PostUNcrossing

Random Images

The world is vast & weird.

 

 
Found it!

Finally.

I have been looking for you since … since … checks original post, My Shetland: Lerwick Today … May of last year … Why did you decide to hide in a pile of ASB show pics?

Hmm.

This is cute.

Maybe I should start Postcrossing again. It was fun getting postcards from around the world [Latest Batch].

Activates account.

Goes looking for postcards.

Huh. Postcards have gotten hard to find. Who knew.

Bookstore? Nope.

Pharmacy? Nope, even though website says they carry them.

That’s okay. I know what I’ll do. Instead of a generic state postcard, I’ll go to one of the local tourist sites and buy pretties.

This may take a while, I don’t go into town that often.

Bzzzzt. You are not going into town at all.

Maybe I can order some online. This would be a good home-stay activity.

Website? Yes.

Gift shop? Of course.

Gift shop has online orders? Nope. I guess the as tourist attractions go, they aren’t big enough to need an online sales presence. Grand Canyon they are not.

Bzzzzt. Bzzzzt. Attention, please. The world is closed. Please come back in … we’re not sure when.

Well, so much for sending postcards.

At least I have this pretty postcard of Shetland Ponies in Sweaters
 

 
More Shetland
[Counting Down The Days Shetland Style]
[In or Out? On or Off? Questions of Horse Management]
[Taste Vs. Authenticity]

Miscellaneous stamp info
 

 
“For the £1.35 stamps, the designs are an oak tree (England), linen (Northern Ireland), thistle (Scotland) and daffodil (Wales).” Linn’s Stamp News: Royal Mail’s new definitives, Denise McCarty, 2019

“The Scotland stamps were designed by Tayburn: the thistle was sculpted by Tim Chalk” Royal Mail sales page

“Definitive stamps are sometimes called the “workhorse” of the postal system. They’re also known as regular-issue stamps.” Mystic Stamp Company: The Difference Between Definitive and Commemorative Stamps

Smithsonian National Postal Museum: Definitive Issues
SNPM: Commemorative Issues
SNPM: Glossary P Provisional stamp

“Country definitives, formerly known as regional postage stamps of Great Britain are the postage stamps issued for regions of the United Kingdom, reflecting the regional identity of the various countries and islands of the British isles.” Wiki: Country Definitives

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine Walcott

Why Is This Hard For You, I Mean, Yay Progress

Training Journal

If you’re riding a horse, you’ve already won.

 
One of the action items for my Lemonade List [Finding the Lemonade] is to work on trotting in the pasture. Mission bonus would include cantering and hillwork.

I used to buzz around the pasture all the time with Previous Horse. Warm up? Trot on a long rein along the edge of their field. Cool-down? Go for a walk. Come home from Rolex and feel the need to do conditioning work [Aftermath]? Around we go.

Rodney has not come alongside the idea quite as quickly.

Back to first principles. We would trot from the ring to the near corner. His cow corner [Cow TV]. Treat this as a new thing and introduce him gradually [The Emotional Onion]. We’ve done this before, but a) it was two years ago [XC, Kinda, Sorta, Maybe] & b) going slowly with this horse is never a bad idea. Whatever I think is a small step can always be sliced in to even smaller steps.

Walk back and forth in hand, ring to corner, ring to corner.

Walk path under saddle.

Trot path.

Walk back and repeat.

He did so well on the first pass that at end of second trot, I hung a left and proceeded along the short side to the next corner.

Success! Callooh! Callay!’

On one hand. Victory. He did the planned exercise perfectly. He did an extended version of the exercise that I had not planned. He did the second phase with no introductory walking of the path. Given Rodney’s view of the world, he did excellently.

On the other hand.

Seriously? It takes this much work to trot in your own pasture?

Rodney has lived in this field for 10 years come August. 10 years! He routinely grazes in the back 40. We have walked the entire edge of the pasture in hand more times than I want to count. He has walked around the pasture under saddle.

But trotting?

Trotting is new.

I could *feel* him thinking deeply while we trotted the short side.

Oh well. The rider doesn’t get to choose how the horse reacts.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine Walcott

Center of Gravity, Notes From A Lesson

Adventures in Saddle Seat

Enjoy the ride.

 

 
Putting my lesson down on paper so that I have some hope of remembering what went right the next time I get out to the barn. Whenever that is. [Changing of the Guard, Horse Edition]

Part of the reason I get nervous before a saddle seat lesson is that I find it a precarious way of riding. The more I ride the way God – or at least Federico Caprilli – intended, the more precarious saddle seat feels. On the theory that knowledge improves my ability to deal with the world, I had a theory sit-down with Coach Courtney before I rode. These thoughts are the result. Errors mine.

Balance
‘It’s all about the center of gravity.” This was the first thing she said. This helped immensely. I concentrated on staying in the center both laterally and longitudinally. I made this my idée fixe. I did that first and then added in the rest. Seemed to work.

