The Loot Shoot

 

The Loot shoot is traditional by now, and comes as the final expression of BreyerFest.  Yet I would like to let my audience know that there are a whole lot of other BreyerFest blog post subjects I want to cover, which happened earlier.  It takes several days to recover from this extravaganza, and several more to get the photos downloaded and organized;  and then it takes time to blog!  So bear with me;  and thank you so much for your patience.

I feel my 'take' was small this year.  There was a reason.  It was that I'd fallen madly head-over-heels in love with one mold -- in mostly one color! -- and spent ALL my shopping time hunting ONE HORSE.   This is an almost impossible feat to pull off!  The most amazing part of the story is I didn't find him,... until the last minute,... and then in a very unexpected way.  Many steps still remain to be taken before I obtain him.  Those steps are being taken as I write, so y'-all will have to be content, as I am, knowing he's in the pipeline.

What I possibly got obsessed with was my own ability to focus down on just one horse (a trance state) and thus handle the incredible flood of HSOs that is BreyerFest,...

This bird's-eye view is the most complete, and shows all the loot I could find at the time of shooting.  The cloth items are pony pockets of one size or another.  Of course (why does this always happen?!) something got left out (!).  You can forgive a missed fridge magnet, but maybe not my little trinkets, of which I had at least 3 more than this shows.  Trinkets are tiny animal-shaped gifties, freely given at the least little excuse, and they came into their own this BFest.  Where are mine?  What pocket did they disappear into?  Ah, mysteries -- the mysteries of BreyerFest.  I don't know where they are.  I found one -- the red Dala horse -- but the rest are in the Zone of Unfound Things. *

The art gifties this year were rich.  Both the above red horse images, the Akhal Teke on the left and the gilt Fire Horse on the right, were picked up during the Breyer Youth Show.  The bits below the right image are from my friend Heather.  The flower to their right is a product of Jody Powers' Jaapi halters, her attempt to make a Scandinavian-themed saddle pad for Flinka.  (Technically not a gift, but a purchase.)  Pads are new for Jody.  The halter above the tiny Dala is Jaapi's answer to this year's theme.  She did a Aurora Borealis card backing to a halter with reflective green-and-blue stripes on it.  I am charmed!

StarBatCraft gets some free advertising here.  I've admired her videos.  :)   The bags of tiny round iron-on spots, seen at upper left, are more gifts from my tackmaking friend Heather Moreton.  They are precious supplies which I had nearly run out of and knew of no place to get more.  But now I know!  I think Heather dang near holds the record when it comes to giving me gifts merely for visiting.  I am overwhelmed, in a good way.

The Sarah Hartman mecate, which looks like a brown fuzzy rope above her card, is really a fanastic piece of tack, totally unexpected and very detailed.  I should do a separate post on this gift, which falls into the category of former student does good.  It very nearly made me cry, in a good way,...  Until then, here's a portrait of my new Remington wearing a very makeshift halter of it, posted on my FB July 9.

 In a perfect world, such a lovely mecate would have its own TSII rawhide bosal and a headstall hanger made by Sarah.  Hey a gal can dream...!

 

The Stone Arab Foal, a OOAK tag-named as The Flocking Games, was acquired at the Stone Mansion on Friday night.  As I said on my FB, that curated van shuttle was a lifesaver, given the crowds and traffic jams,... not to mention the weather!  This was definitely a BreyerFest of challenging weather.  This pinto foal is a delightful sunrise color, all reds and oranges and glowing golden yellows, as only Dawn Quick can do.  I have named her First Light, after the first flush of dawn colors.

The Classic Silky Sullivan is for a friend;  likewise the 2 Flinkas.  The four Special Runs tell their own tale, i.e., I had 2 tickets this year instead of the usual one.  You might wonder where the fourth horse is.  It was Wanderer, whom I really liked.  I was giving myself the chance to change my mind and keep a second FireHeart,... but no.  In the end this hard choice was made easy when I visited Resin Renaissance and a dear friend blurted out how much she wanted a Wanderer.  That was serendipitous!  I would much rather he was sold to a friend than a stranger.  Thank you, Danielle Miller.

 The bunny, a companion to last year's bunny, was again made by Tina McCaussin.  Here he is sitting on the first thing I bought at BreyerFest this year:  a book.  I already had this book, The Red Roan Pony by Joseph Lippincott (Lippincott does horses!), but my earlier copy didn't have illustrations by C. W. Anderson --!!  Talk about a $3 bargain,...

