Christmas Gift

Off Topic

 

I can’t buy everyone a book, so the gift is the recommendation.

A Christmas Cornucopia: The Hidden Stories Behind Our Yuletide Traditions by Mark Forsyth (Penguin 2016)
Author’s book announcement, Inky Fool: A Christmas Cornucopia. May I also recommend his blog, Inky Fool. He hasn’t posted often in recent years, but you have the entire archive to enjoy.

In the book, the author raises an eyebrow at both Christmas traditions and what we have said about those traditions over the years. Underneath the deconstruction, he has a deep respect for the underlying spirit of Christmas. The book came out in 2016, but I’ve only just rediscovered it on my Kindle.

The post title is not a cultural assumption. If you celebrate, it is gift FOR Christmas. If you don’t celebrate, it is a gift ABOUT Christmas. Either way, a “Christmas” gift. If that sort of word parsing isn’t amusing, you probably aren’t going to be amused by the Inky Fool.

I have most of this other books, several in more than one format: codex, ebook, audio.
The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language (Icon 2011)
The Horologicon: A Day’s Jaunt Through the Lost Words of the English Language (Icon 2012)
The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase (Berkeley 2014)
The Unknown Unknown: Bookshops and the delight of not getting what you wanted (Icon 2014) [What I Want From My Blog]
The Servant: A Short Story (Casey 2015)
A Short History of Drunkenness: How, Why, Where, and When Humankind Has Gotten Merry from the Stone Age to the Present (Three Rivers 2018). For personal reasons [Aftermath], I skipped this one. I suspect it is entertaining, everything else of his has been.

Other Recommendations
For word nerds
Book. Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kori Stamper (Random House 2017). The author’s life as a lexicographer.
Blog. harm.less drudg.ery. As above, I wish she would post more.
Podcast. Fiat Lex: A Dictionary Podcast, By Kory Stamper and Steve Kleinedler. I don’t do podcasts, so I couldn’t say.

For history geeks
Blog. Frock Flicks. “We are a blog and a podcast that reviews movies and TV shows set in mostly pre-1960s eras, primarily looking at the costume angle, but also taking into account history and design in general.” FAQ
I don’t watch enough historical movies to be a true devotee, but what I’ve read, I’ve enjoyed, SNARK WEEK: Stop It With the Skirt Hiking. Gotta love a blog that has instituted Snark Week.

For people who sew &/or are interested in a thrifty lifestyle
Blog. Goodbye Valentino “On August 31, 2011 I gave up buying clothes for a year and vowed to make my clothes instead … shopping for clothes had dominated my checkbook for decades. During my year of sewing I made 64 garments, saved thousands of dollars, and received countless compliments on my clothes from people who did not know my story.” About

For armchair travellers
Land Cruising Adventure Driving around the world in a Toyota Land Cruiser since 2003. Slow travel. It’s a thing.

And finally
Whatever: An Interview With Santa’s Lawyer

Methodology
No horse books or blogs. I’m assuming you can find those on your own. Also, I didn’t want to start naming blogs & leave one out. If I know you, either through blogging or IRL, you have not been included. I’m using the annoy-everyone-equally theory of recommendation.