I’ve noticed this is true with Rodney as well. He is sensitive to what I do with my shoulders. If he thunders down a hill, or motorcycles around a turn, I usually find that I have tipped forward or to the inside. I have been trying to keep Sally Swift‘s barber pole in mind.

Of course, it’s always easier to ride when I’m thinking about how the horse is going rather than about myself.

High Hands
When I first got on an ASB, the hand position felt ridiculously high.

“Hands up, way up, even higher.”
[Switching Gears]

[Putting The Show In Showmanship]

I was taught that the rider’s hands should be a straight line from elbow to bit. When I ride Sam this is not the case. Not even close.

[Barnshine]

However, as I looked around the office at photographs of Reagan riding fancy horses in snazzy venues, I realized that when the horse is up in front and firing on all cylinders, the line from elbow to bit is straight.

Knees
Dig in with your knees. Really? That feels even weirder than raising my hands. For years I was told DON’T grab with your knees [2 Talking Steeds]. The point of saying ‘Dig in with the knees’ is as a shorthand to get the rider to use their upper thigh.

In the lesson, I found that pushing against my knees helped in keeping my upper body back.

Contact
One of the opportunities of riding Optimus is the chance to practice with a show bridle.

In the lesson, I got to hold the two reins but I didn’t really get to use them. I kept my center of gravity organized. I found that keeping the energy up and keeping him together every stride came off my upper body more than anything. My hands felt like decorative afterthoughts.

Know Your Place
Of course, all of this worked because, as I keep saying, Optimus is such a good dude [Going In Cold]. I would use an aid, such as bringing my shoulders back, and he would respond correctly by staying up and together.

Someday. Again. At some point.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine Walcott

Milton Behind Bars

Horsekeeping

Lucky enough to have a horse.

 

 
For the second time this month, Milton has come up mildly lame after a rainstorm [Moments]. We think he is frolicking foolishly. Last time, the tweak was high up in the hind end. This time, there was a small warm patch on the inside of a hind fetlock. As a repeat offender, Milton was sentence to stall rest.

He was not pleased.

Since Milton’s driver was WFH at the barn [Silver Linings], he was on hand to dispense snacks, take Milton for walkies, and monitor how upset Milton actually got when Rodney wandered off to graze. Answer, not much. One loud bellow – I could hear it in the house – less with the frantic pacing.
 

 
Grumpy photo aside, Milton was overall pretty good about being up. His leg never ballooned up, either from the injury or from standing around. He took his meds as required, and got good reports from his handwalks. Mostly.

He is now sound & back out. He’ll probably get a few more days off. Maybe the rest of the week. No reason to press. Not in any hurry. It’s not as if anyone is going anywhere, anytime soon.

Next time it rains, we are considering putting Milton up on blocks.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine Walcott

Be Careful What You Train

Training Journal

If you’re riding a horse, you’ve already won.

 

 
We have created a monster. Well, a mini-monster.

Back in the normal days, Rodney was being introduced to a new arena [Travels] and to the idea of barrel racing [Not From Around These Parts]. We put cookies on top of each of the three race barrels to encourage walking up to the barrels rather than giving them the hairy eyeball.

On a separate note, we bought half a dozen used plastic barrels to be used as driving obstacles. We have two of them in the field for Milton to longline around.

You can see where this is going, yes?

Rodney now insists on checking out each barrel, each time he goes past. Might be a cookie. Ya never know. Some lessons sink in fast.

In other news, spotted the first tick of the season. Fortunately it was crawling rather than attached. Still, ick. We already have flies [Silver Linings]. Two reminders that the blessings of Spring are mixed.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine Walcott

Blog V. Life, HSL Color Reference

Celebrating Art

 

 
Using the subject from yesterday’s post [Blogging My Life Versus Living It], I experimented with HSL, a third option in color choice for Inkscape. Last time, I messed around with RGB and CMYB, [State Of The Blog Logo & Color Reference]. Most of the following is for my own reference. If color theory isn’t your thing, smile at the pretty graphic and move on. If color theory is your thing, what should I explore next?

Delta h
Hue is the color wheel.
0 degrees to 360 degrees IRL, 0 to 255 in Inkscape
Image color values:
h = 0 -> 255
s = 255, full saturation
l = 128, halfway between 0 black & 255 white

Delta s
Saturation goes from gray to full color.
Adding gray to a color is tone
0% to 100% IRL, 0 to 255 in Inkscape
Image color values:
h = arbitrary color, chosen for pretty
s = 0 -> 255
l = 128, halfway between 0 black & 255 white

Delta l
Lightness goes from black to white.
Adding black to a color is shade, adding white is tint.
0% to 100% IRL, 0 to 255 in Inkscape
Image color values:
h = arbitrary color, chosen for pretty
s= 255, full saturation
l = 0 -> 255

Letter Values
B – 0
L – 85
O – 170
G – 255

L – 85
I – 142
F – 199
E – 255

Process Notes

Letter arrangement. Which way? The way I used makes life an offshoot of the blog. The other way, with the word blog across the top and life running vertical, could be interpreted as life supporting the blog. It looked better graphically since the square letters of “life” stacked up nicely, but didn’t read as well, which reduced life to even more of a secondary position. Neither life as offshoot nor life as support was my intended message. Probably unavoidable with “life” coming off the second letter of “blog.”

