was free to what was still open, which was the main building with a few rooms of exhibits. 

Here are a few things I found interesting.

Models of any sort catch my eye and I love cutaways to show how structures were made:

At a glance, this looked close to Traditional Breyer scale.  It was very interesting:

The story posted about these two white buffalo calves is that they had been born on the same farm, years apart, but had not lived long.  As for the big one, I've seen many (live) buffalo/bison up close, but I still forget how big they are. 

Breyers!

Other horse-shaped-objects:

This barn made me think about the Barn Raising Challenge on Facebook...  Is it that time again?  I need to go check... 

What little I got to see of Bonanzaville was interesting and I learned quite a bit about North Dakota history during the short visit there.  I would like to go back when everything is open.  Apparently, they have many buildings full of things to see, including a carriage house, steam locomotive, and a pioneer village.  Maybe next summer I'll go back to check it all out.  

October Observation

 

Waking up like:

I should probably start blogging again.

Motivation Monday - Keep Beginning

Back Aboard The Coach!

The last time I posted anything about my Epic Stagecoach project was...  Almost 6 years ago.  I have not touched it since then.

Well, that's not entirely true.

Last year, it made its live show debut.  How??  In the awesome Big Dreams class at The Jennifer Show, where it was the biggest dream - by footprint anyhow.  It, and all it's paraphernalia, took up an entire table. 

After that, it was all packed away again.  

Recently, I've made an effort in my "new" studio room (been in there for over a year, but it still feels new and not moved into) to set up a work station just for the Stagecoach.

Last night, I randomly sat down in the spot, cleared a few things out of the way, and got back to work.

In my last post about the project, I shared how one of the wheels had been shattered.  My plan has always been to use that as an "opportunity" to redo the wheels, having learned MUCH more about actual wheelwrighting since making them.  However, last night I made the decision to repair the broken wheel and move forward... with a footnote.  I will be making sure the wheels are removeable.  That way I can backtrack and do the upgrades at a later date if I want to (and I do).

Before deciding to fix the wheel, I ended up peeling off the "tire", intending to break the rim apart and start the from scratch rebuild.  After deciding to repair the wheel "as is", I decided that this removal was fine to do, it gave me an idea how hard or easy it would be to tear down the wheel later.  It wasn't too hard, but did require some patience.

I called it a night last night, after repairing the (long) broken wheel.  Four wheels with spokes again, for the first time in yeeeears.

Tonight's task ended up a simple one, but crucial.  It was also something that had had me stuck - bigly.  

For such a high end kit, the wheel hubs are quite poorly made.  To the point that the center holes aren't even big enough (or round enough) for the axle shafts to go through!  For years - okay, not constantly, but several times - I'd debated how best to fix this.  Tonight I just did it.  

The fix ended up being hand drilling; starting with a bit that would go through - 4.5mm for 3 of them, a tight fit for the 4th - then 4.8mm, then the 5mm that they needed.  I had been hesitant to use power tools on these and was glad that hand drilling worked.  Thanks to Jeff for suggesting the start small and work up gradually technique.  

I really wanted to work on the project tonight, to keep up the momentum unexpectedly started last night.  I decided to stop for tonight once I saw this:

A confession - I'm not *quite* ready to be at this point.  A few other things need to be put on the chassis before the axles are attached.  However, I could not wait any longer to see the "rolling chassis".

I'm taking it slow, I'd like to work on this a bit every day (if possible).  Maybe I'll finally finish it, THIS decade?

Of course there's also the harnesses and horses and...  

(crazy laughter fades into the distance)