EverAfter Stables

Update!

2011-10-18T19:15:00.000+02:00

I'm still here! Some of you will have already heard the big news that happened in my life - I moved back to Oregon from Holland this summer. Living in Holland was wonderful, and I'll always cherish my time there and the friends I made, but it's been wonderful to be back in Portland.

I got a job managing a construction company, which requires that I work 50-60 hour weeks, so naturally my tackmaking time has taken a big hit from when I was able to do it full time in Holland. I am not currently accepting new orders, and won't be for the foreseeable future - I will be clearing out all the orders I have now before thinking about taking more.

All of my possessions (clothes, studio items, collection) arrived this past Sunday, finally! So I'm working on finishing the move-in process, and looking forward to having my fully functional studio back.

If you have an order with me and you are concerned about when it will be done, please email me - I'll be doing my best to get things done in a timely manner as my new schedule allows.

Thank you all for your continued interest in my work!

Finished something different!

2011-04-05T17:13:00.000+02:00

This is a fun order I just finished this morning. I can't figure out exactly what category it fits into - it has elements from old style mexican and spanish saddles, as well as older American saddles, but then with new style tooling! It was certainly fun to do though, in spite of some challenges from working with this totally new (and customized to match the reference pic) tree. Anyway, here it is!

Show photo raffle!

2011-03-16T01:21:00.000+01:00

I am going to be holding a raffle on my blog this August (for my birthday!), and the winner will get a western headstall with reins, made to their specifications.

A few bridle options I've done in the past:

To enter, just e-mail me photos of my tack items at model horse shows, with any winnings. Each photo gets you entered once - send me five photos and get entered five times! Of course, within reason - the five photos should be of different classes or callbacks, not five photos of the same thing. ;-) Photo show photos count too, just include text of what awards have been given.

Thank you all very much for supporting my tack making endeavors!

Show photos!

2011-03-16T00:11:00.000+01:00

Long time no post! I've been working away here, after hosting my big live show in February. Things were crazy around that time, and this blog suffered!

Anyway, I have some show photos to share! These were taken this past weekend at Carolina Gold Classic. This set is owned by Brooke Smith, pictured on her lovely Rose Reiner painted by Angelica Nelson.

Here he is in trail:

for the Western Championship callbacks:

Winning Reserve Champ Western!

Thank you Brooke for sending in your photos! For anybody else with saddles from me reading this, don't forget to send in those show photos - I'll be holding a raffle in August this year (for my birthday) for everybody that has sent in show photos. The prize will be something really neat!

Almost forgot!

2011-01-25T20:40:00.000+01:00

I made an EverAfter Stables Facebook page! It's here. I figured it was finally time to split out my tack making stuff from my personal page. After all, people that are interested in my tack may not be interested about everything else I prattle on about on Facebook, so now there's a choice!

Back in the Saddle!

2011-01-25T20:29:00.000+01:00

Literally... sort of!

My trip to the US was just amazing, and I loved every minute of it. I got to see almost all my friends, even though I don't feel like I got to see any of them for long enough! I even got to a small live show the weekend before I came home, which was great! My goal for 2012 is to make NAN and Breyerfest, so it was wonderful to get a bunch of minis qualified for the big show.

I am back now though, and getting back into my Dutch routine. I felt really rusty getting back into tack making though, so I have started rather slowly with this set that will be a donation for the Northwest Congress show. It's coming along nicely though, and has really served it's purpose as a "ease back into it" set. I hope to get it put together in the next couple of days, and mailed off to Washington.

My live show, Hearts N Horses, is coming right up as well! It's on February 12th, and I have some guests coming the week before, so it's going to be busy around here until the middle of February.

I hope you all had a great holiday!

Last saddle for the year!

2010-12-23T14:30:00.000+01:00

I finished that parade set last night, and got photos this morning! I am really beyond happy with how it turned out, so without further delay here are a whole bunch of photos.

This is it from me for the year! Tomorrow morning we head down to Maarssen for Christmas, and then I am off on Monday the 27th for America. I really cannot wait to visit everybody in Oregon and Washington, and have a HUGE list of things I want to do while I am there. Go to Michael's and revel in a huge craft store, Jo-Ann for the same reason, not to mention all of my friends and family that I miss terribly. It will also be wonderful to go places and understand the conversations around me without having to work to listen!

I hope you guys reading this have a wonderful holiday too, and that you are able to spend it with those you love.

Two per week has failed!

2010-12-21T18:29:00.000+01:00

Though I can't say I am especially surprised, two per week lasted exactly one week. I did get one saddle per week done the other two weeks, though! I am fortunate that a couple of my customers asked that their saddles be moved farther down the line, so nobody is waiting longer than expected (I hope!).

Anyway, here is a small preview pic of the last saddle of 2010!

It has more than 140 individually tooled and detailed longhorn conchos, those were a bear! Right now I am in the last stages of construction, and it should be done tomorrow or Thursday. Just in time, because we leave on Friday to have Christmas with Ben's family! Then on Monday I fly to America for my visit! It will probably be quiet around these parts for my trip, though I do hope to update at least once. I still have another post coming with finished photos of this parade set, though, when it's done!

As Promised, Tack Pics!

2010-12-13T15:00:00.000+01:00

I just got this one put together and got a few photos. It's a reining set, to fit the Rose Reiner (obviously, haha). I love the reference pic the customer sent. She wanted this saddle here, except with a rope edge instead of barbed wire, and with tooling added to the corners of the fenders and jockeys:

Aaaaaand, here's my interpretation:

This one was fun!

Live Show this Weekend!

2010-12-13T11:40:00.000+01:00

Well, I do not have saddle pics to post today. I DO have one saddle almost done for this week, however! It's not two, but it's better than none.

One of the reasons I was busier than usual this week is that I held my very first live show here in Holland. It was really fun! The point of the show was to give a low-key opportunity to practice with the "show one horse in many performance classes" system, which is totally new over here. Only four entrants were able to make it in the end (it was rather frosty the week leading up to the show), but I heard great things from all four of them. In addition, these guys just blew me away with how hard they worked to learn this new format! They all had horses entered in multiple classes, and one entrant managed to get her horse shown in both the other performance division and the english division, with great success.

The show hall is rather small, but I can fit ten entrants in it, and the price is right. I will be doing another one of these in April, this time only for AR models, CM models, and OF Minis.

Here are a few photos! M&Ms were my "ribbons", and the orange ones are for first place. It went Orange, Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, Brown.

You can see the whole album here, with many more photos of performance and OF Halter (the two divisions offered).

I also hope to have more photos to post later today or tomorrow, of the saddle I am finishing!

I fail.

2010-12-05T17:09:00.000+01:00

Operation Two Per week crashed and burned this week. I have all sorts of excuses, but the result is that I finished just one set, and that was today. I also made a pair of skid boots, but those are pretty quick.

Instead of wallowing in my failure, I will just post a few peetchers of the set I DID finish. It was made for the ISH, who is a lot heavier through the middle than Miss America here, so excuse the hanging billet - that girth is cinched all the way up!

I am hoping I manage to be more productive next week, and stick to my goal! Only 3 weeks left until I get on a plane... EEK!

Sometimes I feel like I'm being watched...

2010-12-01T16:38:00.000+01:00

Working alone in the house can have it's positives, like having whatever music I want turned up as loud as I want it. Some days though, I get a little stir crazy...

