Back to the Barn

Last week I wrote about discovering that the doctor who does my spine injections is also a horsey girl. We spent part of my appointment talking horses and she ended up giving me her personal cell number so we could arrange a visit to the barn. 

Yesterday was the day we'd scheduled to visit the horses. But when she got home from work, she discovered that both her sons were running fevers. She was really disappointed, but I assured her that I could easily reschedule and we'd go another time when the boys were healthy.

I started to head back into the sewing room to get some more Feast work done, but then I decided I would go by myself. I had already cut up apples and carrots, and I knew that  Tim had moved the horses to a dryer area so we would not get muddy.

So, I put down my sewing needle, stepped into my barn boots, and headed out.

Sultanna is the only horse who really knows me well - the others arrived after Abby's death. She came right up to say hello.

It was good to see her. I fed her some apple slices and petted her a bit before moving on.

EZ has a shoulder injury and is on stall rest for a month. Tim has a movable pen he puts in various places so EZ can be outside and get some fresh air.

Bogo doesn't know me and while she liked my apple offerings, she really wasn't interested in visiting.

Same with Penny - she ate her apples and then walked off and out into the northwest pasture to graze.

With Tim's permission, Indianna has Rosy Red fish residing in the trough eating algae and insect larva. There are some PVC pipes to give them shelter from the sun and predators. I had to smile - it is clear that Tim loves having Belle and her kids at his barn!

I walked through the new barn - Belle's family's saddles were lined up in a row and made me smile.

I almost took my English saddle home as I need it next month for the Feast School Day presentation I'm doing, but I will get it another time and will probably keep it here at home after that.

The lounge had recently been swept and Tim's wood carving things have been put away. They'll be back again, though - he carves a lot during cold weather.

As I finished walking around, my heart grew heavy. The grief at losing Abby had surfaced and I felt it keenly as I finished my walk-through of the barn.

I drove home in tears. 

I was happy to have been at the barn, but this is why I mostly stay away now. My girl is gone and the grief begins to well in my heart as I visit a place that I love and that has so many happy memories.

But the best part of those memories is gone and I miss Abby's presence. Her whickers when she would see me arrive and the way she would come barreling up to the gate to greet me. The pied piper moments and how she followed me everywhere. The companionship as we simply hung out together.

It's been over two years since that lightning strike took her life but clearly my heart still has not healed.

Stay 'tooned.

First Post of the Day

Christmas Horse of the Day

A second piece from the Stablemates Gamblers' Choice, Clydesdale Christmas blind bag set!

Produced in 2021, this one is red charm with a white mane and tail and gold bobs and ribbons.

I'd love to have the gold and silver charm Clydesdales to complete the set, so if you have one to sell, please contact me at horsiemama8@gmail.com.

Advent Calendar - Day 20

A white barn

with a red roof!

Four more days left!

A Barn Update

Well, look what I did.  

An unplanned visit done on a whim while running an errand. A sign of healing because that is what I would have done before Abby died - any time I was in the vicinity of the barn, I'd have swung by to visit the horses.

Hokey and Sultanna did not come up the last time I'd stopped by; this time they came right over.

Tim was way out in the northwest pasture doing a burn pile, but when he saw me, he hiked down to say hello. That gave us a chance to catch up.

He thinks that Hokey may have actually been hit by the lightning strike that killed Abby and Two Socks. He gave me his reasoning at length (and it's sound), but here's an abbreviated summary:

~  Hokey's feet were very tender for weeks afterward, and that is where the lightning would have exited his body.

~  He was SO very traumatized, hiding in the old barn for weeks and only coming out for brief periods to graze and drink.

~  He is blind in his right eye now and that happened suddenly and right after the lightning strike.

Poor boy! 

As you can see, Sultanna is back and she has taken over Abby's role as the herd alpha. 

Tim reports that when she returned she was very protective of Hokey and kept running Easy off from him. Hokey and Easy had become good buddies, and so now they are all sorting out their relationships in the herd.

