Starting to go Wild

 

 While we were driving back from an errand last week, my husband achieved immortality in Punner's Galaxy.  He's always been a punster but this was a new high.  I felt the hit all through my tackshop and beyond, touching my life, my nation and my very soul.  And we were just talking about a pair of reins!

 "Ferrules," he said, "Aren't those the little beads that are starting to go wild?"

 I literally laughed all the way home!

Sassy being played with

 The more I look at this most unusual pair of romal reins, the more I think they have, indeed, gone wild.  They appear to be the result of trying to blend two traditions in tackmaking that ought not, perhaps, have been blended.  One tradition is making ferruled leather reins in black leather, which the majority of full scale parade sets have.  The other tradition, I see now, was my own strong bent towards making braided (rawhide) reins.  (Now how could that have happened?!!  :)  Sometimes hybrids work, but this one, alas, is giving me some powerful vibes that perhaps, just perhaps, the third time will be the charm.  These were the second try.  The first try left no pictures and its parts were disassembled and remade into what you see here.

The quirt has "TSII" on one side and curlicues on the other.

 Making these reins has been like pulling teeth.  I published my book at the end of August 2025 and said I wanted to return to making tack.  Yet here it is nearly 5 months later and all I've made has been a couple of braided bridles (and a breastcollar).  With over 500 saddles under my belt, what the heck is the hangup?  I'm really struggling,... and NaMoPaiMo is about to wallop me.

 These reins are the first concrete evidence of my next saddle, TSII #458.  It is to be my own silver parade set.  It is to be for Kotinga, my hopefully soon-to-be-palomino NaMoPaiMo victim;  but it's also supposed to fit Sassy*, my Stone Half-Arab Mare, Kotinga's wife.  I haven't made a parade set for myself since 1997 (#400), and I haven't made a saddle at all, period, since 2020 (#457, Eleanor's Goehring).  As it happens, the last 4 saddles I completed have all been silver Parade sets.  (TSII #456 Star Wars, #455 Miller's Hexagon and #454 Silver Tipped.)  Number 454 was finished in 2015, eleven years ago -- more than a decade! -- so you can see how truly rusty I am.

I'm thinking that rustiness is partly to blame that I would take so long to spin up making just a pair of romal reins.  The first try was braided thread, black and brown;  but parts were too slender and the riendas (hand parts) were too stiff.  The second try you see here, also stiff (!), a strange combination of braided covers over hot-oiled dark leather, with black sinew connectors.  I wanted a darkest-brown-but-not-black color, and I think also that this requirement is to blame.  Sinew doesn't come in that color, hence the attempts at thread blending.

A quick thank you to Heather Moreton, who told me about the existence of black dental floss and saw to it that I had some.  That material, so silky-smooth it is hard to braid with! is used in these rein coverings.  Look at the second pic below for a better glimpse of this floss.

Saddles are my bread-and-butter, the main source of TSII work and fame.  I have always wanted to come back to them.  The trigger for Kotinga's is the story of the so-called Russian parade set, a blog subject if ever there was one!  You have seen glimpses of it, in my Christmas letter and in the Spiro Arrives post.  As with Kotinga, there are many strands to its story, and it is a very personal tale.  Be patient with me.  The best stories take time.

Above:  Note how the liquid silver ferrule seam edges don't quite meet.  This tiny imperfection was done on purpose.  The leather width necessary for strength is just a scoosh too large for the ferrules.  (I think I trimmed it a little too thin in a few places.)  When polished, the silver glints are so eye-catching that the brain does not notice the gap.

These reins really fought me and there were mistakes along the way.  Below, the foldover at the end broke and popped out when I pulled on its loop.  Now I had to fix it.  Five of its 7 ferrules await re-installation while I figured out how to make the leather longer.  The answer was to splice on a whole new piece of lace, at the braid start slit.  

So much for shorter blog posts.  Ain't gonna happen, I guess.  But this one has made me remember the reins for #456 used black sinew, with silver ferrules.  

TSII #456, Star Wars.  Handmade medallions

Either I will accept black reins instead of darkest-brown ones (the so-called Russian has black);  or I will figure out how to dye plain rawhide ones.  I guess sometimes it takes three times to find the right answer. 

*At least for now, 'Sassy' has taken over as this mare's name, and "Tawny" is on hold. 