Like today, I was working away with tooling and got that "eyes boring holes into me" feeling. I wonder why...

She watches...

Still... mostly on track!

2010-11-30T00:22:00.000+01:00

Can we pretend today isn't Monday? Yes? Great. In that case, here is the second of the two saddles I finished right on time.

It's a rather "old school" style, which was really fun to do - my reference pic was of an older Circle-Y saddle that looks strikingly similar to the dark oil Billy Royal I showed in for years.

Up next: Light oil star themed reining set and a second pink sweetheart set! NEXT week I will do a parade set I've been very excited to start on!

Two Per Week; Still on Track!

2010-11-28T00:42:00.001+01:00

Here's the saddle I finished this morning:

It's for a customer that has a dark breastcollar and headstall coming from Susan Bensema-Young at some point, and I am just honored that my saddle will be paired with such work. I feel similarly about an order I have on the books to make a saddle to match a headstall and breastcollar by Heather Moreton-Abounader. Both of these ladies do incredible braiding and strap goods. You can find Heather's blog here, where she gives us previews of her amazing work!

One day I hope to tackle braiding! It's another item on my list of things to do when people tire of ordering from me and I have more time to play around with stuff for myself. Other items on this list include harnesses, english tack, spanish and portugese tack, crazy feathered and rhinestoned circus tack... Oh, to have unlimited time.

Anyway, Saddle Number Two for this week is still partially in pieces - it's tomorrow's project.

I hope all of you in the US had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

(Edit to add - one of the little silver dealies is crooked on the top photo! Those can move, they are held in with pins that reinforce the saddle construction, so I just have to nudge it back into place, but oops! I normally catch those before photos...)

Finished the LB set from earlier this week!

2010-11-23T10:59:00.000+01:00

The bridle is too big for this horse, the horse it was made for has a wider and bigger head. So ignore the floppy fit on the bridle and the extra length on the throatlatch and the reins!

Woo hoo! Now on to two chocolate colored pleasure sets, one trad and one classic.

Customer Photos!

2010-11-22T22:44:00.000+01:00

WOO HOO, I have some customer photos from a show to post! I just love getting these. A note for anybody that owns a saddle by me - e-mail me show photos, and for every show you get entered into a raffle. Next year I will draw a winner, who will get something very special. I don't know exactly what I'm going to give away for this yet, but it'll be worth taking a few photos for, I promise!

These are from Red Dirt Roundup, held this weekend in Oklahoma I believe.

This first entry belongs to Kellye Bussey - I love her customized Miss America resin!

These next photos are of an entry by Christie Partee, on one of my favorite performance horses - the BHR Loping horse!

If you have photos of any of my other work from a show, don't hesitate to send them my way!

A LB Set!

2010-11-21T17:54:00.000+01:00

I confess. Making tack smaller than classic scale is not my favorite thing in the world. There just isn't enough space to get in all the goodies I want to add to everything!

In spite of my hesitation about them, I have made a few. Here are progress photos I took this evening of a LB scale working set I'm doing now:

I hope to finish it up tonight or tomorrow.

Here's a couple photos of the other recent LB set I've done - it doubles as a parade or pleasure set:

I have one more LB scale set on the books right now, and once that's done I hope this will be the end of my Tiny Tack adventures for a while! I will say though, the big ones just seem so easy after doing a couple of these wee ones!

Something awesome happened!

2010-11-19T22:31:00.000+01:00

I made this set earlier this year:

I sent the link to that saddle's page to the Tacky Tack blog when it happened, and I just got an e-mail that she posted it to her blog! The comments are just beyond flattering, and I am so tickled to be mentioned over there. You can read the post on the Tacky Tack of the Day blog here.

Operation Two Per Week is still on track, though I have a LOT to do on the LB set this weekend to get it done for this week's deadline! I will hopefully have photos of that on Sunday, as well as real finished photos of the classic set.

We have friends here visiting this weekend too, so I am taking some time to be social! Tomorrow we're going somewhere to see seals. That's about all I know about this destination. Hoping the weather holds!

Have a great weekend everybody!

Operation Two Per Week: So far so good.

2010-11-17T16:59:00.000+01:00

I am 3 days into my "Two Per Week" goal, and so far it is going well. Today I finished the classic set I started on Monday, and Friday I will finish the LB working set. If all goes well on Friday, I should be able to start tooling next week's sets this weekend!

Here is a terrible dark preview photo of the classic set. It has only corner/accent tooling, and the buyer requested very little silver. So here it is!

I also started a second blog this week, about my experiences living in Holland. There may or may not be loads of sarcasm, whining and the occasional asterisked swear word, so be forewarned! It is here.

Two per week?

2010-11-15T16:39:00.000+01:00

You may already have read that I am coming to the US for a much awaited visit this January. Shortly after that I will be holding my big live show here in Leeuwarden. These things combined will mean about six weeks away from tack making. For this reason, my goal is to finish ALL of my current commissions before Christmas. I did the math last night, and this means I would need to finish two sets per week from now until then. Theoretically I should be able to do this. It only takes me 2 days to make a set from start to finish, but that is at a really intense pace... more often I average out at about a set per week. So these next 7-8 weeks are going to be rather challenging!

I am right on schedule though for this week. Today I spent a solid seven hours in the studio, and got a LB working set and a classic all-around set outlined, tooled and dyed. This means that if I can get back into the studio tonight to get the pieces cut out (and maybe even edged), I should be able to get them both put together on Wednesday and Friday. Of course I can't do much of anything on Tuesdays and Thursdays, since I leave here for class at 10:30 and don't get home for about 12 hours.

Anyway, here are a few photos of the set I finished this weekend. It's just the second one I have used these micro-studs on, and I love the effect!

New Pony!

2010-11-14T17:51:00.000+01:00

In the spirit of updating more often, I thought I would share my most recent purchase over here. This gal is rather a big deal, because she is one of a very very small number of horses that I have purchased outright this year. I am doing a whole lot of trading these days, which I love! But this lady came at the right time, and for the RIGHT price, so I snapped her up.

She is a Miss America resin, customized and painted by Tammy Myrold. I could not be happier with her! She will make a fantastic tack model, too. I finished a set tonight that I will put on her tomorrow for finished photos!

Here she is:

Not Dead!

2010-11-07T23:35:00.000+01:00

Just neglecting this blog, as per usual apparently. I checked my website stats today, and I'm getting a lot of traffic from this poor neglected blog, so I thought I should pop over here and do a little update.

I have been working away on orders and a sales piece here and there. Almost all of my recent work is up on this page of my website, here.

I am also (as of today!) in the process of creating a new and better website. The old homestead one will stay up until the new one is complete, hopefully within a few weeks.

I think that's it for now! Here are a few photos of recent orders and sales pieces, because every blog post needs a photo or two.

Expecting a Visitor!

2010-07-19T15:07:00.000+02:00

Today I am preparing for my first visit from a model horse friend in Holland! Anne is coming from Den Dolder, which is close-ish to where Ben's parents live. She is coming tomorrow and will leave on Wednesday. We are going to be doing a lot of tack making, and I can't wait! I am about 75% finished with a commission set, so I hope to finish that tomorrow and get a good dent in tooling the next set on Wednesday.

Here's the little station I made for Anne, with all the essential tools for tooling and tack making! Of course there are supplies she will need, so I can supply her from 'my' desk next door.

