Virtual Brush Box

Self-Improvement

S is for Self-Improvement. If you are joining me from Blogging A To Z, welcome! Since the blog is already daily, with topics for each day [About: Schedule], there is no specific A To Z theme. I may even skip a few letters. Gasp. Clutch the pearls. The goal for this year is less crazy, more visiting. [Ze State of Ze Blog 2014]

~~~
State of the Blog comes early this month. [List of previous SotB posts].

10 Things To Post Before The End of the Year

Piece of Cake
1 Photo Essay. Easy peasey. My photo teacher [Meet Meg] has already suggested this.

The causative agent was the article “Family Recipes” by Celestina Morgan, a photo essay in the Spring 2017 issue of Gravy, published by the Southern Foodways Alliance. It is a black and white series of a pair of hands in the process of putting together a recipe. Simple, elegant, and, I suspect, way harder than it looks. (I can’t find a link and doubt the ethics of reproducing the photos. Trust me, it is amazing.)

2 Photo of Me on Milton. Piece of cake-ish. We have the ingredients. Need to bake the cake.

3 A Blog Adventure. Go somewhere interesting/amusing/engaging in order to blog about it.

4 AlphaBooks Z is for ? No reason I shouldn’t finish the project [Explanation]. Wanted to give myself a softball.

Stretch
5 Eight Saturday experiments, one for each remaining month. Essays. Another referral Saturday [Horseback Reads]. The blog adventure listed above. Anything more thoughtful than Ack, it’s Friday. I need a post! Full goal is eight. I’ll be happy with five.

6 At least one image on which I have done some small amount of post production. Right now, my skill set is crop, watermark, and add a border. I’m not being a purist. I post images right out of the camera because I don’t know any better.

7 Daily Images. A stretch goal due to vagueness. I want to add visual appeal, but don’t want to make myself nuts, again [Where Do We Go From Here?]. I don’t want to get so busy checking items off lists that I forget to have a life.

Magical Unicorn Fantasy Goals
(Shout out to Ambitious for help with the category title.)

8 Photo of me jumping.

9 Show Report with Milton or Rodney. A Beginner Novice event would be awesome. Anything jumping would be great. A dressage show will meet goal requirements.

10 Writer’s website. The How is simple. I have a cousin in the biz. The Why is problematic. Before I make a website, I have figure out what I want to DO with it, which involves figuring out what I want to BE when I grow up.

Onwards!

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Foto Friday: Reflection

R is for Reflection. If you are joining me from Blogging A To Z, welcome! Since the blog is already daily, with topics for each day [About: Schedule], there is no specific A To Z theme. I may even skip a few letters. Gasp. Clutch the pearls. The goal for this year is less crazy, more visiting. [Ze State of Ze Blog 2014]

~~~

Results of my class in horse portraiture.
Photos by me.
Image processing by Meg McKinney [Meet Meg].
Cropping & borders by me.
Slim was our photo model [California Girl becomes a Southern Belle].

Meg’s links
Website
Facebook
Instagram

Meg head

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Que Pasa?

~~Driving Thursday~~

Q is for Que Pasa. If you are joining me from Blogging A To Z, welcome! Since the blog is already daily, with topics for each day [About: Schedule], there is no specific A To Z theme. I may even skip a few letters. Gasp. Clutch the pearls. The goal for this year is less crazy, more visiting. [Ze State of Ze Blog 2014]

~~~
Warning: more whining. Mostly because I can’t think of anything else to go with Q. The photo from the show has not arrived to be used for Driving Thursday & Quite The Dude.

I’m having trouble shaking off my poor performance at the show earlier this month [Report]. It’s not that I placed badly. I hope I’m more evolved than that. (Oh, I wouldn’t rule out going behind the barn and kicking the wall a few times.) It’s that I rode so badly. Not only that, but I worked really hard in the weeks before the show to be that bad on the day. I just don’t know what I’m doing out there.

Plus, I was miserable most of the weekend: tears, insomnia, stomach aches. The nerves trifecta. I’m reaching the level of Why am I doing this to myself. To be clear, the nerves still aren’t following me into the ring. So there’s that. While I did ride and drive defensively, I was not the hot mess I am before I get on.

Yes, Rodney is starting to go better. Will it ever be enough to make up for the enormous amount of time I have wasted to date?

My point? No point. I will get over myself, probably sooner rather than later. Onwards!

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

This Is Why I Am Paranoid Around The Barn

Saddle Seat Wednesday

P is for a healthy concern for safety, not an obsession, not at all. If you are joining me from Blogging A To Z, welcome! Since the blog is already daily, with topics for each day [About: Schedule], there is no specific A To Z theme. I may even skip a few letters. Gasp. Clutch the pearls. The goal for this year is less crazy, more visiting. [Ze State of Ze Blog 2014]
~~~

