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.