Virtual Brush Box

Side By Side Seat Comparison

Awareness of the outside world. Studio Legenda: Catropolis Metro.

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Now that I’ve had a few lesson in each discipline.

Photo of woman in light green shirt and pink helmet riding a brown & white pony

Chilling with Razzy. [So This Happened]

Things I Have To Remember Each Time I

Where exactly do my pinkies go?

Hunt seat. Pinkies out. Rein runs between third & fourth fingers. Better grip with a finger on each side.

Saddle seat. Pinkies in. Rein runs around all four fingers. I assume because that is where the snaffle goes with a show bridle.

Things I Have To Remember Each Time II

Aids for canter depart.

Hunt seat. INSIDE rein, outside leg.

Saddle seat. OUTSIDE rein, outside leg.

This was particularly amusing when I had a saddle seat show on Saturday and a hunt seat lesson on Sunday. Wait, what?

Fortunately only the rein changes. The leg stays the same. If I had to change leg as well, I would get hopelessly lost. In contrast to the temporarily lost I get now.

Difference

Lesson duration

Hunt seat. Longer. More casual, more breaks, see photo. Partly an artifact of the group lesson format when you take turns jumping. More strolling.

Saddle seat. Shorter. Does not take breaks. Go in. Ride. Get ‘er done. Go home. Saddlebreds enter the show ring at a trot. They do not stroll.

My saddle seat lessons are much, much shorter than my hunt seat lessons. The dollar per minute rate works out about the same. Despite the time difference, my exhaustion level is higher after a saddle seat lesson. Go figure.

Combining Knowledge

Using my lower leg.

Now that I get to use my lower leg (finally!), I am dredging up all the bad habits. Put leg on horse. No, not that way. It is temptingly easier to roll the leg outwards and use the quads to pull the leg in – think plié – instead of keeping everything facing forward and use abductors to draw the leg sideways into the horse.

Noticed this from photos after a lesson. Score one for riding media.

The fix is to keep the legs loose and facing front. The discovery is what I think of as a double hinge. The tendency is to simply use the lower leg in isolation. Instead, it works much better to lead with the upper leg and then swing the lower leg on. Thirteen years of using only my upper leg has improved my lower leg. Imagine that.

Previous posts

[Dissecting My Position, see Nooooo remarks]

[Compare & Contrast Between Disciplines]

Onwards!
Katherine

Jog Report

Awareness of the outside world. Congress.gov: Find your members, Senate & House. US Senate: Contacting U.S. Senators. US House: Find Your Representative. US.gov: Find and contact elected officials, includes federal, state, & local.

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Saturday afternoon lunge session. Both horses had been seen cantering back to the barn when they thought snacks might be on offer. So we knew they were mostly good.

Rodney is fine. Whatever it was is not any longer. [In Which Rodney Takes Over The Top Spot On The Injured Reserve List]

Milton is 95%. Almost as if the foot is awkwardly shaped and he’s waiting for it to grow out. Think running in one heel and one flat. Usually the growing out part is done sound but this one has been weird. Maybe the abscess hole is in a place that twinges while filling in. [Foot Festival Fades into the Distance, Finally?]

Speaking of running. Milton’s status is an estimate, judged between hopping and running about. I was walking Rodney while Milton lunged. This meant that Milton was yards. Entire yards! From his herdmate! A tragedy not to be borne!

Rodney has less separation anxiety. [Rodney’s ~~Semi~~-Permanent Gold Star]

Onwards!
Katherine

Feeding The Same Breed

Awareness of the outside world. Replaced ancient mattress with 3″ dense foam. Comfy for sleep. The weird part is that it doesn’t bounce when you sit down on it and it doesn’t wiggle when you roll over. You get used to things that you don’t even realize.

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Solution 11% All Grain Feed
Tucker Milling

Previously, I talked about changes to horse feed. [Feeds and Breeds]

Another part of the change is the prevalence of pellets. Everything is pellets these days. Related to ease of manufacture? Better storage? For Warmbloods? For the other reasons and Warmbloods don’t care? No idea.

Anyway.

We decided to go old school. We found an in-state mill that makes a grain-based feed. It still has some pelletized bits but overall looks and smells the horse feed use to look & smell.

