We temporarilly interupt leather carving for deer season

My leather carving time has been temporarily interrupted by deer season. Deer season runs for 3 weekends in November and usually we get at least a few visitors each weekend. The first weekend of deer season brought Dave Peterson back to the badlands and while he was here he dropped off my entries from the recent IFOLG show. Dave had picked them up from Kathy Flanagan when he went down to Denver to take a class from Bill Gomer. Bill had to cancel his class due to the big snow storm CO got, but he did meet Kathy while she was on a "yak exchange trip". I had given my entries to the show to Kathy when I was at her class in Rapid City and she had asked if I had any items she could use for the Columbine Guild display table at the show. One thing she asked to take and put on the table was the embossed bugling elk picture I showed her awhile ago. I told her she could take it, but when I got it back, I wanted it to be colored. I was just joking (well, sort of I was) but when I got it back, it was colored. Not "just" colored, but very beautifully colored! Kathy did a really great job. Thanks so much for doing that Kathy. When Stacy saw this, she commented that I have some very talented and very generous friends, and that is so true.


I mentioned to Kathy that maybe we could try teach a class together on this project, I could teach the carving and she could teach the coloring and she agreed that that would be fun, so look out Rapid City, we're coming back one of these days!


The second weekend of deer season we have a group of hunters that come out each year and camp in our yard. Our whole family has come to look forward to this weekend each year. We figured out that we have been doing this since 1993. Our kids grew up hiking the badlands each fall looking for mule deer with "the hunters". This year we had wonderful weather and got to spend a lot of time hiking the rough stuff. In the evenings we eat in the tent and sit around and catch up, tell stories and learn all kinds of "useful" lessons. Deer camp is over now for this year, but there is still one more weekend of deer season. Then maybe I'll have more time to get back to carving leather again. I've recently been given some great patterns to try out so all I need now is some time.