Sue

Any info you have, experiences during using it? Did you find it useful? what was your horse like in it's previous bridle and how did it differ in the bitless crossover/crossunder bridle.

I have been asked to exercise an arab who is a lovely boy but very fizzy. He has one of these, I know how to fit it and how it's meant to work, I have also had forty years experience of many different horses and ponies including breaking, showing, jumping, carriage driving so I'm not an inexperienced rider :)

What I need is impartial and anecdotal info from those who have experience using one - good or bad.

I picked them on sunday, it's now tuesday, we had a family emergency and I wasn't able to pick over all of them and remove all the tiny stalks as intended, nor wash them so they've sat in two buckets (one aluminium - it was only meant to be for an hour or two!) today they have bubbling juice in both buckets. Do I have to scrap them all (sob- six hours work...) can I wash them and pick out the stalks? should I just make the syrup and skim off the unwanted stuff.... Much as I'd love to I can't make elderberry wine from them as I don't have yeast nor the means to store them. It's syrup (with alcohol to make it keep) or nothing :(

Our group organises a local moot - for those who have never heard of this it's a regular gathering of pagans to meet like minded people, chat, discuss things, hear speakers and generally interact with the rest of the local pagan community, not all moots are the same, some meet in a pub for an informal chat (so those who are younger understandably miss out) some meet in a house. Ours has speakers every month and is held in a community centre the topics are deliberately varied for variety - this month - despite having an excellent speaker from the Doreen Valiente Foundation (Doreen being a founder of Wicca), this month we had very few attendees. Several years ago we had a room filled with interested people keen to listen, now we are not covering the cost of the hall each month. We are advertised in all the pagan press in the UK, online, own dedicated yahoo group, facebook page with a couple of hundred likes.... so it's not lack of advertising.

I notice from yahoo answers, pagan forums and other network sites that there are no shortages of people interested in alternative spirituality, but I'm wondering if you, personally as the interested party reading this question, do you attend your local moot if there is one? What kind is it (pub, house or speaker based) do you interact with your local community at all? Are times too hard that every penny is now spent on general living costs (our moot is £3.00 regardless of speaker, for that you get tea and cake as well)

To those new to the path if you are searching for answers on such sites as this would you not like to attend a gathering of pagan folks to learn a little from those who walk their path? Does anything put you off? I guess I'm just throwing this out there to see what the response is since we are baffled.

Are there any others out there who organise moots and what are your observances over the last few years of numbers of attendees?

Many thanks for any help I can get here :)

I've got as far as creating the picture for the header, now I need to add small letting to display the name of the blog. I clicked on the text tool, selected the spot where it was to go but one single word is bigger than the entire banner. I've tried highlighting the text and selecting the points for size, but it only lets me go to six which apparently isn't small enough. help?

I'm of the British Traditional Witchcraft line, ie initiated into a Coven. I'm seeing a lot of 'Wicca is the religeon and Witchcraft is the practice' type comments from the many excellent Wiccans on here. Don't get me wrong I agree with you but many of you say that you can be 'Wiccan' and not practice witchcraft, within BTW the actual craft is a thread that runs throughout the system, we cast using magic, we celebrate using magic and we draw down using magic and that's before anything else is done, so it's a huge part of our rites.

I'm curious about the non magical Wiccans out there, how do you split the magic from the Wicca? Do you never practice any magic? How do you feel about being 'wiccan' if you are not practicing as it was originally intended by Gardner. (a controversial comment to be sure but I'm all for debate)

Anyway, go to it :)

I would like to hear of readers experiences using natural horsemanship with their animals. Good or bad and any trainer's system. I am impartial at the moment but since a new horse is imminent I'm collecting info for reference.

A bit about me - I've owned horses for thirty+ years and have broken them to ride and drive. I'm just interested in this 'new' idea. My personal theory is that any good horseman uses what is now called 'natural ' techniques automatically since they know horses and know how they react - not so much the specifics but the idea behind the techniques - however I'm willing to use any tool available to me since the new horse is reportedly 'difficult' so I guess I would like to hear how it worked for you, what were the pros, the cons. Thanks in advance for any replies :)

I know of CoA and MysticWs, but I'd love to know of others. You can PM me if you'd rather not post addresses here (understandable lol)

My lovely new camera and tripod fell and there is now a scratch across the coating on the lens, does anyone think I can get this repaired or replaced? It was a xmas present so very new.

Camera is model Canon PowerShot SX120 IS

I have hephaestus horseshoes and eolus wind, just wondering if they would transfer to the new owner (and hoping they do since I mentioned bonuses on the ad)

If I buy a book from Blurb and pay by credit card do they take the money when the book is ready for shipping (there is a delay since they print to order) or immediately. I ordered one yesterday and have been expecting the 'you have paid for this order and we expect it to ship in x days' confirmation email and there hasn't been one. Do I need to worry?

The order is showing as 'pending' on my account on the site.

Just curious and would like to know. :)

Hi there

I don't know if anyone can shed any light on this.

Every time settle down to go to sleep at night just as I'm in the transition from awake to sleep I suddenly get a really nasty sort of jolting feeling. Sometimes it feels like my heart 'stopped' and sometimes it feels like I've stopped breathing for a second and my body has sorta jolted me back to normal. I wake up, with heart pounding and head swimming and it's really really scary. I'm working up to going to the doctors - also scary :(

The last couple of years have been very stressful for me and I'm hoping it's stress related and not something - well horrid.

Any help appreciated.

Ok I remember a much loved book I had as a kid, it was set on an australian ranch, had a couple of kids that rode horses, a greyhound called Monk (who liked to catch rabbits) and someone adult called Paul (I think) Paul was building a house and the 'twins' maybe helped by banging the nails in. That's all I can remember.

I have absolutely no idea who wrote it or what it was called and have been trying to track it down for years - can anyone help me??

read here as I can't get it all in :(

So, I was working on a file in word, came back to it today and looked in 'recent documents' and somehow managed to replace the old file with a new empty file - help!?

I am getting a really annoying email problem, regularly I am getting two repeated icons of what look like a speaker and a circle with a cross in it. My computer then locks up and I have to pull the plug to do anything else. I think it says something like 'flagged message' or something. It happens after looking at a few mails, and I have noticed that if there is something in the bulk folder, its worse (one site I am on let spammers in so I'm wondering if its a virus or something)

help anyone?