"My Little Dalahast"

Yup, finished her.

I was originally going to name her "Tack sa mycket" (Swedish for "many thanks," and that really is about the extent of the Swedish I know, despite having spend goodly parts of many childhood summers in a part of the country that was heavily Swedish and Finnish- influenced.) And have her go by "Tacksy" for short.

But then when I finished her face and looked at her, I realized her name is really Ulla.



It's funny how that happens, but I've read how other people who make toys sometimes find that the right name "comes" to them - and is different from what they were planning.

Rosmaling or Kurbit painting notwithstanding, I did go with the flag themed cutiemark:



The hair I just did as a series of gathered loops; I didn't feel like doing the painstaking stitch-by-stitch hair that I sometimes do on these ponies. It also made it easier to work in the green highlights here and there.

She doesn't look as much like a dalahast as I anticipated, but then again she's not wearing a bridle or saddle and many of the painted dalahast are. (Once in a while you see the Ponies sporting a saddle, usually as a decorative garment...perhaps it functions a bit like a man's tie does in our world?...but I can't really say they use bridles much. I suppose bridles could be seen as a symbol of some kind of oppression (there is an alternate-history fan idea out there, that the world of Equestria is not unlike the Planet of the Apes, where the horses rose up out of human "oppression" and took over and evolved sentience....I will admit I do not particularly like that idea; I prefer to think of the world of the Ponies as being some kind of separate world. Perhaps not another planet so much as a place like Narnia or something, where it's clearly apart from this world but how the two might connect up is kind of hazy)

Special talent? I'm not sure. I'm trying to decide if it's jam-making (especially lingonberry) or if it's writing catchy dancepop music.



***

And tomorrow I get a (big) Grand Day Out, with yarn shopping and book shopping and hanging out with a friend who is not a "local" friend (and therefore, talk will not wind up turning to work or volunteer-work; all of my local friends and I are either colleagues of a sort, or we are part of the same volunteer group). And lunch. And hanging out. Really, the hanging out and getting to talk to someone is what I'm looking forward to the most.

I do still need to make a list of yarns to look for. But I've cleared out the passenger seat of my car (usually I drive to the lunch place as I better know where it is). And I cashed my most recent textbook-evaluation check, and withdrew some money I had squirreled away from an earlier one, so I have money to spend.

I had forgotten how good an entire day off is, especially with no thoughts of "I have to do this thing to be ready for tomorrow." Pretty much all my other days are like that, even weekend days.

So far today I've done some sewing on a quilt top, mowed and edged the lawn, watched three episodes of My Little Pony (all repeats on the Hub, but two of the three were ones I had not seen many times before), and quilted on my quilt.

I am very nearly done with the quilt in the frame. I started it ten years ago (!) this break. I remember that because I remember taking my free time during this break in 2002 to baste it together and put it in the frame. I'm hoping the next quilt I put in takes me less time. (But I admit, I like the sort of symbolic nature of finishing this one at the same point in the year, if ten years later, that I started it.)