But things are settling down. Easy has had some training and Tim has been riding him. He comes from The Easy Ranch in Texas and had mostly been running free in a pasture. He was not used to people much nor did he have much ground training. But he is coming along beautifully.

It was good to be out at the barn again, chatting with Tim, hanging with the horses, and enjoying the barn life. I mentioned that I still needed to retrieve my saddles and tack trunk out of the new barn, and he told me they were fine where they were, reiterating that I was always welcome there.

In response to photos that I'd taken of him and then sent him that afternoon, he wrote a text later in the evening.

"As long as Lynn's bell is out there, please consider it your home."

Thanks, Tim. I have no plans to take the bell home, so you're stuck with me! 

The November Give Away closes at 11:59 PM Eastern tonight! Enter by commenting with your guess as to what kind of riding license the gentleman at the Feast showed me. (I can't wait to share what it was.)

A Barn Swing By

Yesterday I was determined to get to the barn. I sewed all morning, finishing the last voyager shirt I had planned to make for The Feast and that felt really good.

Then I took the afternoon off from sewing as I had some errands to run and scheduled a visit with Abby when those were completed. I was missing my mare and leaving her last meant I would not feel pressed to get on to the next thing on my errands list.

I started by meeting Cole and Vanessa at a restaurant to have a late celebration for Curt's birthday.

A smiling face that I knew greeted us at the door - former student Kamryn! I was her fourth and fifth grade teacher. (I taught her brother, too.) She came over to our table and we had a few minutes to catch up. It's always awesome to run into one of my formers!

After celebrating with Curt, I headed up to my sister's farm

and bought eight new block print fabrics for making shirts.

One had a border of camels

and another had elephants!

Those two motifs are well documented in 18th century fabrics but they are hard to come by in the 21st century. I was really happy to find them.

At last it was time to head to the barn.

Abby was so glad to see me - I think she's missed me as much as I have missed her.

She hustled right over to visit and munch on some peppermints.

Two Socks and Sultanna came up with her, but I did not give them treats. Two Socks gets very pushy if she thinks you have food and demands attention.

Abby and I had a lovely visit on a beautiful Fall day. I was sad to leave, but I still had one more thing on my to-do list.

Re-filming the very last part of the video I am making.

Pepper doing as her Guide Dog training says she should - going under the desk or table when her mama is working.

Lisa had time to come over that evening and shoot it with me. As I was changing back into the clothes I'd worn in the other video clips, I had to laugh - I'd had my hair cut since the other parts were filmed. I wonder how that is going to look in the final version?

Pepper loved the little tent the table made for her and slept under it voluntarily the week it was set up for filming. She will be sad when I take the set down today.

I'm making some cuts to last night's work and then I will send this last bit to Cole so he can add it to what he has already done. Then I will be done!

Much as I love to sew, it was nice to take some time away from the sewing machine and do some other things, especially visiting Abby. And finishing that last bit of videotaping is a huge relief. I am done with the voyageur shirts but I still have some bedgowns to make for The Feast. If I don't finish those,  though, I am still in good shape.

Funny how taking some time off can help you get more accomplished than you thought you could.

The Storm Rolls In

The storm that is keeping me from attending this weekend's Great Lakes Congress show rolled in around 1:00 PM yesterday. Despite the fact that the rain portion of the storm had already begun, I decided to run to the barn for a quick check on the horses before the ice and snow arrived.

That rain (2 inches!) coupled with the melting 13 inches of snow from ten days ago had turned everything into a muddy mess.

I didn't feel like slogging through it to get to Abby, and since Tim was also at the barn, I knew he'd checked them and that they were fine.

A quick check showed that the water trough was full and the heater working, and so I chatted with Tim a few minutes and then headed back home.

Shortly after I got there, the rain transitioned to sleet and freezing rain. I cleaned up from the barn and then went upstairs to my sewing room to work on some projects.

This is the sound of the sleet and freezing rain being blown against the windows in my sewing room.

