~o:> Winding down

Lindy is the first person I ever bought anything from on Etsy.  And we’ve been friends every since.  But here, we finally meet face to face: she and Greg made us part of their southwestern adventure.   This is one reason for loving the new media: you can connect with some great people who come along and really make your life richer.  They ended up camping dry and warm in the new room downstairs instead of out in the nasty rain—which was fun.  And we got to meet their two fab and wonderful border collies who we loved.

Handsome and dang charming Greg

The most lovely and wonderful Lindy. And her beautiful shop.  Her work is so joyous and her color so delicious.  Here she is out on the deck by our little river.

Then came Emma:

Who spent some time at the chaos table, doing some commission work:

she’s making (can you tell?) BATS.  I gotta tell you, I LOVE Halloween – not the yucky, gross commercial end of it, but the harvest moon, bats, black cats on the back fence, hay stacks, pumpkins, jack’o’lantern parts.  Some day, I’m going to make a real lantern out of a squash  – how cool would that be?  So the kids and I made a bunch of bats to hang on the porch, long years ago.  But most of them have disappeared one way or another.  Thus, the commission.  And by the way, she has beautiful skin.  She does NOT look like this really. (groan)

We bought special purple and green push pins for the occasion, and Emma did the hanging, using her fine aesthetic sense for composition (as opposed to de-comp).

I think she enjoyed it.

Disclaimer:  wait.  Does that mean “not owning the responsibility for lousy work”?  Because I have to tell you, if you ever change the white balance in your camera to “incandescent” (regular indoor house lighting), be SURE you remember to change it back when you go outside.  Or everything you shoot will be this awful, saturating blue.  Then spend hours trying to compensate for it.  Which you never can quite do.  So all these shots are kind of yucky.  Which is ALL MY FAULT.

The bats.

They dance all over, madly, when it storms.

And Emma helped me buy the first pumpkins of the season.  Orange and black – wonderful.

Now, these shots are mostly for Emma herself – and Geneva.  And Misty.  We visited Geneva’s horses, way out in the back pastures.  This is Copper.

Have you ever seen a horse turn over?

It’s an amazing feat.

And over he goes.

Then up.

And really up.  Note the weird color I got because of that stupid white balance mess up.

The girl misses these guys.

Here is one my favorite parts of a horse – you see the angle of that fetlock?  The bent ankle part?  It such a delicate part of a horse, but so sturdy to my eye, and so soft when you run your hand down the coat. Lying down isn’t easy for these animals, but it gives you a chance to get a little closer to things you don’t usually see.  This is a bay horse, by the way – brown bodied with black main, tail, lower legs, ear tips.

And this is Kane, the horse who saved Rachel’s life.  He’s a red roan – I just wanted to show you what “roan” means.  His coat is basically red (as you can see under the brand), but it’s frosted by all these long white hairs.  If he’s cut or rubbed, the white hair doesn’t grow back in that place, only the red showing through.  There are also blue roans, blue like our blue merle dogs – a bluish gray – with that white roaning.

I talked Emma into climbing up on my grazing horses some days before this.  So when we got to Geneva’s, she wanted to sit on somebody.  They’re quiet when they graze, and you can just sit for a long time without worrying about the horse streaking out from under you.

Unless the herd decides to change pastures.  Which this one did.  They all just sort of started ambling west.  “He won’t stop,” Emma called, making absolutely no effort to dismount, which she has long been trained to do.  She’s on the forth horse from this end.  Headed away from me at a leisurely walk.

Ummm. Emma?  Where you goin’ girl?

This photo was SOOOO stinkin’ blue, and so dark, I couldn’t do anything but take nearly all the color out.  You see those little brown dots in the middle there, below the trees?  Yeah.  That’s where she ended up.  All the white above there should be stormy sky.  Which would have been impressive and dramatic, if only I’d had the WHITE BALANCE right.  (okay – white balance is the light value the camera understands as the frequency for the color white.  In the house, white is actually yellow because that’s the color temperature of the house bulbs.  Your brain compensates for that, because it’s an incredible computer.  The camera has to work harder.  And your conscious self?  Helpless.)

So she had to come trotting back on her own two feet.  See how far off those horses were?  And we had to go twice that back to the car the other way.

Finally.  A civilized pasture.  And Hickory, who is a close blood relation to all those ambling ponies of Geneva’s.  Yes.  Emma misses these horses.

So I made her one to take home.

She picked the colors without knowing my dastardly plan.

And I think he turned out pretty well, for all the weirdness of that particular hank of yarn.

Yeah.  She likes him.  And now she’s home safe and sound, and all I have to show for that two weeks is a pile of sheets that need cleaning.  Oh, and bats and pumpkins and the pack of gorgeous cards Lindy gave me (and the water bottle they forgot) —and maybe something Gin left behind, like that sock I finally hadda fly to Santa Fe to deliver for Max.  By the way, can you tell the white balance is finally fixed?

Just a couple of shots of the driveway.

I am sighing with contentment.  Ken is back home – going back to the gym, still working on his PhD, generally awake and aware and determined to make the most of his time.  If you would like to read his blog – how he deals with all of this, it’s here.

And the piece de resistance: Emma’s templates: