Several people asked me to post my impressions of the Quick Knot once I’d had a chance to try them out. I haven’t actually shown in them yet, but I did pop a couple braids into Henry’s mane the other day and go for a ride, so I’ve definitely at least got enough feedback about them to hopefully be helpful to those of you who were curious.

First: keep in mind that these ship from the Netherlands (yeah, even when you order from the USA site) so order them at least a couple weeks ahead of when you need them. Mine took about a week and a half to arrive, which isn’t bad from Europe at all, but if you’re expecting 3-4 day US-based shipping, you’ll be kept waiting.

I’ve been eyeballing these things since they first hit the market last year, but the price has always kept me a bit hesitant. At $40 for a pack of 100, they aren’t that cheap when it comes to braiding implements. And while they say you can get at least two uses out of each piece, it still made me wince a bit. I mean, $5 for a pack of rubberbands or $15 for a spool of nice waxed thread are prices that I’m more accustomed to for braiding products. At my core, I am cheap.

But I friggin hate sewing in braids, and I also friggin hate rubberbands for about a thousand reasons, so finally I just said screw it, had a “Treat Yo’self” moment, and bought the overpriced paper clips. Well, ok, first I did try following a suggestion I saw online that said to do the same thing with bobby pins going up through the braid and then an “arm” bent to each side, but a) it didn’t blend with the mane very well, the bobby pins were pretty clearly visible even from 10′ away b) it didn’t seem very secure. So after that I said fine, admitted defeat, and ordered a package of Quick Knot.

I got a good giggle out of the fact that the customs form listed them as “paper clips”, but really that’s kinda what they are. They’re very simple little things, basically just a little metal T that you stab down through the braid and then bend the end up to lock everything in place. I wish I’d come up with this, the profit margin has to be great.

My main concerns were that a) the metal piece would look like a big staple from the backside, b) they wouldn’t stay in. So the day after they hit my mailbox I took them out to the barn and popped a couple braids in Henry’s mane at 5:50am before our ride. He eyeballed me hard. But the first thought I had was “wow, that was fast!”.

So after taking the obligatory photo of the first braid, I turned on my phone timer and did the second one. Despite some fumbling with the rubberband that secured the braid itself (#manhandsproblems), it still only took 41 seconds start to finish. Rolling up the braid and securing it was ridiculously easy. The Quick Knots were stiffer and harder to bend than I had anticipated, but I quickly got the hang of how I needed to manipulate it to secure the braid. They blended pretty darn seamlessly into Henry’s mane though, making them almost invisible.

BUT WOULD THEY STAY? After a 45 minute w/t/c conditioning ride, those buggers didn’t even move. And taking them out? 5 seconds, including pulling out the band securing the braid. I hesitate to say that I’m sold until I actually use them at a show, but my interest is hella piqued.

My only real complaint so far, aside from grumbling about the price, is that I absolutely hate the container they come in. I wish they came in a nice, thick, sturdy zippered bag like some of the bands do. If you tried to use these at a show, out of that cumbersome box, they’d be all over the stall floor in 2 minutes flat. And that thought makes me more than a little nervous, being a piece of metal. I’ve already transferred mine into a baggie.

In trying to justify the price to myself, I did a little math (oh dear god). I bought the package of 100, and let’s just say that I put in an average of 15 braids (I usually have 10-12 on Henry, but erring toward the side of caution). That’s 6+ uses if I only use each one once. If I use each one twice (I’ll probably try for 3 times but let’s account for some losses and/or failures here), that’s 13 uses. Aka 13 times being braided, which for me is 13 shows. That’s about 2 years, at the rate I’m going. 13 uses equals out to about $3 per use, or if you’d rather break it up by year, $20 a year. Definitely nowhere near as cheap as bands or thread or yarn, but a palatable cost. Especially when you consider that it should save me at least 10, probably more like 15 minutes per braid job. That’s over 2 hours of my life that I get back.

So, I’ll come back to these and update you guys again when I’ve used them more, but for now the first impression is generally positive. Hopefully they don’t let me down! We’ll find out at Chatt. And next weekend at FEH… but more on that later. 😉

As I mentioned yesterday, Sunday was ADVENTURE TIME with the boys. I’m really loving the rare weekend days where I have nothing to do but play around with these two idiots.

I took much the same approach this weekend as I did last weekend. We started out with ponying – which Presto has gotten a little bit cocky about as of late. I think he finds it to be a really fun game, and he’s not intimidated by anything at all, so sometimes he tries to nip at Henry or canter in place. He’s funny though, in all of his antics he never actually pulls on the lead rope. He’s just really excited to be there, bro.

Originally I had wanted to just do a nice long walk on the hills, but Mr. CanterOnTheSpot had ants in his pants, so we went for a big long trot lap of the entire field first. That 10 minutes was enough to take a lot of the cockiness out of him, after which we were able to settle and walk, with a few bits of stopping to practice standing still (Henry’s favorite – Presto’s least favorite).

I brought them back in and decided to chop both of their manes off, then it was bath time again. Henry is trying his hardest to do his “I don’t have hair here or here or here” summer routine, so I’ve been keeping after him daily with my variety of shampoos and tinctures. Presto has stayed funk-free so far (he’s fading into a buckskin really quickly in the summer sun though, which is sad) so he just got hosed off and then had to stand in the wash rack and wait politely while I attended to Henny. And when I say “wait politely” I mean wait not-at-all-politely, as he proceeded to try to very deliberately stomp on the hose for the next 15 minutes.

Since Henry kind of ruined courtyard grazing privileges last weekend with his attempted escape (why do they take turns being brats?), I stuck them into the little front paddock with the citrus trees. I took Henry’s lead rope off but left Presto’s on at first, to continue his lessons with the drag rope while I supervised.

As soon as I let them go I could see the mischievousness in Henry’s eyes. Sometimes he just gets that cheeky look about him where you can tell he’s just waiting for the right excuse to be naughty. But they both just walked off and started grazing, and I figured maybe I was wrong.

I was not wrong.

A few minutes later Henry spotted the chickens, and that was exactly the excuse he’d been looking for. He took off bucking and leaping and galloping and squealing and farting. Poor Presto was tagging behind like “Oh, are we spooking? FUN!”, while Henry proceeded to run around like a rodeo horse for the next 10 minutes. Even Presto got tired of his shenanigans and tried to go back to grazing, but Henry would come blazing past him again and Presto would have to duck and cover to get out of the way.

I decided to rescue Presto a little bit and at least take the drag rope off, since he already had enough problems with his idiot brother the bucking bronco.

Presto alternately chased him and then got chased, but he kept it mostly to a trot, because he’s never impressed. It was almost like they were playing tag.

I eventually had to stop their game and take them in, because Henry was getting a little TOO rambunctious. Total idiot, I dunno what wild hair got up his butt. Clearly being ridden 6 days a week with a ramped up conditioning schedule isn’t taking anything out of him. Not feeling particularly guilty about the summer horse shows anymore.

When I put Presto back in his pasture he tried his best to continue the game of tag with his donkeys, but they were 0% interested.

Watching Henry and Presto interact definitely brings me a lot of joy, even when one of them looks like a coked out dolphin and the other is a baby giraffe. Life is never boring with these two!

This past weekend marked my last “free” one for the next, like… 2+ months. I don’t know how this always happens, but it does, and while I do generally like being busy (especially since a lot of those weekends will be at horse shows!), I also sometimes enjoy having less on my plate. Of course, I still managed to fit A LOT of horses into the weekend, because would I even be me if I didn’t? At the heart of things, I’m still just a kid who loves ponies.

JenJ hit me up at the end of last week and asked if I could fill in for a day of barnsitting for her place on Saturday, which I was happy to do.

I was planning on giving my two boys the day off anyway, so it worked out. Then she asked if I’d be willing to clip Taran while I was there, and since my day was open, I said sure. I have to give Taran many props, despite being very annoyed with me and ready to go back to his turnout, he was one of the best-behaved horses I’ve ever clipped… and I used to have a little bodyclipping side business, so I’ve clipped a lot. He was almost a statue. Hopefully he copes a little bit better with these high temps without all that extra hair.

After that it was home to shower and eat lunch, and I found myself with many hours left to kill before Belmont time. Naturally I did what any obsessed self-respecting horse person would do and put up the Belmont undercard races on the TV and the live stream from the jumper ring at Upperville on my laptop.

And yeah, I saw Olivia go, because stalker. Frankie was a beast, I recognized him instantly even among an endless stream of bay and brown horses. I had a couple other friends in that division too, so I wasn’t just keeping an eye out for her, but I found her easily anyway.

After that it was Belmont time. In 2015 I watched American Pharoah’s historic win on a screen outside the videographer’s trailer at a horse show, where I just happened to walk by as they were coming into the stretch. I didn’t really follow the TC races much that year, so I was a little bit removed from everything. This year I followed it start to finish, and loved Justify start to finish, so I was on my feet whooping and hollering and jumping around like an idiot for the entire stretch drive. The dogs scattered, I almost sprained my damn ankle, and I got at least a whole day’s worth of cardio. Say what you want about horse racing, but there are few things that can rival the thrill of watching a magnificent horse running flat out into the history books.

Also I about came undone when Mike Smith was talking to him and giving him smooches after the race. It really showed just how one special horse can make all of someone’s wildest dreams come true, just by being their fantastic selves. Horses… we don’t deserve them.

By the time I capped off the day by going back out to feed Jen’s crew, I’d definitely managed to fit all sizes, shapes, and kinds of horses into one day.

Sunday was filled with my two favorite and most familiar faces:

but those adventures (because whenever these two are involved, it’s ALWAYS an adventure) are stories for another day.

You know when you’re doing so well with resisting the urge to buy things, not looking at sales, and talking yourself out of stuff you don’t actually need?

This is not one of those times for me.

Yeah I know, as of Monday I was doing pretty well. I’d resisted the idea of buying a new coat and a new pair of breeches for Chatt. All I’d really succumbed to was a package of Quick Knot. Okay, that was actually a lie. The Quick Knot was the only show-related thing I had succumbed to. Okay, that’s still a lie. I forgot about the fact that stupid Dover got me with their stupid 50% off sale and I grabbed a few shirts (the shirts don’t get called stupid because I like them. Just Dover and their sales are stupid, even if they do manage to get me like once a year with something and then I feel really dirty afterward for months. Is there a 12 step program for this?).

To be fair, the shirts averaged out to $25 each. It barely counts.

The things I deliberately didn’t mention on Monday (and they’re really small things, so again – BARELY COUNTS) are:

1) A noseband taper gauge

I actually mentioned this handy dandy little tool in my post a couple weeks ago about nosebands. I was intrigued by it, but too cheap to buy it and pay the shipping from the UK. Plus, like… why do I need to own one of these, aside from sheer curiosity and an obvious lack of impulse control? Oh right, I don’t. BUT THEN, as if by sheer magic, Blackjak Refinery posted on Instagram saying they had a few extras for sale, and it was really cheap and I was like omg nifty little toy thingy ooo shiny and then I dunno, I blacked out or something and ta-da now I have a noseband taper gauge.

I already played with it on my own bridles (I actually DO have “2 fingers” of space in there, by their standard!) so I don’t really know what to do with it now. I really want to go full batshit and volunteer for bit check somewhere and run my own private study on what % of people have their nosebands set to what adjustment, but I figured that might get me volun-fired and volun-told not to come back. So instead I’m thinking that if anyone else out there wants to try this out and check their own nosebands against an actual measurable standard, let me know and I’ll let you borrow it. But if you lose it or don’t send it back I will absolutely 100% send a glitter bomb to your house because yes I would in fact have your address. Make good choices.

2) A bonnet for Presto

Yeah I know, you’re sitting there screaming “You idiot, he’s a YEARLING!”. You’re not wrong on either count. See, what had happened was, I was sitting there chatting with Sierra of If the Bonnet Fits about how funny it would be if Presto had a bonnet with spikes. He’s so freaking punk rock/emo with his side eye and his “whatever, man” attitude and his ridiculously voluminous hair. If any horse ever deserved a spiked bonnet, it’s him. And then Sierra is all like “I can make anything, just watch” and then again I blacked out and a few months later, BOOM.

Tell me it’s not magnificent.

Actually don’t, because I love it and it’s okay if you don’t. But yeah, that’s how the yearling got a bonnet even though he’s at least 2 years away from realistically wearing one. If you came to my blog looking for good decisions and things that make sense, you made a wrong turn.

But those were the only 2 (ahem 5) things I didn’t fess up to earlier. And they’re all in the “under $50” category so none count.

Then, yesterday happened. I’m still not sure if we should call it an epic win or an epic fail, but here’s how it went down.

I’ve been keeping my eye out for a good deal on a new schooling helmet for the past few months. I wanted brown, and I’d narrowed it down to either a Samshield or a One K, whichever I could find the best deal on. I even got in low-key bidding wars over a couple of new-in-box helmets on ebay, but both went above what I felt was the price that warrants FANTASTIC DEAL in my mind. No problem, I’m not in a hurry. I can hold out for the deal.

Yesterday an auction was ending on another one of these ebay new-in-box helmets, a brown One K in a large long oval (which is like, semi-miraculous in and of itself to be able to find the exact weird thing I need). I’m feeling extra penny-pinching these days since I just mailed off 2 horse show entries, so I set up an auction price for something even lower than my previous FANTASTIC DEAL price and promptly forgot about. I figured no way it would go for that, since even with several hours left to go it was already only $15 less.

Then, while I was waiting for that auction to end, a friend messaged me and said that eBay had a 20% off code running for the day. While that was not applicable to an auction item like the helmet, something else did immediately spring to mind. A few days prior (when I was being a big whiny baby about whether or not I should just bite the bullet and buy the Motionlite coat) I had seen a UK seller with a few different colors and sizes of new Motionlites listed around $175. When I looked before they didn’t have my size available, but when I wandered back this time, they did. So I was like “hmmm, wonder if that coupon code works on this?”. So I put it in, and it DID. Now it was $137 with free shipping. Whuuuuuut. Another blackout, and I awoke to another completed Paypal transaction. Maybe I should see a doctor about this.

As I was heading to facebook to tell everyone else about this fabulous deal, I got a “Pay Now” message on my ebay. I had won the brand-new-in-box One K for $99. Again: whuuuuuuuuuut.

So while, yes, I did not intend to make any of these purchases, I don’t feel particularly guilty about them either. However, I’m officially cutting myself off.

Probably.

Because let’s face it, I really just can’t be trusted with the internet.