Elaine

Tranquil Evening

Tranquil Evening
We woke up yesterday to near blizzard conditions, but it was tranquil and still by the time I took this photo of the hills to the west of us in the evening. I tend to determine the strength of storms by how many of our neighbors’ houses we can see from our windows, and yesterday was occasionally a “no house” storm. Once, it was almost a “no barn” storm, when I couldn’t see our horse barn. As I fed the horses in the morning, I wished I could tell them it was supposed to be a fast moving storm. They didn’t seem too peeved, so maybe they knew it.

It is hard to tell how much snow we received because of the drifting: probably about six inches.

Browser Security Test

The Browser Security Test lets you know how secure it considers your browser and operating system combination. I think I found this via Lifehacker, a blog that provides a nice variety of tips about life and computers while managing not to hit you over the head with the fact that it is sponsored by Sony.

Carved Crow

I carved this crow image based on the photo I took a few weeks ago. I used The Gimp to turn the photo into an image I could carve. I’ve always wanted a turn-photo-into-soft-block-carving filter, and the new photocopy filter provided with Gimp 2.2 comes close.

Morning branches

The New Dr. Who

But she’s a girl reviews the new the new Dr. Who and it sounds promising. I was never a big fan, but have enjoyed the occasional episode. She warns that there are spoilers in the review, but I found them to be minor.

Scrapbook Quilt

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Scrapbook Quilts was the workshop topic for my stamp club this month. The woman who organized it is a fabulous quilter and scrapbooker. Since I don’t scrapbook and don’t quilt, I felt somewhat intimidated by the topic, but decided I could always watch the others work. (The organizer’s reassurance that it was just collage on fabric didn’t help either, since I don’t do collage very well.)

Instead of using small quilts, the organizer provided a selection of quilted fabric placemats that she had bought at department clearance sales. I picked the plainest one I could find, and started pushing Sizzix die cuts around on it. Everyone had brought lots of different items to embellish the quilts and we were all pawing through each others’ stuff to see if we could find anything that would help our own quilt. The buttons at the top of mine came from one woman’s stash, and the Scrabble tiles came from the stash of the organizer, who buys every Scrabble set she finds at thrift stores and garage sales. I didn’t finish mine at the meeting because I had a photo at home that I wanted to use, but most members did complete their quilts.

I know it doesn’t look completely square in the photograph, and I finally discovered after attempts to make it square, that it didn’t start square. The quilting seems to have warped the place mat slightly.

Although this isn’t my usual style, it was nice to do something different for a change.

Splitcoast Faux Postage

Beate Johns has written a good tutorial on how to make Faux Postage at Splitcoaststampers. Faux Postage is designed to look like official postage, but should not be used for that purpose.

Yahoo! Groups Redesign

Yahoo! has apparently not forgotten about YahooGroups, and the site has been redesigned. See the new look at SceneStampers and SaraL.

Define Thunder Snow

Guess what prompted me to look up the Google definition of thunder snow? Although Google defines it as a winter storm, we seem to encounter it most often in spring here in Colorado.

Haphazard

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Frequently, after I ride Hap, my 20 year old Thoroughbred gelding, my trainer gets on him for what she calls a pony ride. This saves her the trouble of getting a horse ready to ride, and keeps her hand in, so to speak. I like it because it is the only chance I have to see Hap looking as good as I think he feels when I ride him. Although one or two people ride him occasionally, he is never quite as relaxed for others.

I first saw Hap when he was eight: the woman who had evented him brought him over for me to try. When I saw him, I thought he was skinny (because he was at the weight they like for eventing) but sort of cute. When I rode him I immediately thought “I want this horse. This is my horse.” I almost gave her a check on the spot so she wouldn’t put my horse in the trailer and take him away. I was more worried about what might turn up in the pre purchase exam than the seller.

That feeling never left, not even when he had me so intimidated that I had to ride him every day because I was afraid if I took day off I might not be able to force myself back on him. The trainer I had at the time insisted I would never be able to ride him in a snaffle. Hap had one strategy for dealing with life’s little fears and frustrations: grab the bit and run forward. It took me and my current trainer eighteen months to get him to give to the bit and not lock everything forward of his shoulder. For years I thought that he was like the little girl who had a little curl: when he was good he was very very good, and when he was bad he was horrid. I even used to worry that he might be getting sick on the very good days.

He looked so good with my trainer today that I went and got my camera from the car and took some snapshots. As I joked to my trainer afterward: twelve years and we finally got him broke.