Contents of the little work surface: catalogs for inspiration, sealer, paint, glue, water and a brush for tooling, a few stamps, tiny knives, burnishing tools, various styluses a ruler, leather pieces, rawhide hammer for stamping, and a little tray with toothpics for paint and glue.

I've also tidied up the studio in general, there were some adult (or at least late teen) sized dust bunnies!

I'm really looking forward to having somebody to work with, it's been a long time.

I have gone nuts.

2010-07-16T17:18:00.001+02:00

So I was working away on a commission today, when I hit a piece of leather that was super thin, and would be too floppy for a trad scale set. I thought to myself that it would be great for a mini set, if I made those. You can see where this is going - I said to myself well, why don't I make mini sets? No matter that the last ones I made were abominations to tack making, and I did them more than 10 years ago. It's always a good time to try something new, right? So my order was sidelined, and I set to work trying to tool a mini pleasure set. Here are photos of it right now, with the Spinny by Mel Miller that will be wearing it!

Here's a detail shot of the pieces. They are larger than life here! I have just edge coated them, and will go back up and burnish the edges after dinner.

Sorry for the terrible photos!

I am planning on trying to finish this tonight after dinner. I think I should be able to, assuming I can figure out the tree situation in a reasonable amount of time. I really have no clue how I'm going to go about doing the swells and the horn, especially.

Wish me luck!

German show & tack updates!

2010-07-15T16:39:00.000+02:00

Once again I managed to ignore this poor blog for a month. How does the time go so quickly? Since I last posted I went to a show in Germany again, this time in Frondenberg. There should be an umlaut over that first O, but my keyboard can't do it. :-( Here's photos from the show, my horses did very well!

http://picasaweb.google.com/erin.corbett/7102010Frondenberg#

I did not show any western saddles this time around, and I think that might become a trend for me. It seems sort of weird to compete against customers, now that I've sold work in Germany. I will show in the western classes at the big show in August, because I have already entered them, but that might be it for me!

I've also been busy in the studio. Here's what I did yesterday and today:

One of the things that helps me really blast through stets is to have the "icky" parts done ahead of time, and in quantity. That photo shows a ton of buckles with pesky tongues added, as well as three saddles worth of stirrup/fender adjustments. I always hate slowing down to do the construction on those, and will really be thanking myself when I don't have to on these next saddles!

This headstall is for an order I did back in May. I really enjoy doing braided headstalls, especially when I can add a little color. The model is Hazel, painted by Carol Huddleston.

Lastly, I am planning on going to Breyerfest next year! My friend in Germany, Melanie K. and I are starting to save now. I am going to be making one "extra" sales saddle set each month to raise money for it. Those sales pieces will be posted directly to MH$P and here, so keep an eye out if you're interested! They will be a mix of pleasure and working sets.

Thanks to everybody for reading!

THWARTED!

2010-06-09T14:22:00.000+02:00

GAH! There are few things worse than being positively seized by inspiration to work on something, only to discover I'm missing crucial supplies and can't work on it. This happened to me last night around 2AM. I sat down at 8PM thinking I'd just work on a few little things here and there, and all of the sudden decided I was going to finish the tooling on the current "on deck" order set.

This is a really complicated design, it's based on this famous saddle from Dale Chavez (pic from their site):

So it's 1:30, I have all the tooling done and the leather coated with sealer, and I'm laying out what I need for this morning to dive right in and possibly finish it in one day. (stranger things have happened.) Lo and behold, I have exactly two 1.5mm silver studs. Not 200. Two. I need probably 350ish for this order, and I had forgotten that I used ALL of them on my last order.

Here's that last order, you can see why I ran out!

Now, I *do* have loads of 2mm silver studs, but I did the tooling and borders with 1.5mm studs in mind, and that half a millimeter will really make a difference when it's all put together.

I placed my order for studs to last me hopefully through the year. I really dislike working on things out of order, but in this case I'd rather work on the next saddle than be idle. so off I go!

I am also leaving for Germany tomorrow afternoon for another model show! This time Melanie and I have planned a Friday of fun horsey stuff - we're going to a Curly farm to do a trail ride! I am bringing tons of extra batteries, so hopefully will come back with photos of me on a cutie-pie fuzzbutt!

Live Show Amstelveen, 6.5.2010

2010-06-06T12:23:00.000+02:00

Whew! I got back late last night from my first live show in Holland. It was fantastic! Everybody was really friendly, and so many Dutch people speak wonderful english that I had no problems getting around and figuring out what was going on. It helps that I do understand some Dutch, so when they called classes for cold bloods, I know that's drafters, full bloods are TBs, etc etc.

My horses did phenomenally well, I ended up winning Champ and Reserve Performance, Champ and Reserve Resin Breed, Champ and Reserve Resin Color, Reserve Champ Custom Breed, Reserve Champ Custom Color, Champ and Reserve OF Plastic Breed. Yeah. The prizes were really neat-o too, I got schleich models with most of those awards, so now I have a mini collection of them!

Here's a few pics of my wins:

This is my OF 2010 Treasure Hunt Wintersong in glossy bay. I was lucky enough to get to hand pick him from several, and he has really lovely dapples and nice clean socks!

This is Haberdasher, a Flitwick painted by Melanie Miller. Here he is getting third place in the Resin Color judge-off, and earning a card to show in the Dutch Championships in October!

This is Granite and Ponsatron, winning Champ and Reserve in Resin Breed. They won the same awards in Resin Color! Granite is painted by Carol Williams, and Ponsatron is by Tracy Eilers.

Granite winning Champ in performance, wearing tack by me. Check out the awesome elven princess I won!

The structure was closer to an American show than the show in Germany was I think - the judging was done by a handful of designated people, instead of the 'judge what you're not showing in' format, which allowed for a lot more consistency of course. For Performance, there were no tack classes, just the regular small list of classes like harness, western, english, spanish, arabian, other. Minis were in with trads for resins and customs, but separated for OF Plastic. The placings were to fourth. I understand that all shows in Holland use the same colors for awards - first or champ is always orange, which is fitting for Holland! Second/Reserve, third and fourth are red, white and blue, the colors of the Dutch flag from top to bottom. This show just placed to fourth, but I hear that some shows place to sixth, and if they do those colors are pink and green.

I think the biggest new thing for this show was no tags! There were not any recorded results, so everybody wrote down what their horses had won. It really perks my show holder mind to think about not having to do a single page of results, LOL! Again we did not pick breeds for anybody, you just put them in the class that is most appropriate for the body type.

There was a really nice raffle, I donated a western pleasure headstall + romels to it. I won a mini-whinnies painting kit and a crystal horse decoration, both of which I will have fun with for sure!

I also earned several cards for the Dutch National Championship show in October. You earn those only in the Championships, and they are awarded to the champion, reserve, and third place in each judge-off. They are good for one year, so the ones I earned yesterday need to be used to enter those horses at the show this year. It's in Groningen, which is less than a half hour's drive from me, so I will be there for sure! From what I understand there is a normal live show, and then the championship is immediately following the live show, the same day. I *think* that there are just a few classes, like Resin Breed, Resin Color, Performance, etc? Maybe one of the Dutch hobby people on here can confirm? I'm very excited about it though!