Rodney gets grain. He is doing well on it. Gradually putting on weight without having the calories bubble out his ears. He still gets pellets, so we still add water to his meals. Minions need to remember that grain does not absorb the way pellets do. One needs to drastically reduce the amount of water. Otherwise sir gets soup. Sir does not like soup.

Milton does NOT get grain. He had an immediate reaction. It was like being inside a laundry detergent commercial. The ears were earier. The kicks were kickier. Fortunately, he had an equally immediate reaction to being take off. Much calmer, almost hungover. ‘Wow, that was some trip.’

Two horses. Same breed. Wildly different responses.

SMH.

Onwards!
Katherine

Mixed Media Flowers, Acrylic Class #3, Art

Art of the outside world. “Hockney was one of the first artists to make extensive use of acrylic. Being fast drying it suited his technique of painting large areas of flat colour and then adding details. He also felt that the fast-drying acrylic paint was more suited to portraying the sun-lit, clean-contoured suburban landscapes of California than slow drying oil paint.” Tate: Understanding David Hockney’s A Bigger Splash.

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photo of a mixed media painting of flowers in a vase

Muppet Flowers
Scrapbook paper, mulberry paper, acrylic paint

Acrylic Painting Class with Chris Cruz
Class 3 of 4
Shelby County Arts Council
Columbiana AL, USA
17 September 2024

Instructor website, Chris Cruz Designs

Start, finished paper, finished paint.

photo of three mixed media paintings of flowers in a vase

Instructor’s examplar, me, other student.

Previous Posts [Class #1, Class #2]

Onwards!
Katherine

Story Devices, Writing

I release these ideas into the world freely. If you are inspired, run with it. All I request is that you let me know the result, so I can enjoy what you have written. Videoed? Turned into an online game? As I have said before, with expert agreement, ideas are the easy part. [Sending A Message To The Future, intro]

Ideas for story frameworks.

The Intersection

A setting for a series of related stories that take place in the buildings at the intersection. Meals at the diner. Commercial transactions at the store and so on. Running into people on the street for good or for ill.

Different scenes of a story can happen in the different locations. Characters exit the stage when they go home for the night.

Short glimpses from passing motorists either add information to the plot or completely misinterpret what is happening, used either for levity or as commentary on the idea that understanding is POV dependent. Or both.

It could be a novel that takes place in a small town, perhaps a county seat, where the office building is the county courthouse and the intersection is the psychological heart of the town. Meet at the light is town standard

Interweaving. People encounter characters from other stories on the sidewalk. Protagonist glimpses two characters who shouldn’t be seen together riding in a passing car. The answer would not be given instory but the the reader will know from reading the other story.

The intersection is metaphorical. Over the years, standalone stories circle an intersection that exists only in the author’s mind. A classic country house on one corner for mysteries. A UFO spaceport on another corner for science fiction. And so on.

The connection may only be know to the writer. The hero of one story is a descendant of an earlier protagonist. The same plot keeps happening in the same place, creating echos that may or may not make it into the published piece.

The Menu

Instead of interrelated stories, this would be one story that followed the structure of a menu. Appetizer is the set up. Salads are the rising action. Entree is the main action, and so on. The different choices in each section are different POV characters. These can be presented in narrative order.

If you want to get fancy, the “entrees” can be read in any order and still move the story forward. A high-end choose your own adventure. Difficult to achieve but would be cool to read.

Drinks & Desserts are separate menus and therefore separate stories set in the same location. One before, one after. Prologue & epilogue.

Mystery set in a restaurant?

Romance in a cooking school?

The story follows the menu theme but is totally unrelated to food.

The story follows the menu theme but is related to food only as a metaphor.

Previous Post

Writing for a building, applies to all.

“The concept is to use _________ as a narrative frame for a sequence of interrelated short stories. The supporting characters from one story are the main characters in another story. The plots are intertwined. Sometimes the influence of one story on another is strong, for example the same events told from two points of view. Other times the connection is a passing incident that can be overlooked or noticed as an Easter Egg. Each story can be read as a stand-alone. Taken together the stories form a larger tale.

The ___________ is both backdrop and part of each story.

Now all I need are the stories.

[Apartment Building as a Framework]

Onwards!
Katherine