Weekend Update

Well, I feel like I haven't blogged in awhile now but I don't have any good excuse. On Saturday I attended the MN March for Science.

The turnout was great, it was fun, and the weather was AMAZING!!

Unfortunately I ended up with a headache and so I didn't go to the barn that day and instead ended up laying around on the couch watching NCIS.

On Sunday I went to the barn in the morning and had a great ride. Jane had moved a couple of horses to a pen at the end of the arena and had the sliding door open so Katai was quite keyed up. I used it to my advantage to test our improved relationship and my new skills. By keeping her really bent and moving off my leg at that end I had a very ridable pony. In fact it was fun because she was more forward and up in front of me. I had memorized first level test 1 the previous evening so I played with bits of that test, cuing for the canter at C for example. Unfortunately now that we've been working so much on the canter and canter transitions Katai is throwing that transition in when I want her to lengthen her trot across the diagonal. Oh well, something to work on.

After that we worked on the trailer again. This is our 4th or 5th time now, I've sort of lost track. At any rate last time we practiced things really clicked and Katai did an AMAZING job. This time Jane had moved the trailer to right in front of the barn, had it hooked up to the truck, and had removed the divider so it's completely open. With those changes (and Jane and her SO working nearby) I kind of thought she might regress a bit. However, she walked right in at least 5-6 times and although she was dancey (she was actually doing a bit of Piaffe) she wasn't as nervous as she has been in the past. At one point I heard Jane's SO yell "See! She's ready for I-2". I giggled but Jane was studying Katai and nodding her head so it must have been a decent, if very trailer induced piaffe. Then Katai threw in some Levade for good measure. She was definitely more stressed on the trailer with everything going on but she would immediately calm down once I took her out so that's huge progress.

After that I went to my parents and my dad and I finished up this!

It is so, so cool and I can't wait to load it with all my tack. It still needs to be sanded and finished but my dad will be bringing it to my place on Friday and then I'll be able to work on it whenever I like rather than making the 1.5 hour drive to my parent's place. 

It's only been about a year and a half in the making :) It's been an amazing project with my dad and now I'm trying to figure out what else I can work on with him.

With my sister and dad for scale, it's big!

Makeup: Lesson Recap 3/27 and Weekend Updates

I had a great makeup lesson on Saturday. Katai was really a good little pumpkin but wasn't completely sure she wanted to work on the canter. It's gone from a gait that we never do and therefore exciting to a gait that's a lot of work so the first time I asked her to canter in each direction I got some pretty good ponytechnics with lots of bucking.

To get the canter we cued for it out of leg yield once we hit the wall at the end of the arena and she did pretty well in one direction but was pretty stiff to the other side and didn't want to flex to the left at all.

 We did a bit of lateral work and also got the alignment better than we have. Overall though, while Katai was trying she was just unwilling to flex to the left and wanted to retract her neck.

Jane and I also had a great time talking about the FEI World Cup and I'm getting even more excited to be there!

Also baked some amazing banana bread!!

After my lesson I went to my parent's farm and worked with my dad on my tack locker. He's made some progress this spring with some of the smaller things that needed time between (for the glue to dry) since it was just slowing our process down too much but we made a bunch more progress on Saturday when I was there.

Door with polo wrap shelves

The main part of the cabinet

These drawers go in the right side of the cabinet. 

I can't wait to get the building part done now so that I can start to decorate it haha.

Project Update

I got another weekend in with my dad working on my tack locker. We're working on the toughest part right now which is getting the body of the cabinet assembled. Luckily my dad has 7 large clamps that we can use to hold it together because it's like a large, heavy, sticky (from the wood glue) 3D puzzle.

So far we have the top and left side up and nailed and glued. We're letting the glue dry on those before we put up the right side and bottom luckily those will be far easier since we'll at least have a reference and more to clamp to.
 

Getting there!

Since I'm in WA this week and only getting home on Friday I likely won't go home again until the beginning of March but over the next few times working on it we should be able to do the majority of the rest of the work. I'm not in too much of a hurry though because before I move it I want to paint it and since it doesn't make sense to paint in the small enclosed space of my dad's shop I'll likely wait until it's warm enough to take it outside and that won't be for at least a month or more.

Selfie time! From my hotel window seat looking out at the Seattle Convention Center

I also finished up another project! I started working on the idea for a stall name plate like this over Christmas but I went through a couple before I got it right (right enough anyway). There are still things I'd like to improve but mainly I really like it. I'll take a picture to share when I get home but I painted chalk board paint in a rectangle on the bottom so that I can put notes or just doodles on it. The chalkboard is nice although a white board would have been nicer to write on. The colors, navy and pink, are what I'm going to try to do with my tack locker so it should be a cute match once that's done.

Tack Locker Project

I briefly mentioned in an earlier post that I'm working with my dad on a tack locker. I had found this website and fell in love with this tack locker.

They have a couple of different plans and I liked a couple of the options but I decided that this was my favorite set up. I kept trying to figure out how I could get the tools needed to make this and how could I do it on my own. Eventually I realized that having my dad help could be a great option. He's done some carpentry projects in the past and he and my mom almost completely built the house I grew up in. The only things they didn't do on their own were pouring the slab, the central heating, and lifting the trusses onto the roof. Everything else including electrical, dry wall etc they did.

When I thought about that I decided to ask my dad to help me build it using his tools and I would buy the materials. He cheated a little and did buy most of the plywood which was so amazing :-)

Before Christmas we spent some time cutting the big pieces of plywood and then earlier in January we cut most of the little pieces.

Today we started assembly!! I completely forgot to take pictures but we were gluing and then finish nailing parting bead to the back piece of the cabinet to prepare for attaching the sides and some of the shelves.

We are going to finish this a little different than in the picture of the original. I've decided to take out the "saddle house" assembly so it will have the two shelves and two drawers below but not the saddle thing above. I decided that if I put a more standard saddle rack in instead I'd be able to then use that top shelve to stack saddle pads and thought it would give me a little more freedom to add some extra hanging hooks. Of course it also gives us that much less cutting and assembly to do which doesn't hurt either :-)

The inside of the door will be the same as shown in the picture though. I can't wait to have it done!!!