A while back, I was at Stepping Stone, getting ready for my lesson. The grooming stall is full of SSF brushes and material, so I leave my brush box just outside, in the aisle. (Yes, I bring my own brushes. Your point?) As I was about to reach down to get a brush, I saw a horse being led up the aisle.

From an excess of caution, I stood up & stepped back, waiting for the horse pass by. As he got level with me, the horse suddenly kicked out with both hind feet. I was looking at the bottom of a set of hooves from about a foot away. At least, it felt like 12 inches. Probably was more. I was perfectly safe where I was.

What if I had been a step closer, bent over? Shudder.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Milton’s Overtime

O is for Overtime. If you are joining me from Blogging A To Z, welcome! Since the blog is already daily, with topics for each day [About: Schedule], there is no specific A To Z theme. I may even skip a few letters. Gasp. Clutch the pearls. The goal for this year is less crazy, more visiting. [Ze State of Ze Blog 2014]

~~~

Milton values his alone time [Naptime].

On more than one occasion, I have opened the stall door to zero response on the part of the occupant. Sometimes he’s eating. Sometimes he’s chilling. In neither case does he make any effort toward the door. [Daily Routine – Morning]

If I have time, I close the door and let him bake a while longer. Usually, he comes out on the second attempt. OTOH, there are days when I try three times and finally have to chase him out or use a halter to drag him out.

At the same time, I have to prevent Rodney from running into the stall [Inner Brat]. Rodney is learning to stand in an assigned, out-of-the-way spot while I decant Milton. He’s good about it, but if I take too long, he breaks the sit-stay.

I never doubted Milton values his naps [Update]. Now we have further proof.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

The Bratitude Increases

N is for Not Again. If you are joining me from Blogging A To Z, welcome! Since the blog is already daily, with topics for each day [About: Schedule], there is no specific A To Z theme. I may even skip a few letters. Gasp. Clutch the pearls. The goal for this year is less crazy, more visiting. [Ze State of Ze Blog 2014]

~~~
As the confidence increases, so does the back talk. Remember when Rodney mutinied going up the hill [Rodney’s Hillwork]? and then about standing [Rodney Channels]? The rot has spread to the ring.

I got on. We started walking. Rodney became fascinated with a stand of trees at the edge of the pasture.

I booted him in the side and told him to keep his eyes in the boat.

This is huge.

We were having a conversation under saddle. Okay, the conversation concerned what a brat Rodney was being, but one must to start somewhere. He wasn’t putting his hooves over his ears and waiting for the world to stop bothering him.

I say “not again,” but really I’m tickled. I can cope with attitude much better than with a fragile flower.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Update: One reader said that the annoyed came thru more clearly than the tickled in this post. I was annoyed. Rodney was being a twit. He was being a bog-standard, work-avoiding, exasperating horse. The fact that we had reached a level of normality where I COULD get after him for being annoying, THAT has me tickled.

Letter Art: Wallpapering with Light

The Immersion Room at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum has the neatest interactive table. Although the word “interactive” gets tossed about, this one really is. You use a stylus to draw on a screen. The result is displayed as a repeating pattern on the walls. Too cool.

Since my life is a blog post, I asked my friends to design Rodney’s Saga wallpaper. Voila!

Letter design & photography courtesy of the A Squad.

List of NYC Posts

nyc-2016-immersion-room-pose-1
~~~
No SketchBox lettering for April. It was pencils, which I have always hated for their messiness and impermanence. I tried, but not even the pretty colors and fancy holder could not overcome my loathing. The other item was a self-filling sepia pen that I could never get to work. #artfail