Here's the link to my photos. I made comments on them to talk about what was going on, so they make the most sense if you start at the beginning and click through.

http://picasaweb.google.com/erin.cor...010Amstelveen#

Thanks for reading, I hope it was at least a little interesting!

It's finished!

2010-06-02T19:16:00.000+02:00

I have finished Erin's Ode to Tacky Tack. This project more or less took over my studio and my brain for the past two days - went to sleep thinking about it, woke up with ideas of how to do the decorations. Now it's back to the regular schedule!

The link to the full set of photos is here, on my website.

A preview photo:

The Tacky Tack blog has created a monster.

2010-05-31T22:25:00.000+02:00

Right now spread out on my work desk:

Yellow and white snake skin
Pink metallic skiver with sparkles
Pink and silver studs
Pink and clear crystals
Campy "pistol" curb bit

It's going to be magnificent.

More New Stuff!

2010-05-31T16:06:00.000+02:00

My website has been updated, again. This is the price I pay for being productive, the work I have to put in keeping my website current! I have to keep reminding myself that it's much faster to update as I go than to wait and try and do a bunch of them at once.

Anyway, here's the new 2010 page with it's new additions:

http://everafterstables.homestead.com/SaddlePics/2010/2010.html

Here's a pic of the most recent addition, a commission to fit Sarah Rose's Khemosabi resin. I don't have one of those, so Reno here had to do for pics!

I hope you all in the states are enjoying your Memorial Day Weekend!

Hair! Hair Everywhere!

2010-05-30T17:07:00.001+02:00

Here's what I just did:

I have decided to do a couple of hours of work on stuff for sales/myself every time I finish an order. I finished an order this morning, so this afternoon I'm playing with hairy cowhide! I'll start on the next order in the morning - for now I'm going to see if I can't put together part of a fun gaming set straight from the Tacky Tack blog. :-D

Not dead!

2010-05-27T16:24:00.000+02:00

Just really lazy, apparently. I forget that not everybody is on Model Horse Blab or Facebook, so I should probably make an effort to update here too!

I did a major website update and re-design this week, as well as officially opening the books for a handful of orders. I only have room for one more, then the books are closed until I get what I have finished.

Here's the updated tackmaking page:

http://everafterstables.homestead.com/Tackmaking.html

I also, under great duress, made a real price sheet and order form. I was re-inventing the wheel every time I spoke with a potential customer, so now I have everything down in one place! If you're interested in ordering something, just shoot me an e-mail and I'll send you the information.

In current news, here's what I've been working on for the past couple of hours:

I really dislike making these little doohickeys, but they're necessary... if real saddles have 'em, I need to make 'em. At least I'm making enough for several saddles. I'll thank myself for that when I don't have to make them again for a couple of weeks. These are only partially done, not tooled or on pins yet.

Thanks to everybody that has stuck around! I promise to be better!

Flying Tomorrow!

2010-02-26T02:16:00.000+01:00

Well, tomorrow I finally get to get on the plane. Since I posted last I had to move my flight out one week - I won't bore you with the details of why! But tomorrow is finally upon me. It's been an incredibly emotional couple of weeks, saying goodbye to friends and family here.

Ben has found a house for us in Leeuwarden, which is in the northern part of Holland, in Friesland. That's a photo of it there at the top of this post - I cannot get it to drag down farther this time around, sorry!

There is a model horse show on the 13th that I'd love to go to, but it will all depend on how moving goes. Our house is available on the 8th, and my plan is to move in IMMEDIATELY! I am positively chomping at the bit to get my collection unpacked and onto the Ikea shelves I have picked out.

I'll post more photos of the move here when I get them, and also on Facebook for those of you that see me on there. :-)

Peace Out, USA!

2010-02-01T22:59:00.000+01:00

Well, it's finally here. I have been silent on this blog for so long because I didn't want the world in general (aka my job) to know I was planning on leaving for Holland until it was actually final. Now they know, so I am free to post about it here!

My last day at work is on Friday 2/12, and I fly to Holland on Friday 2/19, after spending a week in Corvallis with my family.

I haven't been able to work on tack since October, and it's killing me! I should be able to move into our house in Leeuwarden on 3/1, and setting up my studio is a top priority. I have a couple of orders all set up and ready to go, and am SO excited thinking about having space to work again, not to mention all of my collection around me instead of half the world away packed up in boxes.

I will be updating this blog regularly again now that the cat's out of the bag, and will keep current with photos and such!

Thanks to anybody that stuck around through the dry spell!

Life isn't fair.

2009-12-23T20:30:00.000+01:00

This year has been a bad one in terms of losing people. Even though it's almost Christmas, I can't get into the season for a couple reasons. One is that I'm still unsure when I get to join Ben. The other just hit me yesterday:

http://www.bhranch.com/appmainpagenew.htm

Karen Grimm of Black Horse Ranch is going through palliative care treatment for ovarian cancer. You can read the story from her at the link above.

If you haven't noticed from previous posts, my BHR models are the stars of my collection. I've e-mailed with Karen on and off for many years, and I simply can't wrap my head around the fact that she probably won't be around for much longer. I wish the newer people in the hobby realized how much of an influence Karen has been - she had Kitty Cantrell sculpting for her before Breyer. Sue Sifton is a major contributor to the BHR line. Karen arguably has the best and most complete Breyer collection out there.

This is the first hobby 'bad news' that's really hit home for me. Which brings me to the subject of this post - life just isn't fair. I know everybody has to pass on at some point, but it's too early for Karen.

Just kidding about no posts for a month!

2009-10-20T00:36:00.000+02:00

I thought I should post that I have finally updated my website with four new saddles from the last couple of months. I actually have several saddles I made for NAN that are not posted yet - but I didn't get good photos of most of them, so will need to cobble something together when I have time, from the NAN photos.

Anyway, here's the link:

http://everafterstables.homestead.com/Tackmaking.html

The Rose Tooled set is for sale, as well! I am having a really hard time pricing it, but e-mail me if you are interested and we can try and work something out. Here's a preview photo of it:

I also posted a page for my most recent two commissions - one traditional sized "Arabian Western Pleasure Set", and one classic sized light oil pleasure set. Both were a lot of fun to do - having customer ideas for them really helped me try things I might not have tried otherwise! Here are a couple of photos of those:

Full galleries of all three saddles are posted at the Tackmaking link above. I hope everybody is well!

Blog Hiatus

2009-10-15T20:49:00.000+02:00

If you haven't noticed, it has been quiet here for a while - it will remain so for the next month or so. In the mean time, enjoy these web sites that I check on a semi-regular basis - never on company time, of course.

The first, the only, the classic:

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

Big mistakes with photoshop that somehow make it into the public eye:

http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

Cake Wrecks! Enough said.