 The blue Stone Remington, Other Fish in the Sea, a limited edition of 10 (sorry, not 20 as I told so many!) from Valentines & Villiantines, was NOT purchased at BreyerFest, but DELIVERED at BFest.  I had been making payments since mid-May on this second-most expensive of my Stones.  Many thanks to M. Camp who so kindly let me buy him!  He is indeed my first Remington, the mold I have currently lost my heart to (sculpted by Maggie Bennett);  but he is not the last.  He was a huge help during BreyerFest as I cruised all the rooms multiple times, looking for a red bay or chestnut Remi, as my ISO poster depicted.

I only put up about 3 of these posters.  I was a little embarrassed by them;  I had never put up an ISO poster before.  It seemed so personal, not being TSII or tack business.  Yet I have to admit they did the job--!  Across all of BreyerFest and in the face of 5+ days of hard hunting, it was the poster that made the connection.  This is a sobering conclusion, but only in the face of the rumour that next year's BreyerFest might not allow room sales or posters.  For the record, I think they might be allowed after all,... the pressure will be great.  Marriott Griffin Gate put up with us, why not Marriott Delta?  But we shall just have to see.

 So we come back to my loot:  It is not finished, I still have one horse coming.  On my last BreyerFest day, Sunday, a face swam out of the crowd and claimed she was the owner of one of the horses on my ISO poster.  What are the odds?!  We were in such a rush I could only blurt out we'd be in touch afterwards.  It was the red chestnut in the center of the bottom row.  I will spare you the on-again-off-again adventures of the next 4 days, Monday through Thursday, while we tried to get hold of each another and kept failing.  The sale went through on Thursday.  I am, finally, the owner of two dream horses.  Thank you, Elizabeth.

 It's been an unusual BreyerFest for me.  The tale is not over.  Nor is my love affair with Maggie Bennett's great gelding.  As Hiccup said in How to Train Your Dragon, "There will be consequences!"  

* On Saturday morning the Unfound Zone was revealed to be inside a trinket box.  I'd had a little bureau-top cedar chest for sale, no one wanted it, I was packing my big Sales Box and must have thrown all my trinkets into it.  Duh!!  I'm reasonably sure the pink Triceratops came from Stone and the frog was given by a little girl and her mother who made the rounds of my entire hall, the 600s, distributing frogs of various colors, one to a customer.

 Thanks for reading.

My BreyerFest Posters

 

I don't know why I didn't think of this before!  So many things are obvious in hindsight,... The TSII doesn't put up that many posters at BreyerFest, but there are a couple of new ones this year.  This blog would be a perfect place to "try out" and also "preserve" them.   Speaking of preserving it has long been a secret pleasure of mine to run around very late the last Saturday night of BFest and make off with posters that particularly caught my eye --- they were all going to be thrown away anyway.  Maybe some day I'll post on those,...  For now, I'm including a couple of pix taken in 2019.  These were shot very early in the BFest process, when only a few posters were up.  Let them, now, stand for the potential of future hotels.  Here is another attempt at a short blog post,... to which we can only say, Hah!

 Here is my main poster for 2026, what I'm calling the Big Three.  The three are, of course, my two books.  Written by hand in the middle, not seen here, are the words View a printed copy in Rm 612.

 The back cover to the Abaft is much nicer than the front, I think:

 I have been slowly hatching wishes to "fix up" the Abaft's front cover.  When I have time (again, hah!).  The horse doesn't match the braided borders or the bosal.  My excuse, such as it is, is that the cover was created at the tail end of 3 years of work, when I was really pushing to finish, and it perhaps didn't receive quite the attention it deserved.  It appears to break one of my own rules about model  entries, which is an equal level of detail for all parts.

But it'll do for now. 

Here is a more typical poster, just the kind of thing you'd see rafts of in the halls of the Clarion.  I am planning on hanging up only a few of these, as they are not horses greatly in demand (except for the Blue Note).  [The Wapasha is an etch, no paint markings.]  But this is their tiny bid for glory.

 

The "Rm 612" will be written in the border.

Taken pretty early in 2019

Here is the poster with my personal collecting desires.  Again, I plan on hanging only a few.  It's a stab into the dark, both the idea and the price.  But I've spent many months working up this desire, and my wish has stood the test of time.  

Photo credits:  Stone, K Gino, E Stayner

One of the methods I use to survive BreyerFest is to really concentrate on only a few horses.  Only 1 or 2 will be on my deeply-desired, actively-hunting list.  Last year it was a palomino Stone ASB.  Also, last year was my [second] Stone Half Arab Mare.  One year it was a Breyer appaloosa POA!  Out of tens of thousands of models!?  This year my eye will be tuned for that reaching right forefoot, the ragged-ended tail and the warm color.  No Pony tails need apply!, nor do I want Remi's smooth long mane.  This mold was inaugurated in 2021.  Curiously, five years seems to be enough time for him to accumulate to sufficient numbers to filter down to us garden variety collectors (I almost said bottom feeders).  

