Me and NaMoPaiMo

I wish I'd kept a copy of what I wrote in the comments for my NaMoPaiMo entry.  It was downright funny! along the lines of:  Although following the crowd is anathema to me, this horse of all my 13 unfinisheds is talking to me most strongly.  "Flame mane copper liver chestnut," he says, "that's as close as you'll get, Akhal Tekes don't come in silver bay."  "But you don't have a mane," I say.  "Sculpt some," he says, "thirty-nine years in the hobby has given you the skills."  "I'll call you Brasenose," I say.

It was surely one of my best paragraphs.  Brasenose, incidentally, means bronze nose:  rather appropriate for a metallic-copper-tinted horse, don't you think?  It's the name of a college in Oxford England, a building actually, and I got it reading Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers (one of my favorite Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries) at the time I was buying this horse.  I found out that the bronze doorknocker of the building, in the shape of a dog's head, gives it its name.  It's a very English name for a very Russian horse.  This contrast, like the mane/no mane, perfectly represents my ambivalence towards the project.

Of course the horse was talking to me.  In the NaMoPaiMo FaceBook group I see posts from people asking what color to paint their horses.  Use your imagination and give it time.  Eventually even  tack may speak to you.  Tack certainly speaks to me!

My story begins with an MH$P ad, but the roots go back to becoming interested in jogging and race-running for health reasons.  Of the many breeds I've identified with in my life, the current one is clearly solidifying: the Akhal Teke and its ancestor the Turkmene (E.H.Edwards' Horse Type 3).  Who'd'a thunk it!!  since I was raised on Quarter Horses and went through Belgians and Paso Finos...  whose favorite color was black bay tobiano and favorite breed, if you'd asked, was the Moroccan Pinto... (all right, let's go off the rails for a moment and confess my real favorite breed, the Zalar:  a carousel horse carved by John Zalar!!)  Anyway I'd been focusing on Akhal Tekes for a couple years, such as Breyer's Lonesome Glory and the CollectAs.  Then I started noticing resincasts.

Last year I'd had my Mini Rose Khan painted by Jennifer (Danza) O'Donnell.  I asked for the "Golden Horse" coffee table book for Christmas, and got it!!  (Thank you Janet!)  When I saw Margarita Malova's Gazyr and Magnolia on MH$P last October, I was smitten.

Photo by Margarita Malova

As cute as that foal was, the stallion was what grabbed me.  I could find very little wrong with his conformation.  Every other Ahkal Teke resin was either unaffordable or just didn't look right to me.  This one, though of very limited production (the ad promised a mere 10 copies) was within my range.  The fact that he was part of the Russian wave just added to his allure.  My husband and I had great fun following the postal tracking of his box.
(I don't think he's really limited to 10 copies, by the way.)

Notice the Cyrillic characters on the box.

 At the same time I was trying to decide whether to join NaMoPaiMo.  I had extremely complicated feelings about it.  My observations are part of this blog (Thoughts on NaMoPaiMo) but my actual participation centered around a saddle blanket.  How's that again?  A saddle blanket for a silver parade set:  a black-and-white corona.

Of all the participants in the first National Model Painting Month, I'll wager I was the only one doing a piece of tack.  And I must have been the record-holder in confused feelings, because I was trying to keep the saddle under wraps (command of the owner) while viscerally responding to the trumpetcall of a FaceBook group passionately involved in something I cared about.  Not the horse-painting so much as the group dynamics were what called me.  I was new to FaceBook still, and here was history being made, right in front of me.  I read most posts.  I stubbornly clung to what had been true for decades:  I was a tackmaker, not a painter.  What I needed from this huge and wonderful push was to get that corona done.  It had the benefit of truth.  I did finish.

Arrow shows white band.  TSII #456 'Star Wars'

I look back now and credit myself with an original and perfectly acceptable solution to my situation, but at the time I was so shy I only managed squeaks of comments on other people's horses.  (It takes time to form new habits of gabbing in public when one's decades-long hobby history was carried out by handwritten letter.)  Plus, this organization was NEW, and no one really knew how it would turn out.  I was, and still am, very strongly trained not to post anything on FaceBook that could possibly be construed as a criticism.