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

The ONLY celebrity gossip site I frequent, because their stories are true and their writers are witty:

http://evilbeetgossip.film.com/

Tacky horse tack. One day I'll make several saddles from this site - I love me some shine!

http://tackytackoftheday.blogspot.com/

This can have a little rough language, but the stories are unbelievable.

http://psychoticlettersfrommen.blogspot.com/

This has a LOT of rough language, but is a constant reminder that I really did not miss out on THAT much by not being a 'party girl' in college.

http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/

This site is rather hit and miss, but some of the photos are fantastic!

http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

Rarely updated, but a cruise through the archives is good for a chuckle.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

Shameful things horse owners do to their horses.

http://shameinthehorseshowring.blogspot.com/

Fugly blog in a nutshell - don't breed it!

http://www.fuglyblog.com/

A new addition to the morning blog list, this site encompasses why I am a Target gal.

http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/

Cute sleeping kittens. All you really need.

http://dreamingofkittens.com/

Pics of otherwise attractive women in rather odd situations.

http://hawtness.com/

AWESOME customer stories for anybody that has ever had to "help" a customer.

http://notalwaysright.com/

Little moments of WIN!

http://itmademyday.com/

Not always funny, but cars do get in strange places...

http://thatwillbuffout.com/

One of the only sites to make me laugh at my desk - some of these are priceless.

http://thisisphotobomb.com/

Kids can fail too.

http://myfirstfail.com/

Truly awful wedding photos. 'What Not to Wear", wedding edition.

http://wedinator.com/

It's been a while...

2009-09-11T19:01:00.000+02:00

Sorry about that! To all zero of you that actually read this, ha ha.

Things have been busy - I am dipping my toes into the territory of "making tack for other people", and so far it's going swimmingly. One of the sets is in trade with Tiffany Purdy, she's doing a REALLY COOL custom for me to look like my old arab stud! I can't wait!

I only have a handful of weekends left to work on tack until my room will need to be packed up, so I am not wasting any time. This weekend I should finish Tiffany's set, and make a lot of progress on the other two sets I am working on! One of them will be a traditional sized pleasure set in light oil, rose tooling, tons of silver and studs. It'll be for sale on MH$P when completed! I hope to have some progress photos this weekend.

Take care everybody!

130-something old photos of me & the animals of my life

2009-07-25T06:55:00.000+02:00

Breyerfest is - over. I have no big model horse event to plan for now! I'm still trying to wrap my brain around what that means, so have been doing some little "one day" projects to fill the time. One of those projects is getting all of my old photos scanned in. We have a lovely scanner at work, so I stayed late today and got through about 130 photos. The picasa link will be below - and if you have time, I wrote comments for every photo, and they make the most sense if you start from the beginning.

It's been a very nostalgic, rather depressing evening. I need a horse, you guys. Real bad.

Here's the photos.

(Yes - a great many of the photos have PROOF on them. Unfortunately a bunch of the photogs are now out of business, and I can't get shots. Also, most of them won't keep photos more than 5-8 years old, of which all these are. So please nobody yell at me for using proofs instead of a paid-for image, this is just my personal use anyway.)

NAN, short report

2009-06-30T04:49:00.000+02:00

It's over! I'm still exhausted. Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights I got two, four, and five hours of sleep. Last night I slept for 12 - and feel a lot better today!

The show was incredible, and went really really well for me. All in all, I ended up with eight championships, four reserve championships, and sixty top tens. Many of those are due to Miss Jennifer Buxton - without her making me those two extra english sets at the eleventh hour, I would have had to scratch two models from showing! It would have been a disaster!

This is the champ I was the most excited about, in CM Western Pleasure.

When I first got into showing, I could never imagine doing well in such a tack-specific class as western pleasure. There was no way I could afford to buy the really fancy saddles I saw winning. That motivation was the first thing that got me into tack making in the first place, so winning a national championship in that class was really special for me. The saddle pictured here is a replica of Tracy Eilers' real show saddle. The replica saddle is a gift to Tracy for all of the things she does for me, as well as just for being such a great friend. It makes me truly happy to be able to give gifts like this.

I have posted my NAN photos here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/erin.corbett/Nationals2009?feat=directlink

They are 95% my horses, but I did put a caption on most of them - maybe it'll be semi-interesting? It's bittersweet that the whole thing is over now. I'll be able to do other things with my nights and weekends for a bit, although I am even more excited about tack making again. I had a great discussion with Carolyn Boydston at the show, and she has some pictures of an ancient warrior statue with really neat tack I want to try to make - the bridle has DEER ANTLERS on it! How neat would that be!? It will be fun to make some tack that isn't so boxed in to 'working western' or 'western pleasure'.

I do have Breyerfest coming up in roughly three weeks though. That will be much easier though - since I am flying, I am only going to show one, maybe two horses in performance, and then just OF and CM minis. It will be a great time, and I am looking forward to hanging out with the mom-unit!

No pics - sorry!

2009-06-27T07:44:00.000+02:00

I have a camera full of pics, but still have to pack my customs and resins for tomorrow - so no pictures tonight guys, sorry! NAN today was awesome, but of course exhausting. I ended up with twenty-something top tens, and three champs!

More on Sunday! Tomorrow we'll be there even later because of the auction, but I expect to be home in plenty of time to post all the pics from the weekend on Sunday.

Off to get ready for round two!

.....

2009-06-26T10:46:00.001+02:00

It's 1:46 AM, the morning of my busiest day at NAN. I'm just now going to bed. I'll wake up again in a tad less than four hours.

I AM A CRAZY WOMAN. SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME.

Workin' Away...

2009-06-17T18:05:00.000+02:00

I apologize that I don't have any pictures to post with this blog - it's mostly just an update! I had my second toe surgery on Monday, and it went as well as can be expected. I'm so excited to be able to wear socks and not have throbbing toes at the end of the day!

The saddle factory is going full speed ahead. I got all the tooling done on the next all-around set last night, and dyed the leather. Tonight I will seal it, and being the fun part of construction! It's our friend Julio's birthday though, so I will get a brief reprieve from tackmaking to go out to dinner with friends.

Lastly, proxy bidding for the parade saddle I donated to NAN ends on Saturday! You can see the set at the following link, as well as instructions on how to submit a bid.

http://www.modelhorsesalespages.com/sales/view_details.asp?id=696950

I hope to post again on Thursday with more pictures!

One down, four to go!

2009-06-11T08:38:00.000+02:00

My apologies to those on Blab who will be reading this twice. For everybody else, here goes!

This saddle is one of five I *WILL* get done for myself to show at NAN this year. With NAN in my back yard, I could not pass up the opportunity to show pretty much every performance horse I own. My goal is to have NO tack changes at the show - so that means I need a LOT more tack! The plan is to make the following:

-Super-pleasure light oil silver set (the one pictured in this post)
-All-around set in saddle tan
-All-around set in chocolate
-All around set in light oil
-Gaming set (The theme for this will be unicorns - seriously. I'm going to tool unicorn heads on a saddle. The pad is rainbow...)

Anyway, here it is! I'm really happy with how it turned out. It seems like I try something new on every saddle set I do, so I apologize if me talking about the latest new thing gets old! This time, the new thing was these dogwood flowers. They are the first 'real' round flowers I've done, in that they actually look like flowers and have individual petals. I'm usually a fan of the roughly round thingy with lines in the middle to hide that it's just a round blob... This set also has a new finishing product on it that I LOVE. It really brings out the depth of the tooling way more than what I was using previously. It's amazing what a simple change of finisher will do!

T-minus 2.5 weeks until I MUST finish the other four... Oh, and fly to Breyerwest and work a full time job too. It shall be interesting...

Here's the saddle! It's pictured here on Mel Miller's Jasmine resin, the ears forward version. Tracy Eilers painted her, and is giving her a few more fun details before she shows in Halter, workmanship, AND performance at NAN.

Whoops, it's been a while...

