A winner, and some reminiscing

Thank you all for participating in the Valentine giveaway! I had a great time, and it was fun to hear from so many people in the comments. I just wish I knew how to write responses so they appear under specific comments!

I went ahead and plugged the number of comments into the random number generator and came up with the easy-to-count-backwards-to result of 83. (I figured if I got one, I'd disregard numbers that gave me deleted or duplicate posts.) So the winner is Heather Abounader! Heather, if you'll email me privately with your address, I'll send this guy out to you.

I was also going to share some photos. One of the comments yesterday was from "Dr B", probably better known to most of you as Kim Bjorgo (now Bjorgo-Thorne). She mentioned sharing biohazards for breakfast, so I thought I would share a photo I just happened to run across the day before she posted. I was looking for photos of Rosinante, my first custom glaze, because 2008 marks my tenth year making little shiny horses. I didn't find them, but I did find pictures from the second annual Carolina All-Mini Live Show held at my house that same year.



That's Kim there with my husband, Alan, holding our breakfast in - yes! - a biohazard bag. The show was still small and informal then, so it was held in our home. (We would move to the pretty Waterfront Hall the next year.) Since we had folks traveling from as far away as Florida, we decided to make it a combination show and pajama party. Kim had promised to bring fish so my husband could cook the lowcountry breakfast "grits-and-grunts" for everyone. The fish were part of a study Kim had just finished at Clemson University. She assured us that the fish she would be bringing were her control group. But she did bring them in that biohazard bag, which she claimed was "all that she could find" to put them in. I can say it's not the best way to get people enthused about eating fish for breakfast!

Here's another picture from that same show.



That's me looking rather skeptical standing beside Alli Willis. I'm not sure what was responding to with that expression (maybe someone said "palomino Arabians"!), but Alan swears it must have been him because he sees that look a lot. Poor guy. The baby Alli is holding is my oldest son, Brandon. Just barely visible in the foreground is Anthea Smith Peacock, and in the background is Gretchen Waldo.

I really need to pull out some of my archived photos and go through them and post a few. Then I can make other people feel old, too!

Happy Valentine's Day!

In honor of Valentine's Day, I thought it would be fun to give away one of the new "Summer Storm" plaques. Now if I had been planning ahead properly, I would have glazed one in some holiday-appropriate color like red or pink. (Though I must admit that pink is a little too "My Little Pony" for my tastes - no offense, Addi!)

Anyway, this guy is a pretty soft teal color. He's one of the first tests I pulled from the mold, so his detail is nice and crisp.

What I'll do is draw a winner from the names that appear in the comments. So if you'd like to be entered, just add your name to the comments, and I'll randomly pick from the entries.

The other Spinnaker

This is my other Spinnaker, a chestnut tovero named "Shindig".

More pictures of Elvis

Sabino roans - really, any low-constrast pattern - are always difficult to capture in pictures. Here are some detail shots, though





And a face shot from the other side.

More unseen horses

This is "Elvis Impersonator", a favorite from my own collection. I'm ashamed to say that he's been here for two years, and this is the first time I've taken any pictures of him. I started him at the Pour Horse studio at (what is now) our annual retreat, and then carried him home on the plane to finish him here. I've run out of time to finish color-correcting the rest of the pictures, but I'll post more of him - and of his fellow Spinnaker "Shindig" - later tonight.

Shrove Tuesday

The studio here runs on coffee - Starbucks Vanilla Frappuccinos, to be exact. But today is Shrove Tuesday. That's the Anglican version of Mardi Gras, only with pancakes instead of beads and frontal nudity. And that makes this my last Frappuccino until Easter. I've given up all manner of things for Lent in years past. One year I even gave up internet access, and got an incredible amount of work done. I guess I'll find out if I get less done without coffee. I have this horrible image of Alan coming home one evening and finding me face-planted on the workbench!

But at least on this, my last caffeinated day, I have been busy filling up the kiln. Remember this guy?

Here he is now, with just his final detailing and glossing left to do.



He's unusual in that I have done most of his dappling by hand, using thin washes of color much like I used to do when I cold-painted. That's also how the mapping around his pattern was done, though I'm not sure it's especially visible in this photo. I am anxious to see how he turns out!



And over the weekend I finished up the ceramic production molds for "Moose", Sonya Johnson's medallion for the CT River Classic Live. He's a nice size and has the clean lines that I enjoy painting, so I'm looking forward to glazing a few myself. It will be a week or two before the molds dry, though. His was the last mold I had planned for a while, since it won't be long before I have to start making horses for the Spring Lottery.

Legos in bulk

I've spoken before about using Legos for moldmaking, and the fact that I have been limited to small molds because modern Lego sets don't actually have many of the traditional rectangular pieces. I thought I'd need to haunt the yard sales this summer to see if I could find some of the older sets, but it turns out you can buy Legos online in bulk.

Joan Berkwitz also gave me a wonderful tip that makes clean-up a lot easier. If you coat the inside of the Lego mold with a little vaseline, it will seal the brick lines so the rubber does not seep into the grooves. If the rubber really gets in between the bricks, they can be really difficult to pry apart without damaging the bricks, so I really recommend it!