Visions of Flying Pigs Wearing Iceskates While Singing, Help Me Make It Happen

Random Images

The Proposal
Attention Artists. I am looking to commission an artwork, content explained below. Any media. If you are interested, please send your thoughts on what you envision for this project, your rates, and links to examples of your work.

Not an artist? Who would you recommend? Either people you know or artists whose work you admire who might be up for a lark.

This is a paying proposition. [Contact me].

The Project
At the end of last year, I had my doubts that my horse would make an appearance in the show ring.

“Rodney: Ha. It could happen. Pigs could fly. The horse could learn to sing. If Rodney sets a hoof in a show ring, any ring, I will commission an artwork of flying pigs wearing iceskates while singing.” [A Radiance of Ribbons]

Seems I was wrong. [Words]

Now I must do what I said I would do. My prediction must be brought to life.

At the end of August, I sent an email query to the artist of my choice. No response. Occurred to me that the first email arrived during a major work event. Sent second, added text that said, “If I do not hear, I will assume you are not interested & won’t ask again.” Sigh. Their style would have been perfect for this.

Nevermind. We will find someone even better. Onwards!

My statement combines three sayings.

One) When pigs fly. Obvious. Wiki says this is an adynaton “a figure of speech so hyperbolic that it describes an impossibility.” Wiki: When Pigs Fly

Two) When Hell freezes over. Also obvious. Wiki has this in their List of idioms of improbability, along with flying pigs.

Three) The horse could learn to sing.

My family has a story. A prisoner comes before the king. Prisoner is condemned to death.

‘Alas, your majesty is wise and just,’ says he. ‘I am only sad that my great skill will be lost.’

The kings asks about great skill.

‘I can teach your horse to sing.’

The king is intrigued and grants him a year. If it has not happened in that time, the prisoner will be put to death.

When later asked why he promised such an outlandish thing, the prisoner says, “I have a year. The king could die. I could die. The horse could learn to sing.”

Turns out the story much older. The prisoner is Mullah Nasruddin, The very embodiment of the wise fool. The story is Nasreddin and the Sultan’s Horse, Wiki Books: Sufism/Nasrudin. “The most honored Mullah indicates that all spellings are acceptable when they are on invitations to dinner.” Mullah

Back To The Proposal
Please feel free to scatter this commission as far and as wide as possible to help it find a home with an interested artist.

Update
Et voilà [Flying Pigs]

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Inktober Horse

Random Images

 
I can’t draw.

Correction. Everyone can draw. Everyone can write. Everyone can dance. Everyone can paint. Ability? That’s a different story. Mine is such that I wouldn’t want to draw in the public square and scare the horses. And yet I find myself intrigued by Inktober.

Inktober Rules:
1) Make a drawing in ink
2) Post it
3) Hashtag it with #inktober and #inktober2019
4) Repeat

I have chosen the 5k option.

“Note: you can do it daily, or go the half-marathon route and post every other day, or just do the 5K and post once a week.” Rules

This meshes well with my graphic posts on Sunday. For tools, I have gone with hand-drawn, black ink, and brush pen, although I may switch to technical pen if I do any lettering.

“That’s it! Now go make something beautiful.” Rules


 
#inktober
#inktober2019

Well, I don’t know about beautiful. Mainly I have proven that

a) I was not wrong about my artistic ability.
&
b) The list is vast of things I am willing to do for a blog post.

I tried to do a head-on sketch of Milton from life. When I added the round nostrils at the end of this long face, the result was disconcertingly genitalic. We’ll skip those.

What are you doing for October?

Update
Paper: Canson Mix Media, spiral bound, 98 lb
Pen: not sure, possibly Prismacolor brush tip
Digitization: cell phone camera
Post-production: resized, border, & watermark in GIMP
Retouching: None. (B/c I don’t know how.)
A materials list appears to be an art thing.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Where Are They Now? Fiction Sketch

Writing About Writing

 
Crossposted [Will Write For Feed]

Another one that started as a question on a blog. In Millennial Life Crisis: Solo Road-Tripping the ‘Highway Thru Hell’, the author ponders initials and names carved on a bridge, “I can’t help but wonder if Abby and Brad ever worked out.”

