Tilting at rings!
Dec. 19th, 2021 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickAs you might reasonably expect, I went out over the weekend and got on a horse and Tried To Stab Rings With a lance the butt end of my mostly-symbolic pony beating stick because I have the dumbs and forgot my pretend lance two days in a row. How'd that go? Nice. Hysterically fun in that I totally suck at it.
On Saturday, I took Bird out to play tilting at rings. Bird is on board with the program but also my depth perception (Now Fucked By Bifocals!) sucks dog shit, so... yeah. I failed at doing this AT THE WALK on a calm and patient horse who is very steady and polite and steerable with one hand. I didn't totally fail, but out of 6 rings, the best I ever did was 5. Practice is a thing.
I was going to try again on Sunday but that didn't happen as planned. I got Genie out of the field and she struggled with her emotions during warm-up so that we never got to the "tilting at rings" portion of the program. *sigh* Instead, we did remedial walking up and down the hill. The thing is that you have to ride the horse you have, not the horse you wish you were riding or the horse you had planned to ride. If the horse you have is struggling with "be sane and relaxed walking up and down the hill" then you best set aside your plans and get the horse right with walking up and down the hill. So I did that. And she DID get right with walking up and down the hill, head down, nice pushing walk, loose rein. Very workmanlike, very calm, MUCH improvement. It took three trips up and down the hill and some one-rein stops... this WITH two buddy horses who are calm and pleasant... but she did get there. Her inconsistency suggests she needs more exposure. We're working on it.
When we got back to the house, I baked xmas cookies with Lala. At this point, all my xmas baking (for gifts) is done, with one batch of MSC and one batch of gingersnaps still outstanding to be done on xmas eve with friend Lala. Cookies with a buddy is WAY better than cookies alone. I hate, hate, hate the "putting cookies in the oven, timing them, and moving them from cookie sheets to cooling racks" part of cookies. I am OK with measure & mix up dough, roll and cut out, put them onto cookie sheets but after that I am fucking done with them. My friend Lala does not feel that the "put in oven, time, remove from oven, put onto cooling racks" part is the hard or annoying part. She's good at that part. So we tag-team the cookies.
I do generally complete the easy cookies (shortbread and peanut brittle)
*** You might at this juncture feel the need to point out that peanut brittle is not, technically, a cookie. I will concede the point but also feel moved to note that people who gleefully dwell on the "not really a cookie" nature of peanut brittle are very unlikely to receive peanut brittle in their xmas cookie gift assortment. ***
Anyway, I can do the easy cookies at home by myself because there's not a lot of faffing about with them, but the proper cookies are pretty fafforific and I definitely do better on them if I have a buddy.
In other weekend progress, I finished spinning and plying the remainder of the yarn needed for the Brown Sheep Sweater's final sleeve!! It is hanging to dry (and tbh probably actually dry by now) on the clothesline that spans the living room. I still need to wind it into a ball and do the knitting, but that should go fairly quickly now that I have the effing yarn. :) Might even get this done before the new year.
On Saturday, I took Bird out to play tilting at rings. Bird is on board with the program but also my depth perception (Now Fucked By Bifocals!) sucks dog shit, so... yeah. I failed at doing this AT THE WALK on a calm and patient horse who is very steady and polite and steerable with one hand. I didn't totally fail, but out of 6 rings, the best I ever did was 5. Practice is a thing.
I was going to try again on Sunday but that didn't happen as planned. I got Genie out of the field and she struggled with her emotions during warm-up so that we never got to the "tilting at rings" portion of the program. *sigh* Instead, we did remedial walking up and down the hill. The thing is that you have to ride the horse you have, not the horse you wish you were riding or the horse you had planned to ride. If the horse you have is struggling with "be sane and relaxed walking up and down the hill" then you best set aside your plans and get the horse right with walking up and down the hill. So I did that. And she DID get right with walking up and down the hill, head down, nice pushing walk, loose rein. Very workmanlike, very calm, MUCH improvement. It took three trips up and down the hill and some one-rein stops... this WITH two buddy horses who are calm and pleasant... but she did get there. Her inconsistency suggests she needs more exposure. We're working on it.
When we got back to the house, I baked xmas cookies with Lala. At this point, all my xmas baking (for gifts) is done, with one batch of MSC and one batch of gingersnaps still outstanding to be done on xmas eve with friend Lala. Cookies with a buddy is WAY better than cookies alone. I hate, hate, hate the "putting cookies in the oven, timing them, and moving them from cookie sheets to cooling racks" part of cookies. I am OK with measure & mix up dough, roll and cut out, put them onto cookie sheets but after that I am fucking done with them. My friend Lala does not feel that the "put in oven, time, remove from oven, put onto cooling racks" part is the hard or annoying part. She's good at that part. So we tag-team the cookies.
I do generally complete the easy cookies (shortbread and peanut brittle)
*** You might at this juncture feel the need to point out that peanut brittle is not, technically, a cookie. I will concede the point but also feel moved to note that people who gleefully dwell on the "not really a cookie" nature of peanut brittle are very unlikely to receive peanut brittle in their xmas cookie gift assortment. ***
Anyway, I can do the easy cookies at home by myself because there's not a lot of faffing about with them, but the proper cookies are pretty fafforific and I definitely do better on them if I have a buddy.
In other weekend progress, I finished spinning and plying the remainder of the yarn needed for the Brown Sheep Sweater's final sleeve!! It is hanging to dry (and tbh probably actually dry by now) on the clothesline that spans the living room. I still need to wind it into a ball and do the knitting, but that should go fairly quickly now that I have the effing yarn. :) Might even get this done before the new year.
