Custom Portable Drying Rack: Another SB Blog Non-Crafty DIY

I dunno about the rest of y'all, but I read these awesome crafty write ups and am like damn ladies. You so fine. I'm just over here being average.

you too can do a craft

Because they're like Step One: get some shit (ok yes tracking so far i can do stores) and then it's like Step Two: use this other shit you have sitting around (hard pass i don't have those things and NOPE not going back to the store) and I sometimes keep nodding along like oh yeah that makes so much sense even I could do that.

Funny joke no. I could not.

I am the best at ordering things on the internet. Like pizza. If that was a craft, I would be the craft queen.

But it is not.

now all i can think about is pizza

So if you're more like me than you normally admit out loud and/or if you super need a drying rack for your shit, you're in the right place. I promise you simple step-by-step instructions and BEST PART you don't even need any supplies. Best. Craft. Ever.

1) Get a beverage. Dehydration is a real thing and so is pacing yourself and not trying too hard. You can choose an appropriate beverage for your lifestyle choices and situation. I went with the biggest iced coffee I could find to get me jazzed up for crafts.

pro tip: if you bring your corgi to the coffee drive thru, the annoying barista will talk to him instead of you
#winning

2) It kind of goes without saying that you need wet stuff to put on your drying rack and that if you're building it outside, the weather should be amenable to drying. On my particular test day it was 90f+ with no humidity and I had just scrubbed all the boots I keep in my tack trunk but didn't want to be THAT BOARDER who clogs up the wash rack with their shit.

pictured: not the rack you will be building

3) Get some twine. Now this is where it gets tricky. I'm going to throw in some safety warnings here:

3a) Do not take twine off of bales still in the hay stack, particularly not ones which might create a booby trap for you BO. That is dangerous and mean. 

3b) If taking twine out of the garbage, make sure to check for various critters before just jamming your hand into a dark hole you can't see. I take no responsibility for said hand getting bitten by snakes or rats or cats or whatever varmints are around your place. 

pictured: not a varmint

My particular twine came from the trash because my barn is fab about not leaving loose twine on bales.

3c) There are different colors of twine. You can use any color.

3d) If your barn does not have twine, you should probably give up now. Otherwise you have to buy string and that's a downer.

4) Find an out of the way place that is reasonably close to your stall where no one has an excuse to tamper with your shit that you are ok with having water drip all over. This step might be harder in a super fancy barn that's like "indoors" when you're inside it. My barn aisle is dirt so I can drip away.

pictured: drunk horse in barn aisle

5) Tie the twine to a fixed point. If you have scissors, you can hard tie it. If you do not have access to blades, do a quick release.

6) Tie the other end of the twine to a different fixed point. You end result should look like a loop of twine hanging between two fixed points.

yeah that's impossible to see. it's a feature.

7) Hang wet shit on drying rack.

8) PARTAY GIRLFRIEND YOU DID IT. Pat yourself on the back and enjoy your beverage.

9) I mentioned this rack is fully custom and portable. If you want to level up, you can braid several pieces of twine together in your colors or hang multiple loops. If you need to move it, you can just take it wherever. If your BO complains, you can even wear it like a necklace and just prance around with your wet boots dripping on you as kind of a "statement piece".

WHOA FASHION ADVICE.

You didn't see that coming.

And there you go. I know there's kind of a lot of steps but I wanted to cover my bases and over-prepare you guys rather than let you get to the middle of the project and realize that you needed more information to proceed. And hey! If you successfully complete this project, take a picture and send it to me!

Or just have a sip of your beverage and don't. 

Pimp My Saddle Pad: An SB Blog Non-Crafty How-To

If you have a boring saddle pad that just needs a little kick to become awesome but you have the craft skills and finesse of a drunken elephant even while sober, then we are on the same page. Emma and Olivia and Amanda and Monica and co are always writing these how tos for mind-blowingly complex projects that involve 1) artistic ability 2) having random arting supplies on hand so the damn thing doesn't cost an arm and a leg and 3) an awful lot of time/motivation.

needs spice!

Let me assure you. This project requires none of those things. Which is good because the list of craft supplies I own is basically scissors and super glue. And I don't know where the glue is.

