Tawny Round One

 

The original title for this post was Palomino Relief, intended to go with my earlier post Palomino Insatiety.  The more time that goes by, the more I feel the need to share all those pix taken on June 5 -- the day she arrived -- and the less I need to gripe about how late that arrival was.  While she reinforced all my reasons to buy a Stone "only when in the hand,"  I spent her first day here blazing away.  The result was a huge trove of shots with many splendid pieces of headgear, accumulated over decades, to show off.  What better place to start catching up on blogging?!  above:  Maximilian's Bridle, headstall by Heather Moreton and reins by S. B. Young/TSII.

The amazing thing about this horse is she's better on camera than in person.  Spielberg sums it up with his realization that he didn't believe something was true until he saw it on film.

TSII Dry's Orange Hackamore

The name on my folder of pix is Sassy Round One.  It is a thing of Stone's to name every horse.  Tawny can never be rid of this association.  But in my herd and in my heart, each individual has their own name, built up out of multiple adventures and journeys and experiences unique unto themselves.  From now on, the more I call her by that name, the more she is my own and not Stone's, a true member of King's Herd, looking forward to her own tack, her own stallion and foal and other model-y rewards.  My original name for her was Tawny Gold.  At least for now, given my gripes, she's just Tawny... and that is a good name.

We'll start with two pieces profiled in my new book.  (The book covers how to make them.)  The first is Fancy's Hackamore.  The rider is one of Anne Field's dolls;  I named her Chalif.  The turquoises just set each other off gloriously. 

Fancy's Hackamore goes well with the Elk.

TSII #432, the Elk

 Another thoroughly-covered bridle is the TSII's Peach Rose.  There really is something about pink on palominos!  This might be a chance to get a glimpse of the Peach Rose saddle too.

TSII Peach Rose

 Of course, Sassy was designed in honor of Tiffany Purdy, one of the founders of Volo Artem.  Pink is a natural for her.  

 If the background is grayish or olive-y, it's because the shot was too dark and had to be lightened. 

This next bridle is by Danielle Hart.  I'm restraining myself to just one pic here,... and just one pun.  That Arab head really is small.

Purple Hart

This particular saddle and bridle set is by Erin Corbett.  I thought the brown, cream and gold tones would look fantastic with Tawny.  I made the blanket.  Turn the horse around and the head isn't small anymore;  instead, that near fore lengthens quite a bit.

 Erin used translucent beads for the earpiece and tinted glass jewels on the saddle.   There is a natural coordination with Tawny's colors.  I'm finding out that delicacy is called for with this head.

Erin Corbett saddle, bridle

With delicacy as my guiding light, I reached for one of the more interesting bridle/breastcollar sets in my collection.  This is a piece by Australian Rebecca Dunne of Griffyndoon.  She had a blaze of popularity around 2007 - 2010, and then vanished, as tackmakers often do.  

Griffyndoon 2007

 Finally a piece that really suits this gracile-headed horse!  You can forgive the heavy saddle.

For contrast, here is a most delightful but almost too heavy bridle for her.  This piece was designed by me and built by Jacquee Gillespie of NM, who also did the silver.  I'm showing the whole horse so you can see the tassel ends of the reins.

 This is a fantastic braided bridle.  It's important enough to be my cell phone wallpaper.

Jacquee Gillespie braidwork & silver

Note how the two cheeks have different fastening and adjusting methods.  One is a foldover ring and the other is buckled, a unique design.

She's so pretty!  but this head really does need a light touch.

Here's an old, old piece, dating back to 1997.  I made this out of dental floss.  To this day it's our only white fully braided rawhide bridle created.  White is not really a good color for braided tack because it picks up dirt so well.  Again I'm showing the whole body shot so you can see the end tassels on the reins.

It's not as heavy as it could be on her, both because of color and from the material size.  She looks rather noble here!

TSII (Susan Bensema Young) 1997

 There's just something about the touches of red that really pop on a palomino.

 This next one I am also granting 3 pictures to, showing as much detail as possible.  It's a bridle I seldom display at all.  It was made by Kim Smith of Florida circa 2009.  The reins are by Vicky Norris.

Kim Smith 2009, Norris reins

In this view the face drop is clearly visible.  Clever design!

Here I've turned her even further, and gotten an angle rarely seen on this mold -- rarely even in this post.  Can't get bored here!

Kim Smith headstall

 In finishing this first round of photos of Tawny, we drift towards what was originally planned after all the headgear:  saddles and harness.  This final bridle is not technically braidwork.  The jewels in the silver plates simply sold me on the set;  I could not resist them.  There is a blog post from 2017 on this saddle:  Gilfoyle (Not!) on Copperfox. 