Any recommendations in return? Always looking for blogs to read.
~~~
While we are taking about blogs, today is my blog anniversary. “The goal is to get back to a place where he likes work & I like him. Buried under 16 months of set-backs is the marvelous mid-life crisis horse who so enchanted me when we met.” [We begin. Again.]

After seven years, the blog is going strong. Still looking for my mid-life crisis horse.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Low Key Photo Challenge, Holiday

 

Captain Nutcracker by Breyer. From Carousel Tack Shoppe, cleverly displayed next to the check-out counter.

Process Notes
Taken with phone. Brought big camera to barn. Planned to hang ornament. This set-up caught my eye, after Milton checked the ornament for treats, but failed to do so photogenically. Not enough hands to do with big camera.

Thus the formal period for the Low Key Photo Challenge ends as it began, with my phone camera. “Mission success will be defined as at least once a month for six months.” [Inaugural Edition]. Check. Nine posts in five months, at least one per month.

(Honestly, I didn’t realize I was a month short until I read this post after it was published. Sigh. Oh well, I’m calling it half a year and declaring victory. As I said earlier [Dabbling], I’m trying to reduce the number of arbitrary requirements that I impose on myself. This is not a new phenomenon [Where Do We Go From Here? 2012].)

I’ll stay with the photo challenge, but in a more relaxed fashion. As in, when the mood strikes or when a good idea occurs. Or, when it goes viral and folks are clamoring for weekly challenges. A dog can dream.

Procedure for Low Key Photo Challenge
1) I post photo(s) on a given theme.
2) You comment below with a link to your photo(s) on that theme.
3) We all click over to see what you have.

That’s it. No prizes. No rules. No submissions. For more explanation, [Inaugural Edition]

Previous Challenges
August [Hello!] [Labor]
September [Toys] [Travel]
October [Books] [Hay/Street Art] [Rain]
November [Costume]

Update

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Rollerskates for Grandma, Milton’s New Jump

In our family, rollerskates for grandma is giving an item that you plan to use. Well, Stepping Stone Farm has its first jump. My amazing carpenter chose to make short standards so that a) we could lunge over them and b) any weenie, teenie jumps I eventually take would look more impressive.

We bought two sets of one-handed jump cups from Dapple Equine as a test run before we invest in them for home jumps. Listen to me. Talking about jumping at home. As if that is gonna happen any time soon. Am I optimistic? Or delusional? Where is the line? But I digress.

Onwards! Upwards!
~~~

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Let The Festivities Begin, SSF Christmas Party 2018

Can you imagine! Coach Courtney called me a saddle seat rider! The nerve! As part of the year-end wrap-up, she introduced the National Academy Team [Show Report]. She started off by saying that I ride in another discipline. Then she said I was really a saddle seat rider! How dare she! It’s not like I’m at the barn often. Er. Or that I show a lot. Oh. Or that I have been a jumper rider in this decade. Well. Or an eventer in this century. Nevermind.

Happy barn party season!

Tree at Stepping Stone Farm.

Gifts ready for dirty Santa. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Coach Courtney announces Tommy as one of the new leases for next year [Party Horses].

Meg rescues me from a selfie with the World’s Greatest Horse [Thoughts]. Note the victory vest [More Loot].

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Milton’s Missing Lesson

While the blog was on break last spring [Struggle Bus], Milton and I had a dressage lesson with a new instructor. It did not go well. Horse and rider were shivering wrecks for the next four days. I kept meaning to blog about it, but it kept threatening to turn into a 2000-word epic. Here is the short version. Well, I tried to make it the short version.

This person teaches a friend of mine. I went to watch a lesson. All seemed well. If anything, the person struck me as a little too low key. I might have said more about the ride that was going on in front of us. I scheduled a time to bring Milton over.

Instead of being the pleasant soul that I had encountered, they immediately got all up in our faces about how Milton would never do what we wanted him to do. This is a common attitude encountered in the horse world, ‘Your horse isn’t good enough. You need a new horse.’ Sometimes the speaker has a horse for sale. Sometimes the speaker simply has an opinion they feel compelled to share. Sure, fine, but five minutes after we get off the trailer? You haven’t even seen the horse move.

Nearby, but out of sight, a house was under construction. Huge machinery whizzed and clanked and banged. Milton hated it. Every whiz and clank and bang. He never settled. It took three people to bridle one horse. In hindsight, we should have gone home right then. Nothing good was going to come out of the day.

Lunging. The person had a theory of groundwork that we had not seen before. The work was a bit more demanding than I might have done, but nothing harmful. More of, ‘You will now listen to me.’ Milton didn’t like it, but he wasn’t liking anything at the moment.

No way was I getting on this cavorting, hysterical beast. Too much Tennessee flashback [not a post]. Cajoling occurred. I relented. I got on. I could barely walk Milton around the lunge pen. The instructor felt my hands were so bad that I needed to ride with a running martingale until I could learn to to keep them steady. Huh? Coach Courtney tells me she does this with her rankest beginners.