Without further ado, here is a step-by-step process to pimp your saddle pad.

1) Get some wine.

I forgot to photograph this step. Hopefully you already have the wine. If not, perhaps instead of a craft how-to, you need to reevaluate most of your life choices.

2) Have some awesome friends give you some super cool iron-on patches. This saves on $ big time. I didn't have to pick anything or buy anything. It's great. No choices. No arting.

EB Racing pride!! 

3) Ask husband (/roomie/cat/whoever you live with who knows these things) if you have an iron. Ideally, they will then locate it for you to shut you up because no one wants to dig through this mess, even especially with said wine.

nope

4) Plug in iron. This step is actually way harder than it sounds. I mean, sure you know how to use an electrical outlet (that's the place where you charge your phone), but some irons have all kinds of complicated shit on them. Hint: the shit is to distract you. You don't need to put water in anything. Probably a light should turn on.

4b) It's critically important at this stage that whomever helped you find the iron and any associated pets either leave the room or faithfully and reliably promise to be well behaved. If the iron is working, things are about to get dangerous.

judgmental corgi probably needs a patch

5) Decide where the patches will go on your saddle pad. It's also helpful to already have the pad washed. If it's not, you can kinda just dab up the loose hairs on it with duct tape. No judgement here.

duct tape: now also a craft supply!

hint: do not iron patch to the board while hubs is watching.

6) Determine if the iron is hot. Careful, this is another hard step. If the iron is hot and you touch it, you might get a painful burn. I used a meat thermometer and am proudly burn-free. Let me know if you think of a better solution.

#burnfreebitches

6b) This step may take several tries if you're impatient like me. Just try to avoid the ER trip from burning yourself. That seems like a non-ideal (if predictable) outcome of a craft project.

7a) Once iron is hot, set it on top of the patch positioned where you want it on the saddle pad and let it make the sticky part stick. This step takes a while. Also I like to wiggle the iron around a little just so I don't accidentally make burn marks on the pad.

7b)It's a pretty bad idea I think to touch the patch once the definitely hot iron has been sitting on it for a while, so if you still have the meat thermometer out, you might want to poke the patch with it a few times  to see if it's stuck down.

7c)If the pad starts smoking, throw your wine on it to extinguish any flames and then pour another glass to celebrate your now multi-colored pad.

look ma no hands!

When it seems pretty stuck down, maybe go around the edges with the tip once or twice just to be sure.

8) That's it. You're done. Stay fabulous!

love it.

8b) Make sure you turn the iron off. Don't try to wrap the cord up around your iron until it's fully cooled unless you are trying to intentionally destroy the iron in a wine-fueled rage. You can either repeatedly test it with the meat thermometer or just leave it til tomorrow and hope husband/roomie/pets/social services think that it should be put away and handle that part for you.

too busy admiring handiwork

 And hey! If you completed this DIY without a trip to the ER or unplanned arrival by the fire department, then... you actually might have more craft skills than me. Happy crafting!

Never Apologize: Phone Photography for the Horse Blogger

took this. on my phone. 

I'm kind of known for going on and on about how it's ok to be an amateur and we shouldn't expect to be professional riders when we just plain aren't.

But that doesn't just apply to riding.

I always think it's kind of funny when people post pictures of their horses and then say "It's just a crappy phone photo".

Hello.

best ears. yes edited.

1) It's 2015. My crappy phone photos are FREAKING AMAZING compared to what a picture from a "real" camera would have been even ten years ago.

2) No one (not even me or Wendy) has a professional photographer follow them around and shoot their every move. Most of our pictures (well, mine) are going to be screen shots from a video or ears pics on my phone or headshots of my horse standing still.

3) You can actually take pretty damn good phone pictures if you put a little work into it.

I mean. I'm not an expert. Or an artist. Or a photographer. I'm not educated about photography and the truth is, aside from Lauren's fantastic series on taking horse pictures, I'm not likely to ever take a class.