Starting to sculpt the mane

Well, it turned out fine.  I don't think I could go so far as to credit politics with inspiring a spirit of supporting inclusiveness in defense against hard times, but those times were right for NaMoPaiMo's attitude of helpfulness.  Even professional tackmakers need psychic support, as it turns out.
Of course the next thing that happened was NaMoTackMo.  You'd think that would be a natural for me.  It was.  My habits of reticence proved too strong for me to take a hostess position (plus I honestly didn't have the time), yet I enjoyed it very much.  Many good pieces were born and many good posts written.  Tackmaking is different than horse-painting, and there was a far higher rate of 'failures' or non-completions; still, I used the energies of NaMoTackMo to help finish my monster silver parade saddle,  TSII #456, 'Star Wars.'

What a fantastic idea my hobby had come up with!  This was worth joining FaceBook after all.  For all its time-wasting, it had merit.  But paint a horse??  I hadn't painted a horse since 1983...!!!

Not true.  I had painted the mane and tail on the Moody Minuet seen in my last blog post (Silver Acorn) in 1996.  I had painted any number of figures on my saddles.  I had etched something like 6 horses.  Painting was, if not directly used, at least in my toolbox of skills.  Brasenose had been perfectly right.

Other hobbyists, particularly Lisa and Bobbie, encouraged me.  It will be these few, I am sure, who will see me through.  I haven't got a crowd personality; perversely, I interpret heaps of people leaping on something as a sure sign I should run.  I suppose it is related to my husband's hatred of traffic jams and big cities.  I'm not just afraid of a crowd; when people do something just because others are doing it, I lose my respect for them.  It's a narrow path to tread:  sovereign independence versus the connectivity FaceBook gives in spades, and which I find I need after all.  If I can keep my courage (and of course manage the time!), I just might succeed.

As for the mane part:  I had sculpted several saddle trees, particularly that of the Clyde Goehring set (Tree Fun) and I still had the Apoxie that Ann Bilon had gifted me.  Brasenose was right again.  There was no stopping this skinny Russian horse.  He might not have a partner or wife, he didn't even have eyes yet, but he sure had ideas!

Today I finally set aside time to make a mane for him.  I wanted it to be sparse and thin, yet long enough to show a flaxen color shading to bright at the tips.  One hard part was creating it so as to allow for future tack wearing: "tack friendly."  I'd seen enough Akhal Tekes to know where the necklaces go.  For all my grumping that I wasn't interested in Akhal Teke tack making (truth:  I've never made a set, never bought one and never been tempted), that mane speaks more truly of my intentions.

Grenendere, PAS in the background, is for the carousel saddle restoration.

We come now to a mystery.  How did I happen to choose to try pastels?  I think it was by elimination.  I didn't want acrylics, which I somehow equated with enamels and didn't like the finish-feel of.  I didn't want oils, which would smell too much and besides had a cachet of professionalism I wasn't ready for.  I didn't want to use an airbrush, although I had one; I wanted the handheld tactile control of a paintbrush, something I'd known from tack for 30 years.  My mother had dabbled in pastels when I was growing up.  The thought of slowly layering on powders was strangely akin, in my mind, to dyeing leather, which happens by layers.  The only sticking point was the sealant spraying.  I could not do that in the house, for reasons familial, medical and historical.  Somehow I had to get around that.

Customizing the ears: a bit smaller, with curved tips

So that's how it happened that I can blame a model horse for causing me to clean out the storage barn.  It's a long chain, but it does connect. 

The offside ear is now done too.

Some Akhal Tekes have ears that curve inwards.  The Golden Horse book claims they may be the ancestral stock of the Marwari and Kathiawari.  Gazyr has very long, big ears.

As of now, the barn is not cleaned out.  Finding the time has been my main sticking point; unlike some young participants, I have a house and a husband and a career to take care of.  Plus, what is not obvious:  documenting a project just adds to the time it takes.  I don't have a percentage but it must be considerable: say about 30%.
But the vision is clear:  I know what color I want.  In a purely personal fashion, my goal is not so much a real horse (though I do have photos) as another model.  I want the copper-enhanced liver chestnut of Stone's Ragtime and Jazz.  I started out wanting a copper Wedgewood -- how simple that would've been!  There's nothing in the rules saying it has to be realistic --  then switched to silver bay.  Then, realizing (thanks Lesli) that Akhal Tekes don't come in silver bay, I made up a color.  Brasenose started talking, and he's been talking ever since.

Wish me luck.  And come join us.