The Stone Half Arab mare was the same way for me:  2019 to 2024, 5 years, before I bought one [Sassy].  Similar applied with my Stone Irish Draft, 8 years (2018 to 2026).  The foal took longer.  I want more foals now, fortunately.  This is just one way to collect Stones, but it seems to be the path I'm following for now.

To round out the offerings of Room 612, there will be other model horses, books, 7 Mink pins and a variety of oddments for sale.

"Horses are Cheaper on the Second Floor!!" 

I'll see you there. 

Restoring a Draft Pair Harness

 

Restoring old draft harnesses isn't sexy, yet there is a reassurance about the job.  This particular set of harness is older than most.  At 41 years -- built in 1985 --  it is arguably the first spotted show draft pair harness I ever sold to a customer.  It is the oldest harness I've ever tried to restore (to date).  Rebuilding attempts in the 80s might pre-date it, but those were for myself.

No he's not a shrinky, just angled different

 I took on the job last year [2025], but it's only been since late May that I've been able to get going on it.  The plan was fairly simple:  Clean, polish and replace the buckles with gold-filled wire.  Easy, right??  That was before I realized that the leather, dried out for decades in Colorado air, had done something I've rarely seen,... and never been able to fix.  Despite heroic efforts by others to save the tack with oiling and greasing, the straps had no strength and would break at a touch.  Everything but the patent was cracking and falling apart.  The thing was cursed.  I made up a term for it:  Dehydration disintegration.  There was nothing for it but complete replacement.

Harness restos can be boring because you can't really see the difference between old and new;  but let's try.  Here is the old pole strap/breast strap arrangment:  note the dullness of the brass.  Also note the large-ish split rings on the ends of the hames;  that loewr hame strap has its own keeper, but trust me that keeper isn't inset or sewn into the collar in any way.  For this collar, that was a poor design choice.  The hames didn't like to stay in their groove.

Here are the hardware parts of the old pole/breast arrangement.  If anyone is wondering whether they should use brass wire in model tack, let this be the answer.

Whenever bare brass touches leather, its copper interacts with the tannins, creating verdigris.  The verdigris, mildly poisonous, is thick on the tongue buckles.  Below:  one bright ring stands out:  it's been polished.  The strap at upper right is a new one;  it connects the collar top (at the withers, not the peak) to the backpad hook, and its ring and buckle are gold-filled.  See what I mean:  Even close up, there's not much visual difference in a photograph between the old brass and the bright gold!  But in person, yes, it is noticeable.

I polished and polished.  I kept the keepers;  heaven help us, they seemed strong and there's very little strain on keepers.  Some of the old lace could pass my 'pull test.'  But, once started, I wanted to be consistent in replacing strappage.  My shop's lace has been kept in airtight dark.  No oiling or greasing was done on the replacement straps;  their very newness should keep the harness safe for another 40 years, provided, I think, that the set is kept in a reasonable climate and not sunned too much.  (On this point I offer up my own model harness collection, approaching 50 years and kept unsealed in normal indoor air but not direct sun, oiled maybe once with Lexol and rarely cleaned.  None of my tack has done this disintegration trick.)
 

Here's one of the old martingales.  The brasses (here, the crescent) were precious, imported from England (Lenham Pottery) at the time, as were the hames.  The brasses were so expensive each harness has only five.  They are gold-plated pot metal, and due to that gold they had nothing to fear from those 41 years.   Gold is the answer, either by plating or filling*, if you want tack to last for a really long time.  For full scale it is damningly expensive but at model scales it can be afforded.

*plating = 0.05% gold by weight, cheaper than filling = 5% gold by weight

 What's particularly charming about handling this ancient harness is seeing the design.  I was just starting out back then;  I didn't have the hardware options we have now, but I knew the function of the parts.  I was trying to get the pole strap/breast strap arrangement to show a harness brass on the chest (pretty ornamentation) and yet still be able to stop a loaded wagon via the breeching, which lines up with it (harness is lines of force).  I didn't know I could make a roller buckle for the breast strap.  I opted for a dee ring, sleeved with an aluminum ferrule or roller, handmade of course.  The snaphook fastens directly onto that dee.

