Sunday Progress!

Thank goodness for sundays! From Wednesday through Saturday of Last week, I had a horrible migraine. I guess it's just hormones doing the wacky and there isn't a lot I can do about it except to take my migraine meds and endure.

Mercifully, Sunday the headache gods gave me a reprieve and I was able to work in the studio almost all day! I got two more knots finished on my romel reins! I'm SO HAPPY! Only 6 more to go! hA! I also got more knots on more halters finished up and now there is just some leather work to do on them.

I hope that they will be as well received as the last two halters were. I've been pleasantly overwhelmed at the response to the halters I've had on ebay and it is definiately encouraging me to make some more.

The great thing about the halters is that it directly affects my ability to make the knots on the romel reins. If I successfully make larger knots on the halters, then my brain is "tuned" to making the smaller ones on the romel reins. I seal the knots on the halters and then allow them to dry, in the meantime I work on the romel reins. Then I go back and forth while one knot is drying, I do more.

My Silver working courage has come back to me thankfully (I was feeling quite timid about that for a while)for bit for the bridle for the mother hubbard II set. I also started forming, mentally, what the bridle will look like. I'm hoping that I'll have time to do a fully braided bridle. I haven't done one since 2002 but this new one will be much better than the ones I made back then. My braiding skills are finer now and I have more courage to try more interwoven knots.

I've been re-studying (I say "restudying" because I forget things so easily now) Louis Ortega's work as well as Ray Huffman's work... and of course Susan B.Y.'s braid work which inspires me to make the fully braided bridle for the Mother hubbard set.

I hope that sometime soon someone does a coffee table style book of "cowboy" braidwork in tribute to all of the great braided tackmakers. I don't think I could ever get tired of looking at that stuff..