It was Bob

Since the subject of this post is metaphysical and paranormal, I originally planned few illustrations.  That was before I looked up how many canoe pictures I had of one of the rivers we had done this trip, the great St Johns.  Now you get all the best shots from when we did the St Johns in December 2014.  Current shots exist but aren't yet available  : (  in any case they would be similar.

Over the [2017-2018] holidays a haunting thing happened, something that's only happened to me once before.  In essence it is a Message from Beyond.  I say "is" because these things happen outside of time, yet they are the essence of instantaneous.  They go a far way towards convincing me Not of everlasting life or communication with the dead, but rather evidence that there is a Connection, on a level I am barely aware of and can't explain, with what can only be described as a Web or Network of all living beings and creatures, past, present and probably future, in a timeless and simultaneous presence.

Sound familiar?

I have wanted all my life to have some sort of paranormal experience -- me, the daughter of an engineer and the wife of a science professor! -- so I am proud of my two instances.

Each one has arrived in the form of a thought, a subliminal sense, a suspicion of a change in the status of someone I knew.  The first time the someone was an author I'd never met, but read a lot.  The second time it was a fellow model horse hobbyist whom I'd seldom met, but knew and had worked with.

Out on safari, canoeing in Florida, I don't always know what day it is.  I can only guess that this latest occurrence happened a couple days before the New Year.  I and my husband have done these trips for almost a decade now, paddling the rivers and lakes of central Florida, hiking and birdwatching all the while.  With a mind full of species counts, bird identification questions, canoeing gear, navigation, weather, the state of one's muscles and dealing with river currents (not to mention attention paid to one's partner), I was days away from anything online.  Only books are read on safari.  It was with some surprise that I found myself wondering about one particular hobbyist.  Out of hundreds that I knew, why would one old lady (not THAT old!), with whom I had no current business dealings, now be on my mind so???
The awareness was one of sadness, as though she had suddenly been smitten:  as though she had died.

I found myself, then, while intently focusing on canoeing (a slow-motion sport which, like fishing, demands constant alertness while in a trance state), wondering whether Jane Wagner had died.
Jane Wagner?  She's not old enough, man!  Though accidents happen, Lor' knows; I know enough people, I suppose some of them are going to start kicking off, but I never thought it would be her.
Did Jane Wagner die??

The sense of awareness was quite specific.  I promised myself I'd check out her FaceBook next chance I got.  But safari is safari and it was 3 or 4 days before I could do so.  We have a tablet that can be used in hotels, and so occasionally I check out my online life, with difficulty I confess.  I know, I know, I'm dreadfully oldfashioned in my technology but we have known such success in our ways it's hard to change...

The awareness-of-sadness -- no, not really sadness so much as Connectedness -- lasted for 2 or 3 days and then faded out ... or perhaps I should say, I stopped thinking about Jane at odd moments after 2 days.

The same thing happened to me in 2011 on a March morning during spring break, when I was strolling along an East Coast beach.  Out of nowhere, out of the sea it seemed, it occurred to me to wonder if Farley Mowat had died.  A great sense of something came up over the horizon at me;  the feeling of a distant, if very real, friend's passing (or awareness) was quite strong.  In this case it was almost a week before I realized that my moment on the beach coincided with the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, that killed so many and did so much damage.  It had not been Farley after all (he died 3 years later, and 1 year before I found out).  It had been, instead, a whole world of oceanic and northern interests that had been affected.

How had I known???

In the case of Jane Wagner I discovered that at the very same time I had first thought of her, her dog Bob had passed away.

"It was Bob!"  I said out loud several times, wonderingly, hunched over the tablet in a hotel room, no doubt confusing my watersport partner.

"It was Bob!"

The more I think about it the more amazed I am by the power and presence of a single Jack Russell.  Those who knew Bob, however, would not be surprised.

Is it going to be like this with everybody I know??  There's hundreds...  Or does this only happen while on safari, when I'm out in the wild for weeks, tuned only to the birds, the boat, the waters of the river and my partner?
A Sorrow and yet so much a Connectedness that the sorrow is almost drowned out.

What have we lost, that this is so rare?

hailing frequencies open...

The Marwari and the Pintaloosa

The photographer of so important a show as NAN is not supposed to have any favorites.  Yet out of thousands of horses, I fell madly in love with one foal.  Out of dozens of fantastic costumes, I found myself taking way too many pictures of just two (the other was the Horse with the Golden Saddle).  I promised a blog on them at the time, and the two paragons have stuck in my mind ever since.

The Marwari first.  He initially appears in a table shot, his owner close by.

 He's the entry on the corner.  This horse is a customized Carol Williams Valor, made into a Marwari, the breed with the curved eartips.  Colette is amazingly good about documentation.

When I saw what she was wearing I laughed out loud.

Of course this splendid work is by Cary Nelson, a paragon herself when it comes to costumes.  I could not believe this outfit when I first saw it,... and I still can't.

 The reins alone would take me weeks.

I believe those are metal bells on the top of the rump.

Cary's good at embroidery, but, yeesh---!!!!!

The more you look, the more there is to see.

 It must have taken her months.

There is nothing I'm aware of in the model tack world to equal this kind of dedication and skill.  The density of detail, the materials, the color choices and textures all scream "rabbity" at me (her email).  I've seen a number of Cary Nelson costumes and I own one myself, but this takes the cake.

The horse's name turns out to be Boom Shakalaka, and yes, he did win the class.  : )

The next day I was covering Foal classes.  This is the CM Stock Foal table.

 The photographer moves left, trying to capture everybody.

Three shots for one class is a bit unusual, but they've caught my eye.  They're so cute!

Glory morning. Everything else fell away and I came in close.  I had no idea what mold this was, what resin, whether it was a custom.  I only knew I was falling rapidly.

He had that rough, old-fashioned look, something I'd seen so often in the early years of the hobby.  It's a coarser texture of fur, but for a foal it's appropriate.

Hand painted.  Everything worked well together:  color, shading, conformation, pose.  That nose!  those cute little ears!  that stunning, yet realistic, color choice!
I'm including this shot, despite its obvious flaw, out of sheer equally-obvious love-madness.

A Pintaloosa, or possibly a strange varnish roan appy. 
I found out later he was quite old for a model, several decades.  That would make him a custom on the Stock Horse Foal... if so, a rather drastic custom.

I just loved this little baby!!  Given I'd spent 3 days photographing the best of the best, every possible breed, pose, color, type and material, it says something that I could still find it in me to get so soft.   "Out of all of them..."
I was told, by his owner, who did him, but alas I'm not remembering; this was a year ago.  It was a name I recognized, however.

Other news:  Be sure and check out our website! and Tack Sales Information page.  Most of our news fit to print is there.  I have dreams of making Mechanical Hackamore(s) and a Western Saddle alongside others.  Further out, I'm looking at Parade set restos. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everybody!

The Silver Acorn Opus Saddle

My green blanket is done, and this is the saddle it was for.  The Silver Acorn Opus was created by Heather Moreton (form. Abounader) of Desert Night Creations.  It took her 4 years: 2012 to 2016.   This post will largely be about the adventures of this saddle, although right now I can't resist throwing in a bit about the horse!  She is a Moody Minuet, cast in 1994 by DaBar (200 head) and painted two years later by two famous artists: Elizabeth Bouras did the body and details, and Susan Bensema Young did the mane and tail.  And we know who the photographer is.  : )

Amazingly, all 4 artists are still practicing!  To be sure, some things have changed in that 23-year span.  Still on the subject of the horse, the material used for resincasts is now much lighter in weight, and casts more smoothly.  The camera used is a digital not film.  The software used to process these pictures makes it possible for me to instantly clean up her various bumps, scratches, nicks and scars.  I've never shown her much, but she seemed so perfect for this saddle.  This the fun part:  putting together the pieces, making the vision come real.

The Silver Acorn's story is one of the most complex of those in my saddle collection.  It is my intent to try and round up the various pieces of the tale and put them in one place.  Its four-year creation was one saga; displaying it at museums, another; purchasing it, yet another.  No doubt it will go on to further adventures after it leaves my hands, but let's begin at the beginning.

The first mention of any part of this set occurs on Heather's blog of September 9, 2012: Drivel when she calls it 'a project bridle for me.'  Another picture of the cheekstraps occurs in a post on Oct 17.  It isn't until December 15th, 2012, that the saddle really starts: New Stuff.  A post on Dec 23rd,  Holidays  is also long and heartfelt.