Notes from Fri. From a thematic point of view, Friday’s post [Coloring Contest] should have been a Sunday post. That’s usually when I do art stuff. However, a) I already had this, and b) boosting the signal on Friday would give people more time before the deadline on Tuesday.

As I said, I did the coloring by the numbers. Since I had just finished fiddling with HSL for today’s post, I used that again in GIMP. The grays are increments of 10 on the V (value) slider 0 to 100. The rest of the colors are increments of 10 on the H (hue) slider, 0 to 360, with V and S (saturation) at max for the brightest possible color. The post was in GIMP rather than Inkscape, hence the different ranges. Also, GIMP has HSV, while Inkscape has HSL. Not completely clear on the difference.

H
Inkscape 0 to 255, colors
GIMP 0 to 360, colors

S
Inkscape 0 to 255, gray to full color
GIMP 0 to 100, white to full color

L
Inkscape 0 to 255, black to color to white

V
GIMP 0 to 100, black to full color

So, lightness in Inkscape combines value and saturation in GIMP. I think. Getting into deeply-colored waters here.

It gets worse – or at least less artistic. Even using numbers I was being mechanical. With the grays, I noticed that I was filling area with two colors (binary) or with a color gradation (rainbow). When I noticed this, I threw in a triad. Intuitive coloring wasn’t on the table.

BTW, ‘grAy -> America. grEy -> England. It’s that easy.’ This had to be pointed out to me. Unable to attribute the source as I don’t recall it.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine Walcott

State of the Blog, Blogging My Life Versus Living It

Blogging About Blogging

 

A while back, I called myself a bad blogger, mostly in jest [Changing of the Guard]. I had gotten so caught up in what I had been doing that I forgot to take a picture. Two commenters were kind enough to say that I should have a cookie anyway. In truth, I was a bad blogger. I did not fulfill the requirements of the job. I did not provide visuals to go with the text. That got me thinking about living a life versus blogging about it.

I was having a lesson on Optimus at Stepping Stone Farm. I knew I would be writing a post about it. Before I got on, I gave Coach Courtney my phone so that I could take a between-the-ears shot to go with the post. We both forgot.

OTOH, it wasn’t a bad thing to be a bad blogger right then. I was caught up in the lesson. I was concentrating on what I was doing. I was in the moment rather than removing myself from the moment to comment on it.

I am not alone.

“She started to plan family time around paid posts. “Someone wants to send us a board game while eating a certain cereal? That’s what we’re doing on Friday,” she says. “I was playing the game with them, but I wasn’t really there. I was watching and thinking about how I was going to caption the photo I’d take. It all took away from real time with my kids.” New York Post, “My mommy blog ruined my life”,
Mackenzie Dawson, 2016

On Instagram, Millennial Life Crisis is running a series where there is the Instagram-worthy caption and then the rest of the story.

“INSTAGRAM: Toronto, you sure are beautiful. This was one of my favorite trips of 2019 and I definitely intend on going back because I didn’t get enough time in the city. Maybe one day if I get lucky I’ll get to live there.
–
REALITY: I had to pay $26 to park my rental downtown so that I could run around for hours trying to find this sign because I wanted to be able to say that I’d been there. I got yelled at by four people, pooped on by a bird and, when I got back to my rental car saw that I’d gotten a parking ticket because I didn’t get back to it quick enough…” millennialme88/#MillennialLifeCrisis 2019

They are both making the point that online presentation does not always reflect reality. I am making a slightly different point. I think my blog does reflect reality. But then, I would say that, wouldn’t I?

My point is both accounts demonstrate the lengths one goes to in order to cover a story. That’s fine. If that’s what you are doing. I certain spent enough time covering horse shows. I was not riding in those shows at the time.

Text can be done in hindsight. You do the thing. You go home at write about it. It requires a small amount of mental discipline. I have found my brain wandering off into composing blog posts while at a show. I jerk my mind back to the present and carry on.

It also depends on the level of the event. A little detachment won’t torpedo the entire occasion [State of the Blog: Pondering Twitter]. I suspect at my next lesson, I won’t be quite as stressed. I will do a better job of taking a minute or two out of the day to snap a pic.

Obviously, this is not true if one is covering an event that requires notes in real time. For a blog post, reflection afterward is possible.

With photos, this is not possible at all. Photos happen when the event does. I’ve recreated one or two but they lack immediacy.

Rodney is unimpressed with my efforts at documentation.

[Jump]

So, blogging versus life. Sometimes, they coexist. Sometimes, one shuts the other out.

Update [Blog V. Life, HSL Color Reference]

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine Walcott