Dry's Orange Hackamore

 

This post is all about Dry the Sea's beautiful new Hackamore, with its colors of off-white, dark brown and international orange.  I'm keeping it!  The post also talks about my plans (what plans?!) for Christmas on Mane Street and gives a glimpse of my next book's current stage.  This is a very long post, so sit back and enjoy.

I'd been working on a bosal hackamore for myself ever since April.  I'm not sure how long I've been in love with neon orange for model tack;  it's gradually grown over the past few years.  This fascination may have been aided by collecting blankets; I got a bright neon orange one I particularly liked from Hobo Cat Creations (Amber Wylie) somewhere around 2019.  In 2022 I made 2 bosals with blaze orange, one for IMTM and one in November  (see here).  Somehow neon colors seemed appropriate to my current life.

 It was a wonderful coincidence that International Model Tack Month (IMTM) happened at the same time I was finishing up April's Hackamore's chapter and starting Fancy's.  Here's a photo taken April 11 of this year.  In the manner of these things, what started as a fine idea for a nosebutton got completely carried away.  

Above, I'd put in the light blue dummy thread on the white foundation (lots of work, two entire nosebuttons braided at this point), put in 8 brown interweaves in the center (lots of work, the math dictates 4 + 4 instead of 8 at a time), and then it occurred to me to try echoes of bright orange -- !  The result was so exciting I wondered how I would ever get back to what I was supposed to be doing!  I quickly took a few pix, promised to make myself one later, and took them out.  In hindsight, this was another example of repression leading to greater desire.  I don't know why some of the best ideas come after all those bends in the road, but they do.

Thus you all get to see a peek at the next chapter of my next book.  Fancy's is the 6th of 8 pieces profiled.  For those interested, the above bosal still did not qualify for the book, although some of its photos will be used.  (Material out of scale and too hard to get.)  Its fate [not done yet] is to become a gift for a friend.  As promised, I decided to squeeze in a whole 'nother bosal.  IMTM gave a glorious excuse.  Below: Dry's nosebutton before tightening.

Dry's bosal was started on the 11th and finished on the 22nd of April.   This was one of the few times I entered IMTM and completed my piece on time.  We will forgive that the same thing happened in 2022.

May went to family trips.  Not just any trip:  This was the one where we found out five weeks was too long.  CO, WY, MI east coast, MI Upper Peninsula, MN.  Seasoned travelers though we were, there was a limit.  Finding it was uncomfortable and could have been very bad.  That's all I'll say;  but the strains of that trip, and yes the triumphs too, became woven into the hackamore in the way model tack can sometimes carry.  If I'd had any ideas of letting this piece go, they were dropped then. 

Here's one of the many triumphs, shot June 1st by my husband in the Primitive Picnic Ground of Cascade River State Park, North Shore, MN.

Cascade River State Park, MN

What made the hackamore more intense was the effort that had to go into the orange thread.  Since it was too small for my button-braiding standard, I had to spin two threads together, and ultimately three, to make it bigger (thicker).  The thickening was all done by hand, in hotels, inch by inch.  'Precious' thread has more psychic effort in it, more spirit somehow.  This effect is not new to me, tho the color certainly was.  

There was a lot of dinking in the headstall design, particularly the cheeks.  To match an existing bosal was relatively new for me, but great fun.  The brown and white of the braided ring, for example, balances the lack of brown on the browband sides.  These shots don't show it, but the solid orange buttons had to be replaced with a different gauge and a different button.  Below:  Taken September 3.

 One of the more charming stories within this Hackamore is its conchos and buckle.  Stuck in an oil-change waiting room in Boulder CO, I spent a happy hour acquainting myself with every offering of The World of Model Horse Collecting (TWMHC), Alison Beniush's eBay store.  I should've done this years ago!  What riches!  Cast buckles, bits, brow conchos, stirrups, oh, everything!  I had long since reached the stage of being willing to pay for brow conchos.  In a clever plan-ahead, I ordered some hardware for this hackamore so that it'd be waiting for me when I got home.  And it was. 

In the event, the buckle proved too big.  I dealt with this by squeezing it narrower.  I intend to replace it later.  But I absolutely love the class of these tack parts.  Please don't leave us anytime soon Alison!

In early June, while still on the road, I received the news that Colette Robertson's Smaug's Hoarde would be dispersed.   I was immensely relieved that I didn't have to do more than clean up a few pieces and sell them at BreyerFest!  All praise to Christie P. and Kim W.,...  And then, as is known, those pieces swelled in numbers from a few to 8 to 10 to more, and their cleaning-up swelled to updating, repair, rebuilding and restoring.  This was followed by auction holding, writing letters, photographing, blogging, banking (which took weeks), packing, shipping.  There went June.  There went the first part of July.  There went BreyerFest, and my 5-day covid quarantine after (I passed).  It was about then I found that working on Dry's Hackamore had become a psychological necessity.

I told myself that making his mecate was working on my next book.  This lovely mecate was made the same way that Rinker's was, and his is the last piece for the book.  His mecate is the most detailed of all four mecates included.  I needed to test my measurements.  Dry's mecate, however, showed me they were still off.  H'mm, hmm, what does that do to hopes of finishing -- !!

Photographing a piece dark (underexposed) tends to bring out the orange.

 Dry's mecate was finished last week, at the end of August.  Yesterday, rejoicing in new horses, I held a quick photo shoot.  There are lots of pictures here of the hackamore on 3 other horses.  The star has to be my new Jota and his neon orange Jaapi halter.  You can bet I grabbed that halter at BFest the moment I saw it!  Thanks Jody of Jaapi!

It's a bit challenging to photograph so contrasting a horse.  Shade helps.  The saddle here is a Terry Newberry.  I thought the purple blanket would go well with the orange.

Below: a close-up of this horse, whom I've named Beyond the Pale.  I confess that this portrait was Photo-Shopped to fluff out the two tassels and remove the mouth hole.  The original straggly tassel can be seen above.  Time and play have fluffed it more since.

Here's Miss Independent.  This time I looked for a saddle blanket with orange in it.  The jewel tones of another saddle's blanket (by me) was as close as I could come with my existing collection.  The saddle is TSII #446, the Peach Rose.

I  particularly like this portrait.  Aren't those warm colors something!  Yes, I am etching her mane to white.  The angle of browband to bosal gives her a quirky playfulness.

One last horse, a blood red bay.  The orange does not fare too badly against this color.

This mold, Roxy, has a sweetly wistful feminine face.  Photo-Shopped to remove the hole and fluff the mecate tassel.

In Other News:

I have finally begun work again on Fancy's chapter, so long put off.  Colette's beautiful TSII #325, an exquisite Classic scale prism tape Parade Set, will get restored when I can, -- hopefully soon, -- and it and TSII #402 are promised a blog post of their own.  Truly Colette held the best of the best.

My plans for Christmas on Mane Street have taken a very long time to germinate.  I'm still not 100% sure I'll have anything to offer; or how to offer it.  (Time spent on FB should cure that technological hurdle.)  I thought Mane Street would be a good opportunity to advertise my first book, the Guide;  but that turned out not to be the intention.  My October goes to another trip (3 weeks this time!) so I only have Sept and Nov.  I'm currently thinking that mecates and bosals for Fancy's chapter will yield something.  They don't have to be in the original colors.   I'll know more at the end of the month.

As ever, Thanks for your patience.