But in 2015, the technology is available, accessible, and cheap.

thank you burst mode

90% of the photos on my blog are shot on my phone (iphone 5s). 85% of them are then run through a photo editor (also on my phone) in a sequence that takes under a minute. Here are some (REALLY REALLY) basic guidelines:

1) timing is your friend. You know that awkward moment in the trot where it looks like the horse only has two legs? No one wants to see that. Most phones have a "burst mode" option. On my phone, you literally hold down the camera button and get like 47 photos. Choose the one that doesn't suck. Delete the rest. Magic.

from this

OR. (this is best if someone is taking pictures of you and their timing maybe isn't fantastic or the lighting is less than ideal.) Have them take a video. Pause. Screenshot. Voila! Exactly the moment you wanted.

2) Cropping is your friend. You know how to make a shitty off center picture into reasonably decent blog fodder? CROP THAT BITCH.

to this

Seriously. You don't even need an app for that. Center the horse (more or less) in the frame. Zoom in as much as possible without pixelating the image.

BAM.

Your photo is 75% better already. It took you less than 10 seconds.

emphasis by Redheadlins

Noted: I generally leave a little more space in front of the horse than behind if the horse is going forward. I leave more sky if the sky is pretty or more grass if the footing is nice. If both sky and footing are unremarkable, there's no reason for them to be in the picture. Just highlight what you want to emphasize.

Also noted: instagram likes square pictures. Blogger likes rectangles. On my more motivated days, I make different edits for different mediums. That is not every day.

what my phone looks like before edits

3) Apps are nice. I started with "afterlight" (go to the app store. It's either free or 99 cents). It's a fantastic basic editing program. There are four settings I use all the time--contrast (more or less), saturation (BRIGHT COLORS Y'ALL), brightness (summer in Idaho is a bitch), and... that other one.

There are plenty of other options, but these are just simple, basic things that can drastically improve the visual impact of your photos and take almost no time.

If you're all fancy and cool, you can get pricier apps. I just upgraded to "phototoaster" ($2.99 in the app store) and it has all kinds of bells and whistles and widgets. Part of me knows I'm not technical enough to capitalize on all this, but the other part is determined to make it happen.

kitten <3

If you're on an android platform, I hear rave reviews of Pixlr.

There are roughly a billion photo editing apps out there and you can get REALLY FREAKING FANCY if you want to. I'll admit I got phototoaster after reading this article. While there are some great tips there, that person works a HELL of a lot harder than I do at photo editing. Also they sound like they have a clue about art, which I definitely do not.

yup. phone. 

I mean, if photos aren't your jam, I totally understand. I'll never pretend to have the art chops that Niamh and Lauren do.

But I see no need to apologize for a phone picture. They can be pretty rocking with just a very little amount of work.

Friday Fail: Craft Edition

so pretty

You remember how I said Micaylah is a crafting goddess?

Well maybe not, but she is.

So when we had craft night this week, she randomly decided we (she) should make bridle charms.

They are splendid.

I kind of love this picture

And then I made this ooooooh so pretty bonnet I was pretty stoked about.

I mean, it's sparkly and cool looking and fabric bonnets are coming in. I made the pattern off of a sort of trace of another of my bonnets that fits Courage well.

Not gonna lie, I was super pumped to go put it on C-Rage the next day.

Face cropped for anonymity

Until I actually did it.

Haha.

Um.

So I'm trying a new pattern I created with some serious modifications this time around. Are there any mini mules with low self esteem out there who want the first draft for something?

5 Things that Make January Go By Faster

1) my horse looking dramatic in jump tack

I'm having trouble writing solid content because all I want to do is whine about how much I hate this time of year. Even with the indoor, it's cold and dark and we never see the sun (yay freezing fog ALL THE TIME) and just say no to winter, folks.

So instead, I'm sharing five pictures that make me happy right now.

2) riding around with no reins on said dramatic day

3) the faces he makes when I'm not feeding him

4) Micaylah coming over to make bridle charms

5) screwing around with making fabric bonnets. that sparkle.

 So yeah, not exactly riveting. I'm mean, I'm so crazy go nuts on winter that I literally set up a craft night and went to the fabric store all of my own volition. AND I'm actually crazy excited about my fabric bonnet and enjoying whacking out a prototype and making patterns and figuring out the fit.

ME. I DON'T CRAFT.

Until now. You win again, January.