It finally ended. I got off. We made nice-nice noises and went home. There were tentative plans to come back. The new ground-driving/lunging technique had merit. Perhaps the person could be of use as a groundwork/driving instructor. Perhaps Milton would be more settled next time. We went off to buy a new rope.

I was not happy. Clearly, every decision I had ever made was wrong. And so on. This may be a bad place, but it is not an unusual place for me. My ground crew figured I’d snap out of it eventually. I generally do. By Wednesday, he realized that Milton was also still jumpy. Perhaps it was not all in my head. Perhaps going back was not a good move.

The session went badly from the get go. We didn’t do enough to get a good sense of this person’s teaching style. However, there appeared to be an underlying attitude that did not sit well either with me or with Milton.

Perhaps some form of tough love? Could be. I do not handle that well. Tell me, or even imply, that I am a useless waste and I will curl up in a ball in the nearest corner hoping to keep my worthless self out of everyone’s way. Tell me, show me, convince me that I am wonderful & I will amaze you.

Perhaps Milton feels the same way.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Dabbling in the Art World, Graphics 2018

Looking Back
I’m happy with the quantity of graphic art I produced. Of 42 Sundays, 33 were/will be original work of some sort or another, for a batting average of almost 80%. Only two Sundays had absolutely nothing to do with graphic design. Plus 8 illustrations on non-Sundays.

The quality? Less so. I know I keep quoting this, but Ira’s Glass Advice for Beginners (beautifully rendered by Zen Pencils) is my artistic life right now. I know what I like. I can’t make it happen. Yet.

AlphaBooks 26 posts

Letters – 24 posts, two double
Intro
Recap [AlphaBooks 2018]

Got better with Inkscape. Getting low on books for certain letters. Next year, no AlphaBooks. I could read for years on the books I already have. Plus, less money & less clutter. I know saying No More Books is hopeless, but I don’t need an extra reason to buy books.

Graphic Design & Letter Art 7 posts

[Letter Art: Snow 2018]
[Letter Art: Letters in Darkness]
[Letter Art: NYC Ephemera]
[What Happens When One Spends Five Days Sitting About In Northeast Georgia]
[Red, White, and World Cup]
[The SSF Letters Have a Run-In with Inkscape]
[The Worst and The Best]

Doesn’t have much to do with horses, or at least much to do with me improving the care of my horses and learning to be a better rider. OTOH, it does help me think more visually. I am so totally text-based that any tiny ray of art is an improvement.

Graphic Design, Others 4 posts, all stamp-related

[Graphic Design: Year of the Stamp]
[Graphic Design: My First Stamp Show]
[Pretty Pink Horses]
[A Colorful Quad]

I think stamps may join model horses [MEPSA] on the back burner. Fun, but there are other things I would want to do with my time before I did those. Moving forward, I will engage with these if an opportunity lands in my lap, but I won’t go searching.

Unrelated 2 photo posts

[Champion City, Guest Photo]
[Completing the Historical Record, MSSP 2018 Photos]

Some days, ya just gotta fill the space.

Admin 3 posts
Sundays left in the year – 2, one planned to be my design, other is unknown at this moment.
Today

Non-Sunday Graphics 8 posts

[State of the Blog: In Which I Consider Responsibility to the Reader]
[Hello Dr. Jekyll]
[I’m Tired]
[Horse Show Hack – Ice]
[Hello Whining, My Old Friend]
[Rodney’s Semi-Permanent Gold Star]
[The Poop-O-Meter]
[What’s With All The Recaps?]

Sundays are artwork only. Fridays are photo posts. The rest of the days are text posts. The goal – without overwhelming myself – is to have a visual element with every text post. Photos are easier, but not always available or apropos. In that case, if I have the time and inspiration, I made my own illustration. Would like to do more of this.

Looking Forward
I have a bad habit of coming up with intriguing projects for the blog: AlphaBooks, The Daily Object, stamps. The blog is a big enough project on its own. I don’t need to impose additional requirements. The number of fascinating things the world has to offer is near infinite. My time and attention are not. I need to remember this.

So, staying with graphic design on Sundays, but a one-off each week as things amuse me/catch my attention. Wider net. Fewer projects. More original art.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott