Today's the earliest calculated day for the foal to arrive. Vordís' udder's already rather big and she starts to get wobbly and soft. But well, no foal in the morning and I'm pretty sure she's gonna give birth during one of the following nights like she has done the last 3 times, always surprising us with her foal in the morning. Well, we'll see.
Instead of foalpics I took some flowerpics in my garden. My garden auricula have started flowering a few days ago and are sporting lots of different shades. And the daffodils are braving the wind in different shapes and colours. Looking forward to the tulips and roses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow, already 3 years since Snerpa was born during a rather cold Maynight. She definitely has grown a lot since then and we are looking forward to take her in for her basic training in the autumn. Until then she'll enjoy life with her friends and family and if I'm not mistaken she'll be the guard of Vordís' soon to be born foal.

 

Not being able to show at Akureyri we arranged a small show for the residents of our area. The final rehearsal went very well and the kids were rather tense about how everything would go. But first we offered younger and older kids to come on horseback and have fun.
Finally it was time for the big performance! First we did a few training jumps before starting the program. The horses weren't used to so many spectators so they refused to jump in their direction at first. At last Sara and Vin took the first jump and then the others followed. It was great to see how much Sara's selfconfidence grew through training the program. 
I'm very proud of these young riders and looking forward to work together with them in the future. 
We got a visitor from the local press and you can see a few pics here.
Now it's the question who will be first the release their offspring: Snilld or Vordís. There are already the first lambs at Hólmavað and it can't be long til Snilld is due. We are not sure when Vordís was covered exactly, but after calculating a lot and having a look at her former pregnancies, we are counting on getting the foal in the next days. At least we hope she'll get it before we go south at the 18th. Well, we'll see...

 

I haven't been writing a lot here the last days as I was really busy training 6 young riders for the show Æskan og hesturinn at Akureyri. We wanted to take part this year as it was close by and we could go there for just 1 day without needing a stable for the horses. 
The kids were great, we studied a jumping quadrille, which wasn't that easy as neither the riders nor the horses were really used to jump over obstacles. But Ásdís Helga had already done a very good job teaching them the basics, so I could just go for the fun part. In fact I wasn't that sure they'd be ready for the show, but on Saturday eveything went very well. Unfortunately the weather today was far too stormy to go with the horse trailer. So we decided to leave the horses at home, go and watch the show, go to the swimming pool and have pizza afterwards. Now we have to think about how and when we can show what we have trained.

Well, infact we weren't putting up a fence but taking one down. To be precise the old fence the riding club had at the Bakki area. We hadn't used the fence in quite a few years now and people in town were complaining about it. So today we went there on cars and with a telescopic handler to remove the wire and drag all the posts out of the ground. After about 2 hours we were finished and stored all the stuff, which we will use to fence in our new riding track.

 

 

Perfect weather and a perfect day for a beachride. Our riding club invited its members to meet in the afternoon and take a nice ride on the beach before meeting in the riding hall and having some grilled hot dogs.
I grabbed my camera to catch the moment and upon arriving saw that I wasn't the only photographer on the beach. Well, think we both got nice shots.

 

 

 

 

 

Ever since I took part in Gígja Einarsdóttir's photography clinics, where she told us how much she likes to photograph grey horses and that there's something special about them, I try to take pics of them when I have a chance to.
Today Siffi's mares showed a bit off and I had my camera with me, so here are the results.

 

 

 

 

 

Our riding club was so lucky to get Ásdís Helga, who is one of the pioneers of TREC in Iceland, to teach our kids. There was already a clinic earlier this year, but this weekend was part 2 and they were supposed to learn how to jump obstacles. It was so much fun watching all of them and how concentrated they were. 
Luckily Ásdís Helga was ready to teach grown ups, too, and so we got finally the chance to have some lessons. We enjoyed it a lot and are looking forward to getting her back soon.
Afterwards we took a drive to Þeistareykir and took a walk to the geothermal site there. Still a lot of snow up there!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remember the cardigans I was knitting? I've been working on both of them and the darker one with the flowerpattern was ready to try on. And then the big bummer... It didn't fit, just looked like a balloon on top. You probably can imagine how disappointed I was. But if I wanted to use the cardigan, I'd have to do something and in the end there was just one thing to do: unravel the upper part and all the pattern, start over again. With mixed feelings I started to unravel but before getting to the pattern got the idea to just take 1 row beneath it and keep the pattern for something else later. 
Now I have to think everything over, calculate and probably change the pattern, maybe design my own.

 

 

 

 

 

I think nearly everybody learns the basics in knitting at school, but not all of us use that knowledge. My mum has always been very good at knitting, doing some miracles with those needles. So in fact I didn't have to knit. But some time ago, I thought it would be nice to refresh the knowledge and started to knit a few mittens. As that wasn't too diffucult, I tried socks and then finally started the cardigan I had promised to Ingólfur quite some time ago. My mum helped me a lot when she was here for a visit, as I was rather lazy knitting all those rounds in the same colour. Well, we managed to finish it together and a nice lady at work sew the zipper into it for me. 
In the meantime I had finished a tryout cardigan for me and was thinking about doing a nice one after my own ideas. I got the pattern I wanted, changed a bit and then I was ready to go. Took me quite some time to get the stuff done the way I wanted to. Well, I made it and today it was time to try on my own to cut them open and fit the zipper/buttons.
Sewing and cutting open went well, now I have to crotchet the front and sew the buttons. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We all know that kids love to be around animals and most kids like to take a ride on horseback. So we offered Ingólfur's nices, nephews and their parents to come around, watch him and Hjördís a bit on back and then try themselves. Funny to watch them and especially those who already had decided not to try and then suddenly had a change of mind and just loved what they were doing. Some even went bareback. It's so important to introduce both horses and riders in a secure environment, give them a chance to get to know each other before even going on back.
Last but not least Hjördís asked to try out Magnús and they did very well together. Such a precious and polite horse.
Of course everybody had to have a look at Góa, the little foal, closeby. She's not shy at all, but that's maybe not the best thing later. But we'll see about that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We wish you happy Easter and hope you'll have a sunny and beautiful, relaxing day with your friends and family.
Next step is going for an Easteregg hunt (I already hid some).
By the way: these beauties (Iris reticulata - netted iris) are flowering right now in my garden, earlier than the years before, if I remember right.

 

 

I admit, I've been very lazy updating the homepage and keeping our blogg alive.
But I didn't realize, how lazy I was infact until checking out, when I blogged last time. That was in early December and I was a bit shocked, that I haven't done anything here since then... Mea culpa!
I'll try to get things up to date as soon as possible, working my way from December to March, putting in posts and pics from the last nearly 4 months.
Hope you keep having a look in here.
I attach a pic from our beachride a few weeks ago.

 

 

Prímus left us in the beginning of March and went back to his breeder Halldór who'll try to have him as a tourhorse in his riding tours. Hope that'll go well and am pretty sure that I'm gonna miss him a bit.
As the foal season at our place will start at about the middle of May we decided to move the pregnant mares and the youngsters down to the huge meadow at the seaside. It was 5 horses we had to move. First we caught Kóngur and Rögnir and I walked them to the other place, then Ingólfur walked Þrá and Snerpa and last but not least Vordís, the queen, was transferred, too. To make sure they have a great start there, we fed a new roundbale of hay and rolled it out a bit. So after running wild the horses were rather sweaty and the fresh hay the perfect place to roll over...
Now our herd is reunited and we have to wait and see what is hidden in the big bellies of Vordís, Þrá, List and Fjördís. We of course would love to get marefoals, but Ingólfur already told me that I'm gonna get 2 red stallions... We'll see about that, there are quite a lot of colours I could get.
Vordís was bred again to Snillingur frá Íbishóli (buckskin), which means I could get palomino, buckskin, smoky black, dunalino, dunskin, smoky grullo, red dun, bay dun, blue dun, chestnut, bay and last but not least black.
List was bred to Bósi frá Húsavík (silverdapple), which could result in these colours:  silver dapple, silver dapple bay, silver blue dun, silver bay dun, red dun, bay dun, blue dun, chestnut, bay and black. And this time I hope for at least a star as both parents have a star and a snip.
Þrá and Bósi could get silver dapple, black or chestnut and Fjördís and Óskasteinn red dun, bay dun, blue dun, chestnut, bay and black and 50% chance of a spotted foal if she isn't homozygotus for spotted. So interesting times waiting for us!

 

 

 

 

I haven't spent many evenings outside to take northernlights pics during wintertime and it was getting brighter and brighter every day so it was more or less my last chance to get some nice shots this season. The forecast looked pretty good and we already saw some lights when driving back from the stable. So after getting everything ready I started my drive up to Höskuldsvatn. There were magnificent lights on the way up so I stopped at a good place and got some very nice pics before I continued my drive. 
When arriving I had to acknowledge that the most powerful lights were over, but I was patient and got nice pics there, too. At least I got a lot of pics to put together into a short timelaps movie, which I plan to put together when I have time.