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!