What a weekend!

Well, we finally have our 'new' trailer home.  What a chore!  Went over Wednesday night and looked at it, check.  Drove over Thursday night to pull it out of the pasture/mud hole it was in.  Ha!  After two hours and both Mike's truck AND my truck chained to his we pulled it to high, dry ground.  Both of our trucks are caked in mud and horse manure now.  By the time we got it pulled to dry ground 4 of the 6 tires had lost air/gone flat already.  So, we left it sit where it was.  Drove over Friday night to change the tires.  Took three of us 2 hours to change 5 tires (had to dismount and remount two).  Finally headed home with it.  I have a ton of 'new' stuff to hang up though - old bridles, hames, even a complete harness!

I'm finally able to get started on my customer order now though, not getting home til 10 three nights in a row doesn't let one accomplish much.

I have also finally figured out how to create my saddle pad patterns on the computer!  I found a grid right in MS Works (doh!) that is customizable so I can color in the squares as needed and print out each pattern.  It will take me a while to get all 37+ patterns done though, it's a bit time consuming to color each square but I'm doing it as simply as possible to save some time (and ink).  I'm just glad to finally be able to condense each pattern from four graph paper pages down to ONE page.  Will be so much easier to stitch from.

I was also directed to an online program that will create a cross stitch pattern from anything so I plan to try it on photographs.  Just think - being able to take ANY photo and turn it into a cross stitch pattern for a one of a kind piece of art!  Stay tuned for updates on that.

Saddle pad order!

I now have three saddle pads to do for someone, in trade for a couple of model horses she has.  I will be starting them asap but may not be able to get to them this week, the rest of this week is pretty full for me.  I did finish stitching the new saddle pad, now just need to finish it.  I started another one but with the customer order that one will be put aside for now.

Mike and I went and looked at a 40' steel gooseneck horse trailer tonight.  He wants to convert it into a car hauler with an enclosed area for tools and supplies.  It's an older trailer but is solid looking and was a good deal so he bought it.  There was some harness things inside the trailer and I bought those from the guy to hang up around the house.  I love that kind of stuff.  I have no idea what all is there, it was all hung up on hooks.  Hoping to have some decent things to put on display.  I will post pictures of everything I hang up once we get it home, the trailer is sitting in a pasture in a bunch of water, mud, ice, and snow.  The tires are half buried so it's going to take a little bit to get it out and we already have a pretty busy weekend coming up!

More new model saddle pads!

Well, I've been working on one of the new saddle pad patterns for the last couple of days and have it just about done.  I followed the pattern right down to the colors but I'm not crazy about them together.  It's a neat pattern though.  I also bought a small hoop to use to hold the aida cloth tight but it's going to take me time to get used to it.  I'm thinking I'll do the example pads like I usually do and then do customer orders using the hoop.  I do think the hoop will help them look a bit better.  If I can't get used to the hoop I may see about having Mike build me something to hold the cloth tight (thinking some thin flat pieces of wood with bolts and wing nuts to 'sandwich' the cloth edges in between).

I will also have 40 NEW saddle pad designs in the next week or so as well!  So, with the ones I had, the 10 I just got and the ones I'll be getting, I'll have almost 100 saddle pad designs!!  Now, to come up with some ideas on how to get them OUT to the public so people can see my work and hopefully spark some interest in them.  I think that now that I can make the cutback pads it will help as the cutbacks will fit a wider variety of models better.

Photos of new pads will be coming!

A post about something other than quilts

I've got 10 new model horse saddle pad designs to try out/make.  They're a cutback style, which is something new for me, but they look easy so I'm anxious to try them out and get working on also making the patterns I currently have cutbacks.  The cutback style will allow me to make pads for a wider array of models which will be nice to do.

I also got some new 'pretties'.  A fellow hobbyist is running one heck of a sale on a bunch of models she no longer needs/wants so I scored some Peter Stone models dirt cheap.  They joined my Breyer models on the shelf.  I also got them to 'have' just so if I ever do get a chance to make more tack I have the models here to fit the tack to.