No. They didn’t.
~~~
The Old Bridge
by Katherine Walcott

My neighbor Vicky and I were on our way into town. I was driving. She was recounting her most recent adventures with online dating. The stories made me thankful to be married. When I turned off Mill Road, she interrupted herself, “Why are you going this way?”

“Family habit,” I said. “We always go this way.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Vicky turning to stare at me. “It’s got to be 10 miles out of the way”

“11.4.” I said.

“What?”

“11.4 miles. I’ve measured it.”

“Then why?”

“My grandmother used to drive to this way. She said it was prettier.”

We drove in silence for a few miles.

After a few more miles of trees, Vicky said. You know the old bridge is perfectly safe, don’t you. All the important bits have been replaced. The wooden parts are strictly decorative. I mean, I’m all for highway scenery, but at this speed, that’s 25 minutes. With the return trip, that’s almost an hour of your life. Was your grandmother that into trees?”

“My Mom has a theory. You know how the wooden slats of the old bridge have names and initials on them? On the upstream side someone carved “Abby & Brad.” You can see it from the car if you know where to look. Well, my grandmother’s name was Abby. My grandfather’s name was not Brad.”

I paused for dramatic effect. I glanced at Vicky. She looked suitable impressed.

“My mom thinks my grandmother drove this way so she didn’t have to go over the bridge and pass those names.”

“Did she ever ask?” Vicky wondered.

“Sure. She said every time she asked, Grammy told her not to be silly and then changed the subject.”

“It’s weird to think of your grandparents as young enough to date.”

“I know, right?”

“Do you think she loved Brad all those years? If she were truly over him, she’d be indifferent. She would have no trouble driving right past.

“Maybe it wasn’t heartache,” I said. “Maybe they broke up after a huge public fight at the Homecoming game. From then on the sight of his name filled her with with righteous rage at the memory of finding him under the bleachers with another woman.”

Vicky countered. “Maybe it was a forbidden romance. Brad was visiting from downstate for the summer. They fell in love. He was heir to the Kwik Loc fortune. He would never be allowed to marry an upstater.”

“Kwik Loc?”

“Yeah, those little thingies that keep bread bags closed,” she explained. “Somebody has to be making money from them. Those things are everywhere.”

“Maybe Brad was charming but old-fashioned.” I said. “He proposed but she wanted to marry someone who would treat her more as an equal. Each time she saw their names together she was overcome with melancholy for what might have been, but she knows she made the right decision. People can have conflicting reasons for what they do.”

Vicky began ranting, “Maybe he was a jerk and she was sorry that she ever saw anything in him and now she can’t stand to drive by his name and she hates herself for thinking he was ever worth wasting time on.”

I glanced at her, “Over-identify much?”

“We all make mistakes. Moving on.” Vicky changed the subject. “Do you know what happened to Brad?”

I shrugged. “History does not record.”

“Imagine if she’d married him instead of your grandfather. Then your inheritance would have been substantially more than questionable driving choices.”

“But then I would never know if anyone liked me for myself or for my bread bag fortune.”

“Bread bag CLOSURE fortune.” she corrected. “Bread BAG money takes their vacations in the islands. They’re kind of snobby.”

I paused to negotiate a tricky corner.

“But seriously, I think Brad was a perfectly normal guy.” I said. “They had a teen romance that didn’t work out. He grew up to be a nice person. He married that other woman and they had 2.3 kids and a station wagon. He spent his life taking the bridge up by the highway, driving 10 miles out of his way in the other direction to avoid the wooden mill bridge. I imagine them constantly circling in opposing orbits with the Abby & Brad bridge at the center.

I considered the scenery. “So I drive this way and think about my grandmother.”

Vicky considered the scenery. “It is a pretty road.”
===

It’s Gramming Cats & Dogs, Instagram Recap October 2019

Random Images

 
Posts through the beginning of October 2019 from my blog Instagram account, @myvirtualbrushbox. Previous [Synecdoches and Soft Kitties, Instagram Recap August 2019].


 
Posts By Subject I
Cat pix – seven
Dog pix – two

Posts By Subject II
My cats & dog – three
Stepping Stone Farm cats & dogs – five photos of three cats & one dogs (Ricky was the double, plus a appearance in the background of a third *cough*attention hound*cough*)
Inanda Stables – one

Posts By Location
Home – two
SSF – five
Other – two

Most Liked
1st – tie, Lucy on picnic table & tabby butt
2nd – tie, Ricky by tree & cat shelf

Process Notes
After I posted 2 or 3 cat pictures, I decided to try for an entire segment of cat pictures, because clearly the Internet needs more of those. Dash cuted his way into the series with his shopping cart style. I rounded it out with Nicky & her squeaker to bring the count to nine and be done.

