Too darn hot

Title says it all. It was pretty bad today, tomorrow will be much worse. Ohh, and I get to go to a horse show and nanny my trainer's Irish horses. In the sun.

I've been stuck without my *own* car for a while now. I've actually had to drive around my mom's conversion camper van. It gets 6 gas stations per mile and on the highway it sways like a galleon on the high seas. It's quite ridiculous to drive this thing around every day! Today I abandoned all remaining pride and plugged her into the barn's power supply and turned on the big AC unit. On HIGH. If I got too hot, I just plopped my behind down in the van and read The Chronicle of the Horse for a bit. Won't have that luxury at Monmouth tomorrow!

No pix of the Irish horses yet, I've only seen them in person once since they got out of quarantine. So here's Kim on Casey (Atlantis) instead. Casey was Zone 2 Champion for 2009 in the Second Year Green Working Hunters. I've told his owners that if he ever goes missing they should just look in my barn first.

Wiederholen Sie, bitte.

Begin again please, or repeat please, in German. I heard that alot in 8th grade German class. I liked that teacher, but man, he did like to have us repeat stuff until we got it right. And wiederholen we did. He was also the club advisor forthe D&D club. Yeah, he was nerd-cool.


Begin again. This is the mantra of pattern making, even if you are simply reworking an existing pattern.
For the NAN sidesaddle, I wanted to do a bunch of things, some just different and others need to be better. One portion of the pattern that has been bugging me is the tail end of the near side flap. Never laid the way I wanted and doesn't 100% reflect the various references I have. So, wiederholen. Paper patterns are great, but in some places, you have to use leather, which will mean waste. I hate wasting leather but paper won't always lay the way you need it to.


The brown piece at the top is the original pattern. See the curve to the tail-like portion? I took a paper pattern, judged where the curve needed to stop and go straight, and made two intersecting lines to carry the pattern along in the new direction. The first undyed piece is the result. Close but still wonky. And now I'm not likeing where the flap/safe curves around the leaping head. grrrr.


The second piece is better. I fixed the wonky tail. I filled in that curve on the safe. Not bad. I got smart and use very flawed leather to cut out that piece, so I had to copy/cut another one to actually *use.*


Wiederholen. I cut a new piece out of a lovely new hide I bought at the beginning of the month. I start to cut the slot for the fixed head and the stirrup area. Then I notice the obscenely large flaw in the leather, smack in the middle of the flap. Crap. Useless. Completely useless.

Yup, one more time. The dyed piece at the bottom is the one that is actually on the finished saddle. Took 5 hours to get there. The off side flap went thru a similiar process, but it wasn't such a saga. I think I only had to cut it out twice to get that one right.

About "my" patterns

Two semi related topics today. Would be messy for one post alone.

Yes, I do use, in part, Kerioke patterns for saddle making. Carrie Olguin is a master pattern maker. I am not. I'm pretty good at re-shaping her patterns to suit new styles and various desires. I'm more than happy to pay Carrie for her time in creating patterns I can then further manipulate.

On the left is my notebook of patterns in sheet protectors, on the right is a copy of Carrie's 4 sidesaddle patterns. Typically, I will sell off a book once I've more or less mastered a pattern, but this will be staying for a while. I have yet to attack the western patterns. May never happen as I still don't know how to tool leather!

Carrie's method of pattern transfer is simple and very effective. Copy a pattern to paper, rub a glue stick to the reverse, then apply the pattern to the flesh side of the leather. I like using the 3M brand "restickable" glue stick. Easy to pull the paper off, even days later! This method allows for easy "scaling" of the pattern to the various scales of models.

This is a pic of a page of Carrie's originals (left) and my altered pieces. I actually need to do some work on my pages, I've changed a few more things that I actually have to hand draw every time. Most of the significant alterations are to the saddle flaps.

Next, all about the alterations!

The Road to Hell.

Hmmm. Yeah. The plan was to finally use this thing. A nice post about my NAN Auction donation.

I wanted to also do work on another project with a hard deadline; letting the sealer dry while I type. Whilst searching the drawers for a q-tip, I knocked my ENTIRE tool carousel on the floor. Crap every where. I should have taken a pic before I picked up everything, but all that stuff next to it belongs IN it. I'm so happy I saw the two exacto blades in the carpet before any curious cats came to investigate. The little one, Gidget, is already obsessed with the drawers, so much so I have to bungie them shut with rubber bands when I'm not home.

This is Gidget. Supervising. It is rather hard to work with a cat perched on your knee. And that IS her happy face.

BTW, if you don't have one of these carousel things, you NEED it. Really. I don't care if you just make a couple of things here and there, you NEED it. They are a little pricey ($40+) but if you have a Michael's or an AC Moore near you, just use a 50% coupon. The coupon makes it downright affordable. This one is from "Making Memories". Even if you don't "scrap", the scrapbooking aisle is a fab place to find storage and organizing stuff. Hmm. There's a future post right there!

So, I'm going to clean up the rest of the mess while the sealer dries. In the mean time, the "official" pics are on my website. http://www.opengatefarm.biz/