Kelda Goerte saddle & bridle, TSII blanket

 Alas, the jewels on the saddle don't really show in these photos.  The colors of the blanket suggest them;  that's the best I can do here.  I thought the set's overall smoothness and level of detail would be good on this horse, and I was right.

 Having seen every possible combo of this model, let's end on an intimate moment between man and mount.  These two trust each other, and that's what counts.

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What's next?  It will be a while before I sit down to Round Two of tack on this horse.  I'm much more likely to blog about real tack I own, the flat braid set I just finished, the fabulous prince of a silver saddle I was given in TX, or my plans for my next 2 parade sets.  Or any other random subject, if I know me,...  NaMo is coming, and even though I won't be here for its entire month, I still entertain visions of painting a palomino Stone ASB then.  We have the body.  His name is Cotinga and he will be husband to Tawny here,...

 

Dawes Arboretum

 

A month and a week ago, on October 1st, I and my husband were visiting Dawes Arboretum.  This fascinating place is just north of I-70, about thirty miles east of Columbus, OH.  This was our third time at a site that has quickly become a family favorite.  I don't know when we made it policy that vast public gardens were the perfect spots to spin down from long family trips with;  but that policy has given us some very happy endings.  This time it gave us a very happy beginning.

 Of course, being me, I had a horse along.  Five, actually, but only one got into the pictures.  This is my new mare Sabina, herself named along the way -- a town in Ohio I believe.   I'd better mention that the saddle is by Kathleen Bond and the hackamore is by the most prolific and famous tackmaker of us all (no it's not me).  Anonymous has made more tack than anyone...  The real story here is that the tack pieces taken on trips must be play-worthy and can stand both the gaff of hard use and the risk of loss.

And what better place to carry a workin' horse than the beautiful trails of Dawes. 

Dawes Arboretum will charge you about ten bucks to enter a place where you could easily spend several days just doing the trails.  There's a visitor center, specialty gardens, auto tours and many many acres of the most amazing trees ever created.  I suppose being out in the wild for so long breeds great respect and need for a controlled wild:  for a place that blends gracefully with the hand of man, and benefits from it, yielding peace.  Being a birdwatcher for 35+ years has given me an increasing interest in the trees themselves.  Yet here I only know how wonderful it feels to wander around in a truly lovely landscape laid out to foster tree species.

 Here the oaks, there the holly, over there some birches, yonder the evergreens, cypresses and Oriental maples.  There's a Japanese garden and lake.  Strange trees everywhere.  Dawes is nearly 2,000 acres.  The weather was perfect.  

Did I mention the cypresses?  One of our favorite activities, canoeing, has taken us deep into Southern cypress and tupelo swamps for years.  Image how delighted we were to find that Dawes has not one, not two, but three cypress groves.  One is a swamp (as you would expect), and one is a formal Dawn Redwood collection, in rows.  There is a third one that, given the scale of Dawes, is so small it doesn't figure on the map!  It's north of the Japanese garden and stands at the foot of the trail marked in red.  (I've included a map further down.)  That third one is where we were going next.

 But first:  a very Halloween-y tree, a weeping Arbor Vitae type.  Dawes is full of little surprises like this.  You just want to stop and be reminded of [the book's description of] Treebeard in the Lord of the Rings.  Not that this is Treebeard,.. it looks rather wizard-y to me...

Turning ever more to the left, the third grove comes into sight.  It's not that small, being about 8 trees deep and twenty or so trees wide.  There is something about a regular grove that moves my heart.  Having lived and moved in the wild open plains as a horse-lover for so long, the presence of orchards and groves makes me pause, and feel how sacred a cathedral-like outdoor space can be.  Wood Between the Worlds, from Narnia,...

Photos can't do them justice.  The trail through these younger trees leads to the greatest grove in the place,.. at least in my estimation.  This section is more like a warm-up, a preparation for the later, larger, older one. 

 

 

Below is my husband George in the third grove.  Dawes does not pass up the opportunity to teach the public, but it is not overbearing, distracting or pedantic, like some parks.

 

 

Before I get to the last picture of the last grove, I want to give a better idea of this place.  You can't see it all in one visit.  Take in just a few sections each time.  On the map, the grey is pavement for cars, the colors are trails.  On this visit we were following the red trail seen at the upper left.  A better version of this map can be found at their website:  Dawes Arboretum.

  

The map shows its name at the bottom.  What you can't tell from there is that these letters are actually formed from giant hedges planted in shapes.  The name can be seen from the air.  I know this Google Maps capture doesn't show them clearly, but look carefully just below the lake:

It really is a mass of hedge, higher than my head and nearly half a mile long.  I have been there.  I don't envy the trimmers!