I asked my husband how long it had taken him to think up that pun about ferrules (ferals).  In a Tom Brier moment, he said "Just Now!"  Tom Brier is the ragtime pianist I have included links to in my Christmas letters and whose performances I am so madly in love with.  Here's the appropriate one:  Super Mario Land Birabuto.   Only 2:55 long, it's one of ragtime's greatest impromptu performances.  On the paper he was given the simple theme -- the first time through the tune - - nothing else.  He'd never seen it before.  Everything that follows he made up on the spot, 'ragging' it in the best possible fashion.

I'll leave this post on his note of happy perfection.

 

A Chicki Charm Halter

 

I saw this halter go by on Model Horse Tack Space a week ago, and inexplicably fell in love.  I've never learned how to tie this particular kind of rope halter (!), although I've always wanted to.  I have only one other in that same style (but minus the muzzle braiding).  I had never heard of this particular tackmaker (!) but I'm always on the lookout for up and coming braiders.  I want to support them as well as collect cool pieces.  I've also found I tend to collect more tack when I feel more frustrated or denied in the making of my own;  and that has been the case lately.

Also, I'm experimenting with shorter blog posts.  We'll just have to see how that turns out! 

 The seller had announced a sale date and time on Etsy.  This fixed-date-&-time sale is the same approach used by Anna Helt and Mink Studios.  I'm familiar with it.  A good computer hookup and fast fingers is what's required.  You have to know ahead of time which piece(s) you want.  I went through 10 halters and had 3 choices picked out and ranked.  As it turned out I snagged my 2nd choice.  I like hot colors these days!  😁

 The sale was January 10th.  A mere 5 days later my halter showed up.  I'm derned envious of these people's ability to drop ship or whatever you call those preprinted official mailing labels.  I still don't have that for my own tack shop -- not after 47 years in business.  This is probably because my tack output is so low.  But I'm still jealous.

The only aspect of the transaction that could possibly be construed as 'went wrong' was that Etsy drew my funds out of the bank that stands behind my PayPal and not from my PayPal account itself, as I would've preferred.  But that is not the fault of the seller.  I need to change my settings, or rather, pay more attention.

The halter arrived arrayed upon the paper cut-out of a horse head.  I was astounded at its beauty;  it was elegantly simple in stiffness and utility.  As it happened I had a much larger new horse standing by, and in the way of eager new models, he asked to try it on: "to test its adjustability."  And it fit.

His is the largest head in my herd, outside of drafters and a 1:6 scale horse.  Tying on the halter, I was delighted to discover the ends of the crown strap were fused together.  This was immensely helpful.  The halter's rope material was slightly stretchy, just enough to fit my enormous horse (he is the Stone Irish Draft).  Of course the colors looked fantastic!

The cheek buttons appeared to be half hitches, tied and fused, or perhaps fused and tied, I can't quite tell.  Later, with more intense use, the crown ends parted, but I promptly glued them together again -- that feature is much too useful to lose.

Another extremely minor issue was that the jaw strap wasn't quite symmetrically centered on the throatlatch.   This was really only detectable on a huge horse, and could be rectified with some careful tying.  I am so tickled with this new halter!  Whether I can get my new horse, named Cookie Dough Fever, to let go of it is another matter!

 Madison McComas of Chicki Charm, thank you so much for this fun piece.  My new halter was sold as fitting Trads similar to Idocus / Snowman.

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What's next at the TSII?  I'm trying to buckle down to nothing less than TSII #458, my own silver Parade saddle, based on the so-called Russian.  I've got a few blog posts standing in line, and more tack orders after #458.  Given the family trips, there won't be much tack left over before BreyerFest.  If you want something from me, ask me then.

 

Spiro Arrives

 

This is a long and convoluted blog post about a visit inside a car with another model horse person delivering a horse, which included handling another of her horses plus playing with much tack, but somehow didn't include a shot of the deliveree!  Once home, I had another shoot, but it quickly bounded beyond the model to include dramatic handler-action poses.  About the only thing these 2 situations had in common was a striking silver bridle,... and Stone horses.  It's a mishmash and presents a 'day in the life' of one horse, with many shots, to put it kindly, totally impromptu.