It was fun. OTOH, I have a tendency to create projects when the blog itself more than enough project all by itself. I may try again in a few months. Maybe a Through The Ears series.

Individual Instagrams

 
Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Back In Harness

Training Journal

 

 
Milton is back in harness. What with one thing and another – Milton’s show schedule, Coach Courtney’s show schedule – we have not driven him since spring.

After a small kerfuffle at the start, he was a star. A slow star, but a star. Quiet, relaxed, pleasant. I’m not happy about the kerfuffle, but we will keep working at Stepping Stone Farm under the watchful eye of Coach Courtney until we can hitch reliably on our own, as we used to.

All of the long-lining has increased the strength and flexibility of his topline. He was almost tracking up at a casual walk. He still prefers cones over doing laps around the the ring. Like driver, like horse.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Saddlebred Versatility, Jumpers

Adventures in Saddle Seatbreds

 

This post is straight-up digital stalking. I wasn’t there. I don’t know anything more than what I’ve seen online. If you know more about ASB-over-fences showing, please correct me. If you were there to watch or ride, wanna do a guest post and tell us all about it?

This year, the St. Louis Charity Horse Show had a Saddlebred jumper class, ASB .90m Jumper Stake. Ten horses showed up. As far as I know (??) this is the first time jumpers have competed at a Saddlebred show, at least in the modern era. St. Louis has offered a hunter course for many years. It is the only show (??) to do so. A handful of other shows offer a Hunter Hack-style class with 1 or 2 jumps at the end of the rail work.

HorseShowsOnline
 
The class was .9 meters. For this those of us who predate the conversion to metric jumper classes, that is 2′ 11+”, aka three feet. That takes some real jump training. Not the sort of go out & goof over that Milton and I did this spring. Six of the ten horses have Kris Wallace listed as their trainer. Google says someone of that name with similar habits is at Columbia Equestrian Center.

The show also offered a jumper warm-up, which five horses went in. I don’t understand why everyone didn’t avail themselves of the opportunity to school the course. Either way, it didn’t appear to effect the placings. Competitors who rode in the warm-up class placed 1st, 3rd, 6th, 9th, 10th in the jumper class.

Jump! All! The! Things!

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Where Are We Now? Lesson Recap

Training Journal

 

 

For Lesson # 2 with Brian Tweed [Steady On, first lesson], I deliberately chose not to go back to the place Rodney knew. Instead we went to a new place, Inanda Stables at Shoal Creek. If Rodney is going to be a show horse, he needs to learn to ship in and work at strange places. We can’t spend weeks repeatedly acclimating to every showgrounds. If it was as problem, that would become part of the lesson.

I had a mini meltdown when I saw the ring. Not in the indoor dressage ring, as I thought, see photo. Instead we were in the jump ring. No fence around the ring and riding past jump standards, neither of which are on Rodney’s list of happy-making activities.

I was steadied by the thought that if loaded up and went home right then, if I never got on, we were still farther ahead than I thought we would ever get. We shipped somewhere. We set up a lesson. Both victories.

Of course, it went better than I thought it would. Partly because things generally do. Partly, while the ring did not have a fence, it was within a small paddock that did. That kinda counted. Partly, we are learning to manage Rodney. He walked around in hand. He walked around tacked up and in-hand. He stood. He walked around under saddle. Partly, Coach Brian has a hard-working but low-key approach.

I wasn’t completely ready to trot when the lesson started. Fortunately, we began at a walk. Okay, I’m ready to do that. The exercises were challenging enough to get Rodney thinking but easy enough that he felt capable. “This is hard. I want to be upset, but we are walking slowly on long rein.” Simple, quiet exercises helped the rider feel successful as well.

Take-aways
Small, bendy circles and turns to get his neck and back limber.
Turn on the forehand
Turn on the haunches
Do any of the above, then trot a circle, then go back

We cantered, but not enough to speak of. Rodney was actually a little pissy at the second canter fragment, the way he used to be about the second trot [Evil Twin]. Truthfully, he was a little bit of a pill the entire time. Do you really need to monitor every car that goes up the driveway? Did someone elect you traffic warden when I wasn’t looking? It is nice to know that we can still do good work even when everything is not perfect.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott