Katie

Katie has spent alot of time crafting this summer. She made these cute guinea-pigs from clay and painted them in various natural colours. Having advertised them on some of the forums she belongs to, she's even been able to sell a few.



Katie's also been busy making stables, an outdoor arena and staff/tack room for some of her models. Having made loads of these kinds of things since her love of model horses took off, it's brilliant to see how each has progressed in it's neatness and likeness to the real thing. Model horse riders too are other things she's been making.




Katie's still spending the mornings with AJ, mainly riding but also helping with the mucking out and general horsecare. She's been practising hard for her first dressage test, which happened today, at the riding stables, on one of their horses, Polly. It's the first test of four, which ends May next year, and you accumulate points to try and win a prize. Her instructor at the stables, and the lady who owns AJ, both thought she was good enough for the test, which, she felt, went really well today, but she was so disappointed to see she got pretty low marks (99 points, 49.5%) for her efforts - coming 6th out of 8. I can't help feeling a little upset for her, although when you look at the points the highest mark in her class was 108 with 2nd place getting 103, so there wasn't much in it. I can only assume the examiner was having an off day as seeing last year's test results no-one got lower than 118! What really got to me was the fact that one of the marks had been lowered by 1 double point. If this hadn't happened she would have come 4th.


Anyway, moving on ....

Mega clean out of the rats has occured with fresh new toys for them to play with. These include a new hammock made from the leg of an old pair of jeans, and a rice filled beanbag which can be put either in the fridge to cool down or in the microwave to warm up! This website has lots of toy ideas. We thought we'd lost Meg after the big clean out, but later found her snuggled inside a bag in Katie's wardrobe - bless!

Other crafts - Katie's been following a tutorial to make a felt horse. Her first attempt is pictured and she's sewing her second attempt a little neater - more pics to follow.

I think this little fella has been nibbling too many pony nuts!

Finally, cooking has also featured alot this summer - Katie's been mad on peppermint creams and enjoys making them in rather garish colours. Here's some turquoise blue ones!


And finally, finally. We were lucky enough to watch this fabulous dressage on TV the other afternoon. Taken from the Alltech FEI European Jumping & Dressage Championships, Windsor just last week.