 Thus you have the pole strap, whose lines of force run directly from the end of the wagon pole in front of the horse (imagine it snapped to the hook), between the front legs via the martingale (drooping here), through the belly ring, splitting to the 2 sidestraps and fastening to the breeching, which wraps around the hindquarters.  The breast strap, running from side to side, helps hold up the pole strap and adds some 'holding-back' power from the collar and traces.  Between and beneath, the beautiful chest brass shines out, neatly out of the way.  The top strap of the martingale wraps around the collar throat, and its buckle isn't even sewn in.  There is an elegant simplicity here.

Curiously this harness's chest brasses were mounted on flat leather chafes,... unlike the patent leather which backed every other brass.  You may be sure I replaced them with patent!  Did I run out? or was just sloppy??  I'll never know.  It's equally a mystery to me why the patent leather would not be so affected by the dehydration disintegration.

Earlier I mentioned the lower hame strap.  Here we see the old (right) and the new (left).  I've made the rings in the hames as small as I could (and from stainless steel) and inset 2 keepers so the hames can't possible escape.  There is barely room for them, but they are critical.

 And here are the upper hame straps.  The old harness didn't know how to inset, or sew into the groove, its hame strap keepers.  It thought merely using keepers on the hame straps would do the job.  But patent is slippery.  The newly restored collars feature keepers sewn into the groove,.. a real trick, using awls and chisels to get the lace stuffed in the cracks and then triangular needles to stitch them down, along the seam lines.  It may look similar, but believe me, once you've fastened everything up those hames are not gonna slip around any more.

These collars are very old,... from the start of my career.  They are probably unique, an evolutionary step on the way to today's methods.  Here's a glimpse of how I was solving the problem of making collar peaks in miniature.  

There is a lot going on there, not least using patent for the bottom face, something we don't do nowadays.  The large collar-top buckle in the above shot is turned back;  normally it is angled the other way and the wide (3/8") lace passes through it, forming the collar top.  The double wire, looking straight, is the bottom of the bell wire, coming out of the peak and going forward to form the hook.

Most amazing of all, all the spots were made from straight pins.  That's not something I would ever do again!  I'm leaving those little bits of metal alone.  If they're not fiddled with they'll lie pretty much in place.  Egad, the power of 25-year-old tackmakers.

Left new, right old

Next up:  girths and backpads...

More Mink Art

 

 I do so enjoy supporting my favorite hobby artist!  She has just about never disappointed me.  I am very tickled to finally have a painting by Mink—!!  I don’t know know how she manages to minimize repeats on the bonus stickers, either.  The skills of this particular equine artist are nothing short of astonishing.  There are other artists I support, but this one gets the lion's share (despite being named after a small mammal)...

We'll start here, at the box stage.  I'd never actually bought a framed painting from a live artist that I knew before, blush blush.  When this arrived I knew instantly what must be inside.

It's been much too long since I've shared my hauls by Mink [Sarah Minkiewicz-Bruenig].  I have been collecting pins all along, and at this point I have 9 black velvet display boards, of which 4 are full and the other 5 nearly so.  I was familiar with how pins arrived;  I open those bubble envelopes by cutting the adhesive with a knife, thus saving some of it for future use.  In contrast, the box was stuffed tight with cornstarch-base packing peanuts and the painting was wrapped in brown paper.  Sorry no shots of unboxing,...  The stretched canvas was stapled onto a slim but firm wooden frame.

Up to this point the only non-HSO art I had by hobby friends was a small bear portrait from Sue Rowe and a couple of painted rocks by Heather Moreton.   I think I was jealous of others' larger paintings, seen while visiting.  When this piece by Mink turned up, I thought the riverine theme perfect for a pair of canoeists.   I was right -- George loves it too.

It's now hung in my basement's only hallway, right outside the computer room.  Amazingly, there was a small nail at the right height in the wall, hidden by the previous poster.  No wires needed!!  The whole piece makes me so happy and uplifts an area that was stuck in a rut decor-wise.  Best of all, it was quite affordable for a one-of-a-kind Mink piece.  Win win!

The 3 packages contained a total of 4 stickers, another surprise from Mink.  It always blows me away how she can include stickers I don't have.  The Dancing Horse, Roo #74, neatly fits in.  I love all the pintos and that one was new to my collection.  

The pair of "bookmark" shaped Talisman horses was a winner -- I didn't have them either.  The round orange-colored medallion is a duplicate,.. but a very pretty one.  Bling is the rule with Mink stickers and I'm so spoiled by it I hardly even look at non-sparkly stickers anymore...

Of the two pins, the Runequine Talisman III (left) is the most unusual for me.  Normally I do not collect these highly stylized horses, preferring the Dancing Horses, the Imperial Unicorns and the other more realistic works.  But I already had a pair of Runequines and somehow this one sneaked in to keep them company, and to match the first purple.  Here he is in package,

 and here he is on the board with his friends.   The little "cherry pops" in the centers of the spiral joints are such a nice touch, and yes, they are glitter.