This last shot, once more, doesn't really do the place justice.  What's more rows of trees, after so many?  But Geo and I love cypresses, and these are all mature old Dawn Redwoods planted when we were infants.  The view is crosswise, with the length of the grove extending down to the left.  It's the largest and best grove in the place, the most remote, and yes, my favorite.

 Other large public gardens we have found on our travels include Washington Oaks in Florida and Palmer Gardens in Kansas.  There's also Luce Rose Garden in Kansas City and Longview Gardens right here in central Pennsylvania.  I have Geo to thank for being the flower person in the family, and his mother before him.  These places grow on you... yes, that was on purpose.

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 Other news:  Having completed the portrait bridle and breastcollar, I want to start on a pair of silver Parade saddles;  yet the lure of braidwork is strong.  I may try to squeeze out a single bridle and sell it online.

 

Niche's on Cosimo

This is one of those posts that started out innocently enough -- new horse in old costume -- but then took a completely amazing turn into deep history, astonishing me and blowing the whole thing into another dimension.  If this doesn't wind up as a vast case of intentional teasing it will be a miracle -!  Rabbit holes are just that:  wormholes through space into another place and time.  Clearly there's far more potential here;  but I'm out of time, I'm about to skip town.  We'll have to wait until I get back to see more.

When my new Cosimo arrived I was struck by his romantic Old European appearance.  He wasn't merely Baroque;  he was Medieval.  My goodness, Mink, he's a masterpiece!  I started cudgeling my brains as to what I had that would look good on him.

For my entire career I'd been telling people that I've never made an Arab costume.   In the sense that I'd never made one for a customer, that was true.  But several very intriguing and Arab-like costumes had indeed been made, ... for my own use.   

The best of them has been hanging on the top pole of my tack display racks for decades.  It had originally been created for my brindle bay John Henry, who was new in 1988 (the year I got married).  Of course, John Henry wasn't an Arab at all, which was part of the fun.  In the crazy way I name horses, I misread a local forest road.  I came up with Nichecronk [Nee-chay-cronk] and he grabbed onto it.  Cosimo, however, I liked enough to keep.

So far. 

Niche's costume had been made in the time right after my marriage, and it explored strong, new, rich colors and textures:  iridescent black, velvet red, gold.  The saddle tree was handformed from Friendly Plastic (thank you Fa Shimbo).  I followed no instructions, had no guide other than my own wishes on design.  (Maybe some carousel influence!)  It was made for the sheer fun of dressing up and exploring a tack form I hadn't done up to that point.

 The photo shoot happened at sunset in a local park I'd never visited before:  Fasick Park in Willowbrook Estates, technically Boalsburg, just south of State College.  My husband had found it during his year of intensely birding the surrounding county.

 

The costume explored velvet, bright gold, textiles and beads.  The bit was made from hammered brass wire.  The stirrups were jewelry findings.  I was well pleased at how the iridescent black worked with this horse.  Against the park landscape he looked beautifully noble.

 

 And then I started wondering exactly when this costume had been made.  Was there a photo of Niche wearing it in the photograph shoeboxes?  I didn't have a written registry of costumes (unlike the horses and the saddles, ahem, alas), but I did have the 5 shoeboxes, spanning 1978 to 2010, a full 32 years of my tack output and model horse worlds.  If it was anywhere it'd be in there.  Too early for digital of course...  I had a dim memory that the thing had been somewhere around 1992.  First place to look:  When had Nichecronk joined the herd?  Answer:  1988.  Earlier than I'd thought.  I started with the 1978 to 1992 shoebox.

 

The first real clue was Gypsy's wedding dress.  The reason this is a clue is that Gypsy is Niche's wife.  Gypsy Tintinnara, Breezing Dixie to the rest of you: 

 

 The date on her photo was March 1989.  My own wedding had been less than a year before that.  I remembered that bits of the same satin had gone into this costume.  I pawed on, forward through time:  1990, 1991, 1992.  Arab costume halters, colored Parade sets and prism tape halters showed that color and texture were important to me.  And then, at 2-92, something huge leapt out.

 

Glory be, it was the Grand Cavalcade!  

 

 Back then we'd rented a house in west State College, at 430 Airport Road.  We'd called it Niebenkirche [Nee-ben-kur-kuh] or "near church" because there was a church next to it;  near and nearly were both true.   On special occasions I'd held these enormous assemblies of every horse in the herd, usually to celebrate weddings.  THERE THEY WERE:  Right at the head of the parade, behind King and Maria (Fighting Stallion in an enormous pom-pom-fringed blanket and Running Mare in black and green), reigning couple, flanked by Ponderosa as head Shaman and priest, joined by their own son Tesoro (behind King in blue/white) and Goldenear behind Ponderosa, since Decorators were royalty in and of themselves.

