New brooches

My 2012 plan to list new items at Ellie's Treasures far more frequently took a nose dive within the first few days of January!  As is usual in this household, life came first and sewing came second.  By the evening, my usual sewing time, I was completely exhausted to lift a needle, let alone plan something new, cut it out, and sew it all together with care.  I have, however, managed to make and list a new owl brooch which I think is rather lovely:



and am now in the process of making a new Patchy Pockets wallet. 

Having said all that, I didn't put my sewing kit away entirely.  We had a bit of fun (easy to say now) with Jay a couple of weeks ago in that we decided to load him in the trailer and bring him home for a nice hack up to the marsh.   We have done this before, no problems, and on this occasion he loaded well to come out to our home, but refused to load to go back to his own home after his hack.  After 2 1/2 hours of very stressful "encouraging", we had to keep Jay in our garden over night!  Typically, it was the night the wind decided to blow, pretty strong actually, which couldn't have been pleasant for the poor chap.  He survived and seemed to be quite happy roaming the nooks and crannies of our garden, sticking his nose over the fence and the gate to get a good view of the surrounding area (you should see the state of the lawn!).  We were at a loss as to what to do to get him into the trailer.  We'd called his previous owners for help and they offered to come over to assist us, weather permitting.  The wind in the morning was even worse, with hail storms too at times.  Luckily, around midday, it died down completely, and they came over complete with feed bowls, haylage and lunge lines!  It took us (well them mainly) an hour (which was their available time slot) to load him and get back safely to the yard.  I couldn't have done it without them and was extrememly grateful for their persistance, calmness and for just being there.  It was also pretty amazing that the weather stayed relatively calm for that hour, picking up again once we were back at the yard.  Someone must have been watching over us! 



We've started trailer training him now, as we'd like to move to a new livery yard very soon.  So far we've had no luck.  It is very tiring and frustrating when a horse that once loaded decides enough is enough.

As a thank you I sent the ladies some special chocolate biccies to have with their tea and coffee and I made these little brooches for the yard owner's two children as they were brilliant, sitting and waiting for an hour in the car.


Quite like the little horses with the jumps - may make something similar to Ellie's Treasures.