2009-06-08T03:07:00.000+02:00

I have been neglecting this blog for WAY too long! Thanks to those that are still 'following' me for not giving up hope. Today I have a rather large update! Most of you that would read this probably already know, but my NAN parade set was finished about a week ago, and turned over to the NAN auction coordinator. It was bittersweet to let go of it, it's certainly my best tack set to date. Here's a sample pic of it, the rest you can see on my website.

I'm really glad to have it finished and gone though, so I can move on to the *five* other sets I need to finish for myself in the next three weeks! Yes, it's a bit ambitious, but I have faith I can do it. This is the first of the five, and I am discovering the more saddles I make, the harder it is to 'name' each one. So this one is called "June 2009 Dogwood". It's my first try on these kinds of flowers, and I really like how they turned out. I also tried a new finishing product on this saddle, and LOVE how it brought out the depth of the tooling.

The picture there is rather small, so here's a cropped close-up of a corner, to show tooling:

I am hoping to finish this set tonight! Up next on the "to get done" block will be a purple/rainbow Unicorn themed gaming set (No, I'm not kidding, it's going to be FABULOUS), a saddle tan pleasure/all around set, and then two other all-around sets that have yet to be designed in my head. I'm so glad I have three more weeks to get all this done - and most of the week off prior to NAN!

I'm still recuperating from my toe surgery last week. It was extremely owie, and now my toe is all shades of gross looking. I'm pretty sure the toenail is going to come off this coming week. Lucky me, I get to go back next Monday to have the other toe done! WHEE!

That's all for now, I hope to have more updates this week as the next two saddle sets move along to completion!

Live Shows n Kitties

2009-04-02T23:47:00.000+02:00

I had a horse show last weekend! My good friend Tracy was the show hostess. I really appreciate all the work she did to throw a show – it was great to get the chance to show performance and try to get some of my own stuff qualified for NAN! It’s coming up SO quickly I can hardly believe it… Fortunately I did get a ton of horses qualified. Now I only have three more shows before the entry cutoff for NAN. NW Expo next weekend, Evergreen Custom Classic after that, followed by NAN Twilight. All three of these shows are attractive in their own way, and I can’t wait for all of them!

Tracy’s show did leave me with something I wasn’t expecting that night – a kitten! Marianna and Mel had gone to a local Safeway to get something to snack on that morning, and on their way back to their car they heard some mewing coming from the dumpster area. Upon exploration, they discovered a small grey kitten, soaking wet and shaking under a pile of wood. Being the soft hearts they are, they gathered him up in one of Marianna’s horse blankets and brought him back to the show. He was then delivered to my lap! Apparently I have “SUCKER” tattooed on my forehead, because of course I accepted him (and all the responsibilities he came with).

He did have a collar on – a god-awful heavy leather dog collar with big plastic and metal studs. It was obscene. I would wager that the collar weighed half what the kitten did. I can’t imagine putting a collar like that on such a small animal… what if he’d gotten hung up in a tree? With no safety elastic, he would have just hung there. There were also no tags on the collar, making it not only borderline abusive but also completely useless.

Regardless, I called home and asked Ben to place a craigslist ad about a found kitten. Misguided as they may be, the kitten obviously came from a home.

“Liberace”, as I was calling him, spent most of the rest of the show in my van with loads of blankets and a cardboard box with some litter that Barb was so kind as to drive home and get. He is box trained, and LOVES people – every time I would run out in between classes to check on him he’d run right to the door of the car and turn on his purr-motor.

As the day progressed with no responses from the ads, my more realistic side started to kick in. We have three cats. The third was never supposed to happen either – he showed up in our back yard on Ben’s 30^th birthday. The landlords didn’t want us to have two cats, much less three… four was NOT going to be a plan. After confirming this, I knew I had to find a place for him immediately. One of the other exhibitors at the show had expressed earlier in the day how they’d been thinking about getting a kitten, and how much she loved this one. I approached her as the show was ending, and asked her if she would want to take him home if the owners didn’t come forward before they were leaving the next day. She said yes!

I hadn’t given up on the owners yet, though. On the way home from the show, I stopped and had him scanned with two different wands to see if he was chipped. Of course, that was a negative as well. He spent the night cozy in our downstairs bathroom, and was delivered to his new momma in the morning.

I’m still rather conflicted about how I handled it. On one hand, I know he has a fantastic home now. His new family are very much animal people, they feed raw food, and he’ll have more love than most cats could hope to get. On this same hand, his original owners allowed a tiny kitten to either go out with permission, or weren’t smart enough to keep him in. They also get negative points for not having tags or a chip on him, as well as that terrible dangerous heavy collar. On the other hand, misguided as they may be, he did have a family that probably misses him. *sigh*

I’m trying to talk myself into knowing that I did the best I could with the limited time I had. We just could NOT keep him a day longer in our house, and the offer of a great home was too tempting to pass up. Moral of the story – DON’T LET YOUR KITTEN OUTSIDE!

I am excited though that his new mom is also on Blab, so I get to keep in touch with his life! She’s already posted pictures, and I can tell that it was a match meant to be. <3

Like a Lemming Over the Cliff...

2009-03-17T04:16:00.000+01:00

Today, I purchased my very first Custom Glazed China horse. Her name (the run name, this particular one will need a new name once she gets here and tells me what it is) is Jellibaby. She's a traditional scale miniature horse foal, and is THE CUTEST THING EVER. Here's proof!

I KNOW! SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!

In other news, the weekend was pretty good. Saturday I wasn't feeling too hot, but figured it was just a little sore throat that would go away like they usually do. Tracy came over after work, and we had a wonderful productive afternoon Getting Stuff Done. I finished three headstalls, one pair of reins, and most of the construction on the hip drops. Sunday was more of the same - except that I started to feel a wee bit more sick.

This morning I woke up and knew it was all over. I still went in to work to do a couple of things that I can't miss on Monday mornings, but then I headed home. I really hope this goes away. It's an odd illness - I have an on-and-off fever, sore throat, and a cough. Not much of a runny nose, almost no sneezing. It seems like it's all lung. I really hope it goes away soon. I'm going to keep looking at pictures of my new bebeh to sooth myself.

Another weekend - here I come!

2009-03-13T17:13:00.000+01:00

Last weekend went well. I scratched a miserably small number of things off my list... but one of them was the results from my show! Of course I still have some stragglers that are just now getting their horse lists turned in, but I would say they are 95% done. I'll add the latecomer's info tonight probably, and then get them sent OUT! GONE! DONE! :-D

The other thing I got mostly done is a set of hip drops for the red poppy parade set. I didn't originally make them because I thought the set had a lot going on already, and I'm always paranoid about making things look too busy. But the buyer really wanted hip drops, so instead of having her make them herself or send it to somebody else, I decided to go ahead and do them. They were actually pretty fun! I have all of the main components tooled, sealed, and painted. This weekend I need to do some simple construction, and then they will be all ready to go.

I still have some other stuff to finish - three headstalls, and then I need to get moving on the next few saddle sets. I am thinking I'll be able to make a LOT of progress on everything this weekend, since those results are done! Last weekend I spent TWELVE painful hours on Saturday just cranking through them, so I only had one real work day. This weekend - TWO! Wheee!

I've also been base coating several of my horses so they are more ready for painting! YAY! One of them is a lonestar that will be painted after my old appy gelding - bay varnish/leopard. We call him Moldstar, because of all the moldy roaning he'll have all over. He also has a new mane and tail - Mel gave him a banded mane and braided forelock, and then a lovely long banged show tail! I can't wait to use him in performance!

I also can't wait for this day to be over - joyful weekend, commence!

This Weekend = PRANCEVILLE!

2009-03-05T01:12:00.000+01:00

That's right. This weekend is going to be PRANCETASTICAL. I got a new office chair this weekend! If you can believe it, for the past two years I have done all of my tackmaking in a wooden dining room chair with a little cushion on it. NO MORE!

I got a real-life padded adjustable office chair, with wheels and arm rests! I am just over the moon at the thought of not crouching in my wooden chair for hours.

I am SO SO SO excited about getting back to work on a bunch of stuff that has been bouncing around in my head for a month. I didn't get to work on much in February too, because most of my time was spent getting ready for HnH.

I have several things I need to finish this weekend, and for fun I'm going to list them (because lists are my favorite thing):

1) RESULTS from my show! I am really good at not doing this part, because I just hate doing results. But those need to go in on Sunday, so that's the first thing that needs doing.

2) Ferruled Headstall for a customer. Yes, I never take orders, but this is a headstall I was making anyway, and somebody asked about it when it would be finished. It's a sort-of order?

3) Cutting and Tooling on 2.5 western sets - one Parade (probably for me to keep), one Parade (For the NAN Auction), and one classic set that is a show donation. One parade set is mostly tooled, so I would really love to get the first coat of dye on these as well. Then next weekend can be construction time, which is the most fun anyway!

4) Box up and prepare to ship everything that will need to go out this month. That includes several horses on payments that are almost paid off, as well as the remainder of my "thank-you" mailings from Hearts N Horses. I feel bad that they have taken so long to go out, but the past three weeks just disappeared without any trace.

5) Misc. House stuff that has been neglected for the two weeks we had a visitor. I need to do laundry, pet the cats, and spend some time with Ben.

ETA: I totally forgot about two other things I need to do - another headstall, and possibly some hip drops for the sold parade saddle! It's going to be a busy weekend!

The weekend can't get here fast enough. The only thing that worries me is this plague that has been going around... this morning I woke up with a bit of a sore throat and the sneezes. I will NOT let some germs take away my precious work weekend! >:-(

Parade Saddle: For Sale!

2009-02-28T00:06:00.000+01:00

I did some sobering math earlier this afternoon, and decided it is best if I go ahead and list this for sale. I have a couple more on the horizon, and I'll just keep one of those if I decide I need to have a parade saddle for myself!

The MH$P ad is here:

http://www.modelhorsesalespages.com/sales/view_details.asp?id=657685

You can also see more pictures of it on my website, here:

www.homestead.com/everafterstables

Thanks for looking!

Movin' Along!

2009-02-27T17:48:00.000+01:00

It has been an exciting week in my horse room. (Side note - I can never decide if I want to call it my "studio" or not. I suppose it qualifies, as I do create things within it. I think my hang-up is that I still don't consider myself a "real artist" in any regard, I'm just playing with leather and metal and glue. Anyway. That's why I still call it my horse room.)

I am trying a couple of new techniques in construction, namely the early stages of making the saddle pieces and tooling them. I'm trying it in a different order, and so far it is working really well. I'm on the fence about what sort of tooling to do on this set, though... Originally I was going to do tulips. But then I thought that roses would be a better idea, since NAN is in the Rose City after all. But the problem with that? Roses are HARD to tool! So I might go with tulips for this set I am working on now after all, and then try to tackle roses on the next one.

I also re-discovered an old tool that I had originally discarded as being too hard to handle. It is doing a great job on edging!

Anyway, there's my random 'working on stuff' musings for the day.

Oh! I did have a question. If anybody is reading this and has good suggestions for engaging but not too hard to follow audio books, send 'em my way! Books on my iPod are my new favorite thing to listen to while I am working on stuff, but I'm about to finish the one I am on right now. Genre doesn't really matter, all I care about are good and interesting and engaging stories. A smexy voice reading it doesn't hurt either. :-)

Finally - NAN Auction Item Chosen!

2009-02-24T22:23:00.000+01:00

I have spent a lot of time over the past weeks noodling over what I wanted to do for the NAN auction. Today I finally am committing to a project - it will be a parade saddle set. There isn't anybody doing one for the auction this year, and this way my project will be distinctively different from each of the other tack lots. It will most likely be a saddle tan base colored, tooled of course, with painted accenting. Similar to this one:

The main difference will be the base color obviously, with a new tooling design and different colored painted accent points. I am hoping to learn a really neat tulip pattern for this one - inspired by the reading I've been doing about The Netherlands!

Unfortunately it will still be a couple weeks before I can sit down and start pounding this out - but now that I have a solid goal, I'm SUPER excited to get started!

Busy Weekends: The Double Edged Sword

2009-02-23T18:55:00.000+01:00

This weekend was fun. We have a visitor from The Netherlands who arrived on Friday - Ben's long time friend Marloes. Friday we mostly relaxed, which was nice. She brought us the entire contents of The Dutch Store! Tea, soup, licorice, and a lovely book all about Holland! I've been reading that most nights before bed.

Saturday morning, we got up and headed downtown at about 9:30. Dropped Ben off at work, and Marloes and I headed off for some beauty treatments - I had my usual eyelashes done, and she had her first ever manicure! After that we picked up Ben, and spent the rest of the day cruising around downtown shopping, punctuated with a lovely early dinner at Portland City Grill. That night, we stayed low-key and played a new wii game we got - Carnival Games! It was really fun, and I wish I had more time I could spend playing it to get more stuff unlocked!

Sunday we got up and went to Multnomah Falls, which is always very pretty. On the drive back from that, I saw a BALD EAGLE! I know it's dorky, but I have never seen one in the wild. My dad and I have an on-going "ID the bird of prey" game while we drive, and I was SO excited to finally see the Big One. He was so pretty.

Once we got back into downtown, we had a quick lunch at Chipotle!, and then off to a Blazer's game. I've never been to a Blazer's game, so it was a new experience for me too. We bought foam fingers, and cheered them on to a decisive victory over the Clippers. They scored over 100 points too, so it was free chalupas for everybody! Unfortunately we exited out of a side door, and didn't get our chalupa. Oh well. After that, we headed back home, and I cruised right upstairs to pack some sold horses. I love selling horses to clear off my shelves, but I *hate* packing and mailing boxes! I packed up about 15 horses last night, so when further payments arrive they will be all set to go. Five boxes go out today, YAY!

That was my weekend, in a nutshell. It was a ton of fun, but I sit here at work wondering where my restful recharging time went? I'm not ready for it to be another work week, and it's going to be a SUPER busy week at work, too. Next weekend is going to be more running around doing fun stuff (The Zoo and Mount St. Helens at least!), so I'm looking at another two weeks before I can barricade myself in my horse room and really get some work done. First weekend of March, I'm looking at YOU!

My Cookies are Famous!

2009-02-13T21:56:00.000+01:00

OK, so maybe not "really" my cookies, or "really" famous. But check out this link:

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/02/whats-love-got-to-do-with-it.html

The first cookies pictured, with the nasty expressions - I bought those from Fred Meyer, and gave them out at my show this weekend!

Speaking of my show - it was pretty grand. I'll post a "real" blog entry about it this weekend - right now I'm sort of avoiding all things show related, as per usual for the week after a show.

