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Sunday 29 March 2015

Lyre and Labradors

Work on the Anglo-Saxon Lyre is moving along slowly.  First I did half permanent ink pen and half acrylic paint on the two tester bits of wood, one varnished and one unvarnished, so we could varnish over both and see what would happen.  Now you can see why doing testers is a good idea!

The varnish smudged the acrylic paint, which is on the left of the design on both. It was worse on the varnished than unvarnished tester, but on both permanent ink was the better choice.  I began to use to the ink on the Lyre unvarnished, but one stroke of the pen and I could see it was going to bleed much worse than on the tester.  No idea why, more sanding been done perhaps, so I stopped and Andyroo did one layer of varnish before I inked the design.



What do you think? I think it has come out really well!

It's had two more coats of varnish with a light sand between each layer. Here it is hanging up in Andyroo's woodwork shed to dry.  That used to be my horse-feed shed but it soon got re-purposed and filled up when the horses went.  :)


Actually I had a dream last night that I went out and bought a lovely dapple grey Quarter Horse mare (probably because I'm coveting the beauteous Delia  over at Ride a Good Horse) but the minute I did I was like, oh no why did I do that?  Even in my dream I knew I was still not well enough to care for and enjoy a horse again, dammit. I used to dream about horses all the time when I first gave them up.  I rarely ever got to ride in the dreams, only had hassles that went on and on and didn't lead to actually getting on the horse!  The same thing happened to my sister in the years when she didn't have horses.  Weird!

Anyway, the Lyre is very close now to being put together.  We have all the parts.  Next time I post about it, it might be at the playing stage. Fingers crossed!

I got a little bit of video of my two Labbie girls doing two of their favorite tricks this week.  They do others but I think it would be best if someone else videos those.  :)  These two work quite well in the 'first person' style.

This is Tuppy doing her stand up thing:


She's such a lively little sprite, especially for a Lab!

Here's Rosie doing "Kangaroo." I have no idea why the video link looks grey today, it didn't when I uploaded them yesterday, and it may not tomorrow, but it works fine if you click the link. 

 
That Kangaroo trick evolved somehow from me starting out to free shape her with the clicker to walk backwards in front of me.  Such is the fun and games of clicker training!  I could have stuck to her walking backwards if my intent had been serious, but I like to see what happens when they start to put their own spin onto things, and what happened this time was Kangaroo!  

2 comments:

  1. Love the dog videos! So adorable...what would life be if we didn't have dogs? They make everything better. :) Tuppy has such a beautiful face. So, I must be one of those people who was having difficulties commenting because this is the first time in a while that it let me. Yay! I just read through a few of your past posts to catch up a bit. You're in fall now? Just the opposite of us, guess you really are on the opposite side of the world. We just had the year of no winter here. It's been effortless and just lovely...not so on the east coast I'm afraid. They've had the worst winter in years, but our mountain snow pack is lower than ever, going to be a dry summer I'm afraid. Not as bad here as California though - they're just drying up down there. Scary. Loved the short bit of your book! It must feel awesome to be published!! Such an accomplishment, now I might have to go to Amazon and see what happens. So, the design on your Lyre is very cool, but what is it? Sorry to sound dumb, but I am curious. Anyway, duty calls...take care!

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  2. Hi Lorie, Yes my dogs mean the world to me, always have.

    Yes we are in fall but mostly here it feels more like spring might for you: Green grass begins to grow, the trees come out of summer hibernation, and everything gets all fresh and new. :)

    I'm so glad you enjoyed the first little bit of my book! My sister says it is her favorite of all the ones I've written so far, and since she loved the others, that is high praise. I hope you do give it a shot. It's even a little bit horsey. You might like Death by Dog Trial too. It's full of Gundogs. It won't be in print for a little while yet, only Kindle. I'm working on it right now, though. :)

    The design on the Lyre! Oh yes, how silly of me, I should do a post to explain it. I'll do that tomorrow!


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