Politeness Counts

That is as true of horses as it is people. In fact, maybe more important when it comes to a 1000 plus pound animal. Dandy is a very polite fellow. It makes me love him all that much more. Morning feedings are the most challenging. I have to get Bob the tractor up, loaded and running for hay delivery along with 6 buckets of grain, vitamins and supplements. It's almost always dark, often cold, rainy, snowy, muddy and windy. I have no lighting except my headlamp. Earlier this week, it was icy, and I mean little mincing steps taken from front door onward icy. As hard as ice is for me to navigate it is even harder for horses. Hooves were not made for ice, which brings me to the importance of politeness.

Dandy stands by his feeder and waits with the patience of Job. He may whinny, he almost always nickers but he never tries to snatch and grab his flakes of hay while I am getting them from front end loader to his bin. Never.

I can navigate the ice on my own, without rushing and bless him, he stands stock still if I need to grab a tail or rest a hand on his hip, shoulder or neck. Heck, I even grabbed an ear once last year and he takes it all with such good nature. Now my other two are also acceptably polite most times, Cooper paces or paws behind his feeder but once in a while he'll sneak up behind me and try a snatch and grab. Not often and never on ice. Nick hangs by his feeder too but gets anxious when the buckets come out as he did on this terribly icy morning. I found myself holding onto a tree and then a horses tail and having Nick lurching toward me on thick, slippery ice. I thought I was a goner and Nick too. With some help using Cooper's big steady bulk (and tail), I managed to shoo Nick off into the darkness and get the bucket of goodness into his feeder and away as he came scrambling and sliding back to it. Come the afternoon feeding I moved his eating station to a much less slippery area so we wouldn't have a repeat of that the next morning. Imagine less polite horses all crowding around on that ice flow? It makes me shudder.

The prayer flags are off the loom!

I love the new pattern and it was bitter sweet weaving them on so many levels. I didn't do a long Rainbow Bridge flag for Dennett, but instead single prayer flags to send him on his way and new ones for the others gone before him. I still have many silks ready so another warp will be in process for beaming on this weekend. This one longer but I liked the black and white so will keep it.

The mixed wool warp is wound on, threaded and sleyed.

I have only to do the tie on and tie-up on the treadles. The tie on will be a pain. There are 12 different yarns there, all the same dk weight but some are stretchy, some have little or no give. When I tie on I will do like kinds together so I can adjust each yarn as its give factor dictates. This is not a high tension warp. The treadles will be a piece of cake since it's only two for tabby. I have about 27 inches in the reed at 6 epi. Some threads I doubled up to give a little raised effect throughout the weaving. We'll see what they do. This is such a textural warp already.

In the sewing room I finished off the wool polka dot Zig Zag shirt.

A hemp/silk charmeuse was used for contrast and I have to say, it made it a tricky garment to construct since the fibers were so different.

I had a lot of fun with this embroidery design.

It's named "Spirit Horse" and it is one of the thousands of design available here. Thankfully the hemp/silk combo wasn't as slippery as an all silk would have been. The Brother embroidery unit handled it very well and I kept my sanity, at least until the serger finally said enough is enough. It's packed up and ready for transport to the serger spa (or maybe a serger exorcism). I decided to put sewing projects on hold until it's back from it's treatment. I'm spoiled with the nice finished edges it makes. The prayer flags won't be cut apart until I can serge the ends either. The quilt top is awaiting the batting which is on order. Did you know they have batting with a slightly sticky surface that you can set (and reset if need be), your quilt top and backing for quilting? I didn't but since it negates the need to use safety pins or long straight pins to hold everything together I decided I could go with cotton instead of wool.

I'm planning our super bowl meal ( hot sausage grinders), an easy one since I'd just assume watch the game than be in the kitchen cooking. Saturday night it will look like linguine with hot sausage and tomato sauce. Gene has volunteered (with a bit of prompting) to do the afternoon feeding for me on Sunday. I'm hoping for a better end than the last time these two teams met! Who are you all rooting for or do you just watch for the commercials? ;)

Parting shots: Heads or tails?

Tails!