T-Minus 145 Days!!

2009-01-29T21:42:00.000+01:00

Days until NAN. The National Show. The Big Shebang. The Whole Burrito. The Giant Fiasco. The ... well, you get the idea.

Yesterday I got an e-mail that informed me that somebody nominated me to judge at the show as well! This is neat, even though I won't be able to judge more than half of the show since I am showing in most of it. I can judge on Sunday, for the china classes and the OF collectibility. It'll be fun if I get picked! I sent back my little judging resume this morning.

I'm still going in circles in my head about my NAN donation saddle set. I know that I want to make something super flashy, but I'm stuck on the tooling pattern. I have made a lot of progress in the last year on leatherworking, but I'm still not at the level I would like to be at. I think I just need to sit down and get some practice done, so I can figure out what's realistic to try and do, and what will just look cramped and busy.

Either that, or I need to perfect the technology on my shrink-ray as well as my burglar skills, so I can sneak into tack shops, shrink their real saddles, and get out in under sixty seconds!

It's also ten days from Hearts N Horses, the show I am putting on! I'm very excited about this. Two of the judges are flying in from out of state, one is Jennifer Buxton - she does incredible tack, and we're going to have "tack time" on Sunday! Two tack-makers picking eachother's brains - it's going to be so fun. I'm already generating a list of questions, I hope you know what you have gotten yourself into, Jennifer! :-p

I have another blog entry that has been floating around in my head to do for a while, but it requires some time with MS Paint first. So that'll be coming after my show is over, and I feel OK about setting aside time to play with MS Paint again.

Lastly - one small rant - I'm getting kind of sick of all the lols on PunditKitchen being about how awesome/smexy/cute/magical Barack is. Yes, he's awesome, and yes, our country is better now that he's going to be running it. But you can only lol about it so many times, people.

Cats Like Stinky Things.

2009-01-22T18:12:00.000+01:00

Take, for example, my cat Sita. She is pretty much the cutest flufftailed tortoise shell little kitty I've ever seen. Here she is as a wee kitten:

I KNOW, cutest thing ever, right?

Here she is cuddling with our other cat, Bumper:

But she does some REALLY gross stuff! Several times now, I've busted her chewing on the ends of used q-tips that she retrieves from my bathroom garbage can. Like they're the bestest treat ever.

When I thought about this last night when I couldn't fall asleep, I guess it makes sense. Cats have to have a whole different set of "things that taste like candy" than we do. If you think about it for a second, you'll know why.

She also LOVES to carry around my dirty socks. I have a habit of shedding socks all over the house. I'll take off a pair while sitting on the sofa downstairs, and then the next morning one sock will be upstairs at the end of the hall, and the other one will be hidden in the corner of the living room behind a speaker. I have busted her in this act several times, too - but there is something absurdly cute about a kitty carrying something in it's mouth, so I let her do it.

The last sock-related thing she does is this - she loves to open my sock drawer, then jump up on the dresser and scoop out the contents of the drawer. Then she climbs inside the open drawer and sleeps. For a long time, Ben didn't know that it was Sita doing this, and he just thought I was being incredibly frantic about searching for socks in the morning.

I wanted to post a couple really cute stories about Bandit, too - but I am not prepared with pictures. So that'll be another day.

Anyway, there's not much substance to this post. Really, it was just an excuse to post cute pictures of my cats. Expect a lot more of that. :-)

An Observation

2009-01-21T01:01:00.001+01:00

It seems like there's a very obvious progression that people go through, in regards to where and how they record their thoughts as they age. I know many people, mostly girls, that started off writing in paper journals. Mine even had a miniature lock and key, to keep my most secretest crushes and pre-teen cat fights safe. I still have several of those old journals, and when I'm feeling incredibly bored I leaf through them. It's pretty entertaining.

Then when I was in high school, I got a laptop. I think it was my Junior year. This CHANGED EVERYTHING. I started a word document, put a password on it, and went to town. I used this for about five years, until the laptop became embarrassingly heavy and huge to lug around. I still have it, although for the right price YOU could be her new owner! Any vintage mac collectors?

Back to the original subject. Right around when I was ditching my ancient laptop, The Internets were becoming more and more present in my life. I discovered MySpace. At first, I resisted - MySpace is for children! Children and pedophiles.

Eventually though, peer pressure won. I was still living in Corvallis, and travelling to Portland most weekends to visit friends up there, so they insisted that we had to have an easy way to stay in contact when I wasn't in Portland. That seemed logical enough, so I signed up. For a long time, I didn't blog at all - but after a while, the center-stager in me won over, and I started writing stuff down. It was fun! I also have a TERRIBLE memory, so I could look back and see when things happened. This came in handy more than once.

Until a few months ago, when several of my friends started leaving MySpace for Facebook. Because as it turns out, MySpace *IS* just for children and pedophiles! At first I resisted, as always - Facebook is confusing and irritating with the bajillion applications! I resisted a long time. Until finally, one day I devoted some time to actually learning facebook, and I was switched. I pretty much shut down my myspace, and moved on over to Facebook.

Which brings me to present day. I feel like I finally might have interesting enough things to say to warrant starting an actual blog that the public can see. I don't think many people will read it, but to the few of you that do - thanks! I'm sure I will do a comment contest like Jennifer did, and try to offer some kind of prize for taking the time to see what's going on in ErinLand.

I still LOVE Facebook, though! The My Stable application over there pretty much makes my world go 'round. My most recent purchase is a Suffolk Punch drafter named BeefCake.

Link to Website:

2009-01-20T22:22:00.001+01:00

It would be good if I posted a link to my "real" website here, since I just discovered that I don't know how to add that to my 'user properties' over there on the right.

It is:

http://everafterstables.homestead.com/

Thanks to any who visit there, let me know what you think!

*Edit* - I'm adding it to my model horse links! This blogger thing takes a few run-throughs to get right...

You Can Call me Lemming #84

2009-01-20T22:11:00.000+01:00

Yeah, I started a blog. I have been posting notes in facebook, but the only people that can see those are the people... on facebook, logically enough. I wanted to have a place to write where all can see. So you won't see any work drama here, or really anything that the General Public shouldn't know about.

I also have been asked to participate for the first time in the NAN Auction, which is exhillerating and terrifying at the same time. I needed a place to post a narrative of what's going on with that project, so here we are. I expect a roller-coaster of small victories matched with crushing bumps in the road. Maybe I'm over-exaggerating, but this set really will need to be PERFECT. At least I still have several months to finish it...

In other tack news, I'm very close to finishing my first ever parade set. It's light oil, which is very different from most parade sets. I think that will make it stand out. The embellishments are red painted carved poppies, and leaves, and then loads of studs. The part I am stuck on (I guess not really STUCK on - I'm simply avoiding it all together) is making the tapaderos. I haven't even attempted to start to form them yet, and already I know I will hate them by the end of it. Hopefully by the end of this week, I will have two hunks of studded leather that look something like tapaderos!

I'm also making my first classic sized show set, for Carra's show. She was kind enough to buy the silver plates, tree, and cast bit and have them sent to me. It's fun to work in a smaller scale - SO much less real estate to fill with tooling!

I'll post pictures of all of these projects as they move along, or links at least to my website.

And, in closing - WELCOME, OBAMA! It's a wonderful day!