If that isn't enough, I wanted to answer a question:  Why did I fall for this horse so badly?  I'd almost never had so desperately scrambling a reaction as I did when I saw him online December 8th.  It was unlike me.  But subsequent thought has revealed it had, in fact, plenty of precedent.  Ah me.  Welcome to the herd, Spiro.  I'm keeping your name until such time as you tell me seriously otherwise.  But resist calling your foal Graf I will not.  :)

The story started with this photo.  Kim Bleecker, gifted painter and performance shower, was doing the selling.

photo by Kim Bleecker, TotalEquineImage

She included performance photos.  The horse came with NAN cards.

photo by Kim Bleecker, TotalEquineImage

One of the consequences of such a high perecentage of Stone pieces being OOAK and very low runs (3 to 15) is that ye random collector has no idea what exists.  Yes, Stone keeps archives, but how many of us paw through hundreds of horses at a time?  The archive is not sorted, except chronologically:  not by scale, not by mold, nor by artist.  It is easier to ask FB groups what your horse is, a growing phenom (but separate subject).  I had been collecting pix of Stone ASBs for months, brewing over my potential NaMoPaiMo horse, Kotinga.  NaMo Dreams: Kotinga  After seeing Kim's ad, I'd found Kirsten Wellman's carefully curated collection pages (see www.whitehorseproductions.com) and it was this that told me Spiro was the issue name and not the individual.  But I'd had no idea the run, 30 head from 2011, half matte half glossy, even existed.  Until now I'd never seen him in black.  

 

(Spiro is technically seal brown.)  I had been worried about making Kotinga the equivalent of glossy, able to withstand my hard use of a model horse.  Kim's Spiro brought together 3 factors at once.  He was an ASB and looked spectacular in Parade.  (This mold is statistically the most likely winner of a NAN parade class.)  He was a glossy.  And he was stunningly beautiful.  Black and white is my favorite companion color to the palomino.  I have 2 favorite colors, one warm one cool, as many of my 2-horse congas attest.  The black bay, close to but not pure black, was symbolically important to me.  The blue eye was the icing on the cake.

I had plumped unexpectedly quickly for Sassy.  Also for Kotinga, for Nebelwerfer (who may change his name to Graf 😀), for Florissant at BFest, and, as it turned out, for a bay Irish Draft I'd found a week ago that pulled the same trick as Kotinga.  It has become a pattern for me now:  Do my own etching and make a true one of a kind plus save some money and a whole lotta time and uncertainty.

Nebelwerfer, aka Spiro's Graf

The deal for Spiro was consummated the next day, December 9th.  The first twist of the unusual was that I refused to pay postage.  Kim was only 3 hours away in the same state.  I wanted to save her trouble while at the same time I was hatching a wild idea to go on a cross country drive with my beloved navigator.  He can be bribed with birding trips,...  I found the Hamburg Cabela's three-quarters of the way to Kim's house. (He and I needed to go shopping there.)  All parties agreed to my plan.  Though we did have to wait until after Christmas, this month-long pause was nothing compared to Sassy's 5-months-and-1-week.

The day agreed upon was January 3rd.  It was biting cold.  This was why the visit took place inside my car.  We just couldn't waltz into Cabela's and plop down and do model horses, much fun as that would've been,... 

Naturally, each of us brought horses and tack to show off.  This was the first time Kim had handled Stone's Half Arab mare.  I took lots of photos of her tack.  I had asked to see her Remington.  I don't have one, and it is always good to be familiar with an important Western mold.

Being Kim, it was a fabulously gorgeous Remington.  Being me, these photos will probably not be useful to anyone but hardcore model horse tackmakers.

 I find his shoulders angled amazingly far apart, almost unnaturally,...

 but he is quite tack friendly.  So friendly, in fact, I could not resist plopping my latest and most show-offing-est piece on him.

 I like Kim's smile in the above shot.  :)  This was all very casual and I did not stop to tighten or carefully place things.

 This beautiful old silver parade set was made by Cary Nelson, probably in the 80s.  The color went so well with this horse!

Here's a sample of the tack shots:  An Evelyn Munday saddle belonging to Kim.

I was able to tell Kim how Evelyn did the alligator leather:  with a homemade embossing plate.  This was the most detailed saddle by Evelyn I'd ever seen in person so far.  It took my breath away.

 Just another day in Cabela's parking lot!!