It didn't take long before the ice had accumulated enough that I could not see out those windows.

Because of the snowmelt from the last storm as well as the rain from this one, we are experiencing heavy flooding along with the snow and ice. The Wabash is over many roads including the one I lived on growing up.

This is a picture I took a few years ago of that highway during another time when the Wabash flooded. My home is to the left and behind about 100 feet. The Wabash had jumped its banks and covered the road. (Unlike those crazy drivers ahead of me, I did NOT drive through that water. I turned around and went back the way I had come.)

The Wabash, Tippecanoe, and Wildcat are all out of their banks and causing travel issues. Couple that flooding with the ice and snow, plus the bitter cold coming in tonight, and it's going to be a while before I leave the house again.

As I write, the schools are on a two hour delay this morning. With the way the roads are, I am hoping that the school superintendent ends up canceling school and keeping students and staff safe.  Go here to read about a time when he made a different decision.

As for the GLC show, there's no doubt I made the right decision to stay home.

Stablemate Barn

Breyer currently is producing a really nice barn for Stablemates. It can stand alone on a shelf or dresser or it can be hung on the wall. (Photo taken from Breyer's web site.)

The barn also comes with four Stablemates in a set called Dappled and Dots. 

Currently I have a nice set-up for my Stablemates (which I don't collect) - two four tier clear acrylic cupcake risers.

I like them very much, but the Stablemates are prone to falling over when there is the slightest bump to the risers. I have had more cascades that I can count.

The new barn Breyer was offering looked promising because it had that fence to keep pieces from toppling over. So, when I ordered my Vintage Club Nonoma, I also ordered the barn.

The fact that all four Stablemates in the promo picture are set at an angle should have been a clue as to how the barn would work. That fence is set so far back, nearly all my Stablemates had to be set in at an angle, too. And that eats shelf space.

So, the cupcake risers are still out and in use for the longer models who would not fit.

I'm not sure what I am going to do with them - I was hoping to use that space for more models books. I did check to see if I could remove the fences on the barn and move them out a bit. There is certainly space to do that, but they have been set and glued into holes.

I ended up with mixed emotions about the barn. On the one hand, I did get a lot of Stablemates into it, and it is very well made. I am really pleased with the quality.

But, I still have 43 Stablemates either in boxes or on the cupcake risers. Should I buy another barn? Or should I continue to use the risers?

(Maybe the solution is to just stop buying Stablemates.)

NaMoPaiMo: Does a Nudie Barn Count?

It's day four of NaMoPaiMo, and Mila and I haven't been able to get together yet. In the meantime, I am building my barn.

The barn raising challenge was last month and I didn't have time to join in then. But we've had some bad weather this week and are expecting more this weekend,

so aside from quick trips with Pepper to the back yard and some checks on Abby, I am staying home and indoors. Time to work on my barn!

I began by laying out all the pieces and making sure I had everything.  

Because barns in the western part of Indiana are predominately white with green roofs, I wanted mine to reflect that. (Here is a blog post about barns in my area.)

This is the barn I am modeling mine after. If I can find an in-scale star, I'll add that, too!

Desktop Stables participated in the barn raising challenge and she recommended using markers to color the barn parts. That was a great suggestion. (Thanks, Nichelle!)

Leaving the pieces in their frames made coloring them easier.

I punched them out after all the interior sides were done and sorted them according to what color the exterior side would be painted - green or white 

The green went onto the roof pieces really well but then I ran into trouble. 

My white showed up as a cream! And when I used the fine tip end of the green marker to color the Xs on the barn doors, it bled into the surrounding wood.

Somehow the color bled onto me, too! 

I decided to order another marker, this time in pure white, and see if that works. If it doesn't, I have acrylic paint that I can use. I hope the white paint will prevent the bleeding of the green when it is added. Most definitely I will practice on some of the scraps that were left after punching the pieces out. 

So, I am painting during NaMoPaiMo month and that counts, right?