Knots and Carving

I woke up this morning with the urge to try out the instructions in a book I recently purchased, Leather Braiding by Bruce Grant. After several failed attempts at interweaving a pineapple knot, I ended up with the blue-and-brown knot in the photo below. The smaller knots are spanish ring knots. The blue knot alone took me all morning and I don't believe that I finished it correctly, so I will probably go back to practicing at larger scales before I attempt the rest of the knots on this bridle.



The piece of leather is the beginnings of a western saddle, and my first try at carving leather. I was forced to set it down before I roundhouse kicked something! My carving tool arsenal included an awl, several small screwdrivers, various sculpting tools, and a myriad of blunt metal objects I found lying around my home. Needless to say, these didn't work particularly well. I will likely be ordering real carving tools from Tandy *le gasp!*, such as the beveler recommended by Susan Bensema Young in the Guide. It's really hard to get those tiny edges around the leaves pressed down, and then to fade the impressions out nicely.

If anyone has any suggestions and hints, be they carving or knot-tying related, I would be more than happy to hear them!

Placing at Lethbridge Live!

This is so cool!

About a year ago, I participated in the sm swap on Model Horse Blab. It was one of my first times customizing (WIP photos here.) Anywho, my swap partner, Shauna, took her to Lethbridge Live this past weekend and she placed 6th in a large class! Scroll down to see a picture: Bill Vs. The World. I'm stunned, and really pleased :D. Thanks Shauna, this is such an awesome thing to see!

New Laptop!

I've put in a lot of shifts at work lately, so I decided I could finally afford to buy my own laptop:

MSI CR620

I love it! It's got a nice, bright screen, which will be perfect for digital art once I get the tablet drivers installed. It's also not very heavy. And I love Windows 7!

Overall, I'm very pleased with it :D

New Prismacolors

I received my new set of 132 Prismacolors about a week ago and have since set about drawing some long-overdue gift art. It's still very much a work in progress, but here's the picture so far:



Suffice it to say, I love my Prismacolors!

Bullfighting Tack

Hola!

As you can see, I'm back from Spain. Over the next few days, I plan to shower you with photos of that beautiful country. First, however, I feel the need to post something I find very exciting: bullfighting tack!

During our stay in Seville, my school group made a stop at the bullfighting ring and museum. I got some very strange looks from our guide when I started freaking out over this display (apologies for the horrid picture quality):













Unfortunately, I didn't get a shot of any informational signs about this, so my knowledge of its background is limited. It sure is cool though!

Leaving for Spain

Hey, everyone!

So, this march break (well, actually Wednesday) I'm going to Spain with my school choir! This will be the first time I've ever flown and I'm really looking forward to it :D. I'll be bringing my camera, so hopefully I'll see some Spanish tack while I'm there and be able to take my own reference photos for once. Anyway, wish me luck (and brace yourself for an onslaught of photos when I get back)!

Success!

I've been delving into braiding recently (my inspiration is Susan Bensema Young: http://pages.prodigy.net/sbytsii/tsii/). I've figured out how to do a Spanish Ring knot and a Pineapple knot from her book, The Guide to Making Model Horse Tack. However, I knew that if I really wanted to make braided tack, I'd have to learn how to interweave knots. Today, with the help of this site: http://khww.net/articles.php?article_id=34, I finally did!



This is made from dental floss and embroidery floss. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up some of the thread SBY recommended soon, though.

For scale (you can see that it's not quite small enough for a model horse):



I'm not sure what went wrong with this side:



Still, I'm so excited! This is a huge breakthrough for me :)