 How I managed not to shoot Spiro appears obvious in restrospect.  I'd unwrapped him briefly but he much needed a bath.  There were far more interesting things to shoot.  My attention was not on him but on timing, visiting and shopping:  Kim had never been inside a Cabela's!  I was saving Spiro for later.  Needless to say that visit and drive was a uniquely fun experience.  We got home just before dark.

The next day and after a bath, I tried the same bridle on my new ASB.  This horse is, after Kotinga and my earlier Moonstruck / Spirit of Cinnamon, my third Stone Saddlebred.  After a few portraits, I wondered how I could explain those superlong reins.  I didn't want to go to the trouble quite yet of fitting the entire saddle, although I did try on the breastcollar.  But it distracted from the portraits.

 Then it struck me.  The blue of his eye could be balanced by Chalif my Field of Dolls Western rider.  Blue reflections on this horse (see earlier and below) are from the window.  And so everything came together.  (Why I can go to the bother of hanging up the background sheet but not fit a saddle is a question better left unanswered.)

Now we had something.  

 It's not out of the realm of possibility.  A handler could be doing this.  But how she had to stretch to keep up!  

 I didn't like how her face was shadowed.  She wasn't looking properly at him either.  Below, I photoshopped the corner of the sheet so it at least matched.  I'm also cleaning off tiny white specks, mostly dust.  Despite the bath he's got some age (which I don't mind at all).  The minute nicks and scratches, only visible up close in person, give character.

Finally I got an angle where Chalif was correctly aimed, unshaded and you could see her eyes.  I then changed the saturation balance to let the blues come through.  The confluence of hat and tail, quite unintentional, made me laugh.

What a duo!  Spiro's got a future here.

Thanks for reading.

 

Yuletide Cheer Extras

 

 This post might well be called Bonus Tracks.  In my creating the 31 posts for Kirsten Wellman's Yuletide Cheer Photo Challenge (see my Susan Bensema Young FaceBook page for them all), some pieces were forgotten or discovered too late while others just didn't get chosen, yet were worthy in themselves.  Let's be honest, I'm having too much fun to stop!  To call them 'Extras' is just shorter.

Above is one of my favorite genuine extras, a pony shot for the Day 21 Solstice Pony.  He unfortunately could not compete with the far more magical & mystical Colyer Lake ice sleigh shot that was used.  Yet I thought he was a pretty nice idea for a burst of light.  He sparkles and shimmers like a flame!  He's Black Horse Ranch's Shetland in Gold Charm wearing a Breyer blanket.  Even more unfortunately, I can't recall exactly which blanket this is, nor find it anywhere in IDYB--!!  Bad girl -- I'm ashamed,...

We should start with Day 9, Evergreen.  It dawned on me, several days too late, that I did indeed have a pair of green horses besides the Hartlands I wound up using.  Here they are:  Chrysanthemum and Lily of the Valley, from the 2012 Blossoms series.

 

Likewise for Day 23, Hounds, there were some I realized I'd forgotten.  Unlike Evergreen, there were Quite A Few,... and then I had to go looking for Lupines (wolves) as well as Canines!  We start with two of my normal carriage-sitting dogs, the small china HR and the old Hartland Bullet.  Bullet has often been seen riding in my Hitch Wagon.

 

 

  

Upstairs on the bookshelves was my Breyer Corgi, completely overlooked.  In the small-chinas display cabinet (in the bathroom) were lurking these other dogs.  They are old and of a plaster type material.  They look a bit like wolves, but you ain't seen nothin' yet for lupines, and I think they are on the canine side.

 

 

My final dogs are the most curious.  The wooden Beagle (?) needs help to stand up;  he's missing 2 legs.  (He could probably qualify for "weirdest.")  The little eraser-rubber Shepherd is a much brighter blue than this shot shows.  Adorably cute anyone --?! 

 

 Well I did mention wolves!!  Here we go:  These first three are what I'd call "normal" lupines, the sort you can get from Safari and Schleich.  The hangtag one is a resin-type tree ornament of the kind one can get in a nature center gift store, nicely detailed but too delicate (and heavy) to play with much.

 

 

These next wolves are what I'm calling Strange.  We are a long way from Yule here, although we are really close to Wolfenoot!!  The origami is from my best friend Gertchen, so long ago I couldn't tell you whether she made it.  It's a Christmas-tree ornament now.  The flocked furtail is from my high school years, a German collectible with wire-core legs.  And the red vintage Marx Toy is, of course, from my deep childhood.  Remember all those plastic dinosaurs--??  Those colorful play sets had Dire Wolves with them....