 

The costume had been for Niche's wedding, and this was their triumphal procession. 

  

 

 

The bundle of white flowers in front of Gypsy was a tiny model bouquet, sent to me by Julie Froelich as an unexpected gift upon her happening to see the picture of Gypsy's wedding dress.   The flowers were bourne upon the back of an appaloosa FAF, Cricket, who happened to be the son of Gypsy and Niche.  (Now don't let's get into timing issues,...!)

 

The procession started at the end of the couch, extended to the other end and turned back 180 degrees.  And then the Cavalcade had spread out around the rest of the house.  Niebekirche had a complete loop of a floor plan:  you could indeed walk around in a circle through the rooms.   Looks like my Eight-Horse-Hitch of Black Belgians had been involved.   That made sense:  Their harnesses had been started in 1990 and would have been just finished.  Colts in the wagon bed!   Followed by my 6 Dapple Grey Clydes, as close as they could come to the same performance,...  Er-ma-gerd, ancient old harnesses on them,... and SO much more,...

 

 Astounding to think I had enough horses and tack to circle the house three times.  But I remembered the glorious flood.  I had photographed it thoroughly.  There they all were:  Every blanket, every notable piece of tack, even the bull for the piano.  No one was left out.  It even looked like other couples, in wedding finery (I had another wedding costume from Fashion Star Fillies) had joined in the happy throng.  Good heavens, the turquoise/white/red costume, three horses behind Niche, was my other Arab costume...

  

 

Even the Stablemates got in on it!! 

Perusing all the photos, I saw that my dear old friend Gretchen's carpet herd (all 15 of them) were here too.  She must have been visiting.  That went a ways towards explaining the fuss;  Gre lived several hours away.  Oh what fun.  It had been a happy day.

 

So Niche's costume existed at this time, February of 1992.  It could not have been made earlier than 1988.  My answer lay somewhere in that window of 4 years.  Not bad, given that I had not photographed it upon completion (bad girl!) nor written any accessible notes about it.  The problem with handwritten records is it's all but impossible to search them -- !! 

 

So, you won't get to see all the parade shots.  You won't get a blow-by-blow explanation of every horse, every costume, every piece of tack.  You won't get to see Niche close up and you won't see the other happy couples, nor the previous horse marriages I have celebrated at our current house, the one after Niebenkirche (1993 on).  Not until I get back, near October 24, and take up the reins again.  By then there will be other subjects to blog on,...  I might blog from the trip, if I can figure out how to do that with a phone,...  cell phone technology is not my strong point, but I can learn,..  

But in the meantime, hasn't this rabbit hole of a parade been a happy memory!

 

Thank you Mink and Cosimo:  You have inspired me. 

 

 

Runicorns 3

 

My pin collecting has carried on all this time.  I'm trying to get every Unicorn pin Minkiewicz Studios releases.  But she is so frightfully prolific!   Here are 3 beautiful "curly" Runicorns.  Forgive the trimmed edges and sometimes-fuzzy results.  It is, as I've often said, extremely hard to photograph these little cuties.

I'm calling these Runicorns 1, 2, and 3.  Their official names are Runicorn Series II green, blue and lavender (not to be confused with Runicorns Series II Talismans)*.  The first is actually backgrounded in chartreuse green, not always my favorite color but it works well here.  He can come out candylike, as above, or like this -- look at that mane!  

What looks black is actually the stunning rainbow-oil-iridescent layer, which worked so well with Chargon.  3 Mink orders  As that blog post documents, it was first used on a unicorn's body in 2023.  A couple of years later, heh there's no stopping her.

 I especially like charger no. 1.  His pose is rampant.  They all are.  

This second Runicorn has the very-typical-of-Mink pose of looking in one direction and leaping the other.  It gives him a Celtic gripping-critter unity, a curling about oneself that lends beautifully to heraldry and logos.  It forms lovely pairs.  It also shows, I think, the sheer athleticism of the unicorn.  Very few deer would do this!

This Runicorn 2 also can appear candylike.  Mink has a perfect sense of color co-ordination.  Forgive the poor focus;  I was shooting squatting and aiming sidewise -- ! 

 I usually collect the more realistic Dancing Horses and Imperial and Celestial (and Jewelled) Unicorns.  What am I doing going after the Runicorns, Cave Pony Unicorns, Unilumes, metal pins of unicorns and god knows what she'll dream up next -- ??!!?

There is a simple elegance to their design that is genuinely classic.

The third Runicorn can look pink:

 Or he can look lavender, which is what he's supposed to be.

 Together the three of them form a unity, which flows from one point to another.  Mink has done many Runicorn pieces in her two series.  These are some of the most enchanting.

*I have compiled an exhaustive spreadsheet of all of Mink's pins, five years' worth at this point.