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.