 

 In the early 70s my parents took us camping in Yellowstone.  I stupidly left my toys out overnight.  You can still see the teeth marks where my beloved dire wolf got chewed on by a chipmunk.  Mom said it was because my hands made him salty.  Oh I hated chipmunks for a while then,...

 

My final Bonus Track is for Day 29, an extra shot of the Five Florentines.  I thought it was less well positioned (angled) than the one I used on FB.

 

Thank you ever so much, Kristen, for giving us this Photo Chaos Challenge.  It's been like a photo show for me, but with far less stress.  I've dug up pieces I'd completely forgotten about, and many others that certainly deserved 5 minutes of fame.  What a fun thing to do with December and my FaceBook.  I have thoroughly enjoyed it!

Happy New Year everyone!
 

 

Congas I

I promised a blog post on congas.  This was partly because this new class was so much fun at my recent show, and partly because I counted how many congas my collection really had ("King's Herd's Hidden Congas") and was astounded at the answer (if you define conga as 3 or more of one mold, it was 36).  Also, I find myself increasingly collecting other peoples' conga photos, Stone and Breyer alike.  It is a fascinating field.  While I cannot possibly document all my thirty-six in one post, I thought I might start with a mix of shots from this year's Happy Valley Fun Show and from my existing files.

My own HVFS took place on November 15 and had 33 classes, all judged by one person (me).  The conga class, new for this year, was near the end.  We had 5 entries for it.  The winner was Kim's Classic Walking Draft Horses, sculpted by Mel Miller.  I'd had no idea there were this many.  I thought the variety, arrangement and documentation were very good (nobody else had papers or boxes).  Yay Kim!

 It's always hard to explain placing.  While these teeny little charmers stole everyone's hearts, they only drew second place.  These are the grazing Mini Whinny foals, who first came out in 2005.  Again, I'd had NO idea there were this many!!  They were so cute that both Kim and I photo'd them.

 A more traditional conga showed up with these Roxies.  These were also popular and both Kim and myself photographed them, but from different angles, so you get to see them twice.  These Roxies took third -- that is why the yellow-colored chocolate candy ball is sitting there -- it's the 3rd place ribbon.

 A more unorthodox view has me comparing and considering the many different tails of this mold.

I'm afraid no one photo'd the 4th-place entry, composed of Stablemate Pasos.  But the fifth place Frieseian conga did get photographed.  Although this is clearly the largest conga, I thought them less cute than the foals, and the mold is less close to my heart than Roxy.  Still it is an impressive sight, and must have taken a long time to assemble.

My own collection boasts 2 'official' congas in addition to hordes of unofficial ones.  Having said that, when I counted them, the official ones came in at 12 and 11 while an unofficial trounced everyone with 18--!!  Of course, those eighteen were my ISHs, Stone's Ideal Stock Horse.  I knew I had a lot,... the number fluctuates over time.

So we'll end this first phase congas post with a look at my Classic Liams (Stock Horse Geldings)(the 11) and my Buffaloes (the 12).  I recently posted this shot on my FB in tribute to the kindness of Margaret Loesch of the GrayWoodsCat.  Indeed and truly it is a gift to have a friend who's a dealer.  Thank you Margaret.

 There are some earlier blog posts featuring some of the horses in this conga:  Black Beauty vs. RCMP  and  PalmHenge  and  Reshelving the Classics.

And finally, there's my Buffaloes.  They already have a couple of blog posts of their own, but thanks to the Yuletide Cheer Photo Challenge, they got to be re-shot.  I don't want to talk about the dusting!  What a stampede!!

 Here are their blog posts:  Buffalo Conga  and   Hunting a 12th Buffalo.  Clearly I did pick up a 12th buffalo -- he's just not Waban.  He's a standard no. 76.  I've reached the point where I don't know which one he is;  one of the 3 with white horns with black tips that aren't identifiable as anyone else.

 We'll quit for now with this dizzying view.  It would be nice to blog about King's Herd's hidden congas, but other subjects have priority, not least a fabulous silver saddle.  It has been harder than I anticipated to start work on one's own saddle.  I have dozens of Christmas letters still to go out too.  It's been another year of slowing responses (I must be getting older), but it had some truly great spots, and I am so glad for them.

As ever, thanks for reading.