I'm a stay at home mom. It was my choice not to return to the workforce after my kids were born and it's not a decision I've regretted. However, I do miss bringing home a paycheck. My little tack business has gone a long way to fill that void, and as such, I tend to take it very seriously. I try to work on orders every day, especially during the hours when my kids are in school. However, sometimes things come up and I get a better offer. Happily for me, today was one of those days.

Rather than stay home and work on that marathon harness (sorry, Lisa!), I packed up some tools and horses and headed to my friend Regan's house. She had a rare day off work and had invited me to come over and for a "play in the clay" day. She has been working on an original clay sculpture for almost a year. It's nearing completion but progress has stalled, due to lack of time and general exhaustion.

One of the things Regan hadn't tackled yet was the horse's feet. From the fetlocks down, this sculpture was just big, puddles of clay. Now, I like hooves. They seem to be one of the few horse parts that I just "get". Regan told me I could make play with the sculpture to my heart's content, so I decided to give her ankles and hooves. You're looking at the results! Obviously these are nowhere near done, but they are so much
more done then they were when I started. I wish I had snapped a "before" picture to record the difference. I've done a fair amount of customizing, but this was the first time I've ever worked on a clay sculpture and it was so much fun. I think I need one of my own!

This is the horse I brought with me to work on.

It's a Veiled resin by Linda York that I bought as a project horse a while back. Someone had painted her and
then cut off her head and set it back on at a different angle. The customizing hadn't been done very neatly, so I'd re-decapitated her reattached the head. Unfortunately, I didn't do a very good job of it. She looked better because I did it neatly, but the head/neck connection was still not right. It seemed pretty obvious she was going to have to lose her head again, but I wasn't ready to face that at the time. I hid her on far end of the project shelf and didn't touch her again until today. I showed Regan what I was up to and she helped by digging up some reference pictures of S
addlebreds. I marked the area that needed to be removed and cut her head off for the third time (poor Veiled!).

Here she is with the head disconnected but held in place to check to check alignment.

And this is what she looks like now. I think it's an improvement. If I decide differently tomorrow, I guess I can always get the hacksaw out again...

One last fun picture of some of Regan's other projects along with my headless
Saddlebred. I really do enjoy working with other hobbyists. I always learn something and it's so helpful to have another set of eyes to keep me from making the same mistakes over and over.