 Apparently I'm a sucker for matching sets, alack, alas.  Speaking of matching sets, looky here.  The Zigbys have been having a field day.  I now have all of them but the very first, the Rainbow.

How Mink manages to find new ways to express and celebrate the variations of this dauntless little guy is beyond me.  Zigby leads a charmed life.  With all the releases in one place like this, it's hard to pick a favorite.  However I do have one:  I love the Halloween Zigby best.  The glittersparkle in his white, unseen here but visible in this 2023 blog post Three of a Kind, is unique amongst Zigbys (unless the Rainbow has it,...), and rare in all her pins.  The white Runequine to the left of my matched pair above has it, though unseen here.

I'm going to include one last shot of these six.  It is less exposed and tries to show their colors more clearly.  You can see the copper on the upper left, and the green Vernal is a bit more in focus.

For those who are going to BreyerFest:  I have a fistful of Minkiewicz pins for sale, some of them duplicates.  See them in Room 612!

Swans at Crex Meadows NWR

 

This post covers a bare hour or so in a 23-day birding trip.  Much of the trip was intense, and very good bird-wise, but didn't get captured on film.  This particular encounter was quite special for me though, and --miracle of miracles -- I got it with my own camera.  The date was May 27;  like nearly all the best birdwatching activity, the time was early in the morning.

Crex Meadows National Wildlife Refuge is a rather famous birding destination just outside Grantsburg, WI, along the upper western border of that state.  It's about halfway between Minneapolis and Duluth.  This tiny town is centered around birding tourism, and we stayed at a very nice hotel there, the Trail Inn.  It had clerkless check-in with a magic unlock box for the key (a first for us).  The NWR was barely 10 minutes out of town, a luxury that later resulted in us returning to the hotel for naps.  This had its own adventurous consequences, which perhaps I shouldn't emphasize;  let's just say we got lucky and the hotel's contractor-at-large rescued us from a potentially bad lockout situation, saving our bacon.  I would still recommend that hotel, perfect for everything, except, perhaps, internet connectivity,...

At this point in our trip, 2 weeks in, we had seen Trumpeter Swans by the dozen, but only one cygnet (baby swan).  I was getting desperate.  Swans, swans, swans, lumps of white everywhere, in fields, in lakes and ponds;  but cygnets??  The Canadas had goslings, but the tiny gray cygnets were missing.  I was really starting to worry. 

And then we pulled up alongside Crex Meadows first big lake and there they were.

 I scrambled with my camera.  I was shooting from the driver's seat.  Forgive the slight tilts to some of these.

I was delighted to see six cygnets!!  Yes, FINALLY at last!!  There was just one problem,...

 

Mom and Dad were so busy eating I couldn't get anything but their tails.  Now to be fair, these big birds, the largest Swan in the world, need to eat a lot.  The weather had been so cold for half our trip, drizzly and rainy too.  Spring was very late.  It was a test of our own endurance;  what must it have been for them?  But I'd obsessed over those little guys.  Anyone can see goslings and ducklings;  I wanted cygnets, dang it!!  I stuck to my guns, and here, at last, I was rewarded.

 Over time, I zoomed in and shot better, and the swans moved gently away.  They weren't afraid so much as seeking better grazing.  Below, the right swan has a grass blade in its bill.

 For the rest of the trip I never saw 6 cygnets together again.

Here are some shots of the larger Refuge.  Later we would have incredible adventures here, culminating in our 198th bird of the trip (Nighthawk) and me hearing a wild Bittern calling for half an hour.  Oh that was truly meaningful to me and magical, the crown and crest of a fantastic trip,..

For the record, we got home with 201 species.  The 200th was the Prothonotary Warbler and the 201st was Ruddy Ducks;  both of these were at Maple River, in MI.  Below, Crex Meadows first lake again, showing the far shore.

 Here's a patch of American Lotus, unusual in its number of blooms so early in the cold year.

These last 2 shots were taken with my cell phone, proving, I suppose, that I can take pictures when I really want to.  It is so easy on a trip like this not bother with them,... but I know there will be times I would regret that.  See all those little white dots on the water?  Those are Trumpeter Swans.

This last sign explains the origin of the name.   This is also about the only place where we touch horses on a bird trip;  wire grass was used for stuffing cushions and making floor mats (amoung other things) in the horse-drawn vehicle era and up through the early 20th Century.

 Thank you for your patience!

Future blog posts will attempt to cover visiting Corky & Ardith, Paula and Eleanor, Mink stuff [Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig], other people's tack collections and,... who knows!