The year 2013 started off very well for the saddle, -- but then bogged down in March.  A New Year's Day, 2013, post looks forward;  New & Improved (Jan 20) has a great deal of background, talking about saddle reference books.  January would see two more posts about it, on the 23rd and on the 26th: More in Progress is the first to show the green and black spots set along the border of a fender.  In March Heather's tackmaking interest went into some halters.  A brief look, Workbench (March 18) shows the saddle's current state (fenders and base plate done and bridle's headstall), but other interests would take over for the next 7 months.  Some of them would later turn into a career in photography! and  others, such as shooting pool, would grow to be major activities.  Much was going on:  a job change in July was only one major life evolution for her.  (If only I had known:  2013 was a terrible year for me.)  The next mention of the Silver Acorn is in October with Slow Progress.  For the rest of the year, only a Dec 15 post mentions Facebook pictures of work on the shoulders of a pleasure saddle.  My post is not going to reference many FB posts -- I'm still learning how to find them, let alone link to them!

Not until 2014 would a January 11 post mention "puzzling out the shoulders on the western saddle."   So far she was merely calling it "the western saddle."  A mid-March post complains forgetting everything, but confirms that this is the saddle.  A new studio was finished in April.  On April 28 Heather finished Anna Tackett's bridle, the first piece of tack to be completed after her surgery in January.  Things were looking up!  However, it is not until June 15 that a post mentions the saddle:  "I WANT to be ready by NAN but I have no clue if I will be."  July 23 mentions working on the plates for the saddle, but no pictures.
That BreyerFest, 2014, was one of the two I've had to miss.  Heather went but I did not.  In hindsight it was the right move for me.  How precious our time, our lives, our friends become...

On July 26 Heather did something new and artistic, uploading videos on YouTube of two of her saddles, the making of the California Mother Hubbard and current progress on the Silver Acorn. A link to the Acorn's is here.  I would later see this video and be completely convinced I was not worthy to own such an artistic piece!, so professionally presented. There's even appropriate music!!  Honestly this was the first time I'd seen such a thing...

In August of 2014, possibly inspired by BreyerFest, there was a huge blurt of progress.  August had by far the highest number of  posts (7) of any month of the year, and all but one are on the saddle.  A good glimpse is In Progress (August 10th); an excellent close up is Saddle Silver (August 31st).  All that was missing was the stirrups and some silver; it really seemed that finishing the Silver Acorn was within reach.  Yet in September the siren song of photography surfaced.  Through the rest of that year, it becomes clearer than ever that hers is a photographer's soul.  More and more the posts are of lots of horse pictures.  The saddle is mentioned briefly, but no pictures are shown.
No more work was done on it for the rest of 2014.

In 2015, in an April 8 post, the saddle receives a name: "Opus Saddle."  No pictures are put up, but there is mention of more silver put on.  On April 20 we get an Almost Done post.  There's a very good shot; it looks finished but for the stirrups.  Unfortunately the rest of 2015 was consumed in divorce.  I watched anxiously from afar and wondered if I should speak to both participants, but in the end I could only contact Heather and profess my support. The summer of 2015 was also the summer of the Triple Crown and American Pharoah.  From this time Heather's photographer career would flourish.

The following year, 2016, it's April 10th before the saddle is mentioned.  I am certain that FaceBook rose into prominence (my own saga there would start the year before, in April 2015), and that had an impact on blogging.  Heather went to BreyerFest in July and was tremendously inspired, as were we all; that was the year we were both photographers at NAN!  In a fit of generosity I tried to have my photographer's stipend assigned to her, but this did not work out.  I also did not realize she had entered horses and was showing as well as shooting...!
In a marvelous visit on July 18, I got to see her new house and studio.  Thirty-two of her photos were posted to her FaceBook and she treated me to lunch.  : )  In those 32 the Silver Acorn Opus is clearly depicted, and so was the rawhide braided bridle I wound up selling to Heather.  You can't keep good braiding tackmakers apart.  Heather Visit

On August 28, 2016, Heather posted the finale, Only Took Four Years.   It had indeed been almost exactly 4 years!  Like most big tack projects, that length of time included periods of intense progress and long periods of waiting and idleness.  It was rightly a masterful Opus.  For an artist whose output was limited (her website shows just 15 Western saddles between 2002 and 2013), it was an immense amount of work.

The next chapter in the life of this saddle was the Juried Exhibit at the Morlan Gallery, at Transylvania University in Lexington.  The Exhibit started October 28 and ran til December 2, 2016, and was named Enough to Swear By.  It featured exquisite miniatures from artists around the world.  Talk about exposure!  I had never dreamed some of those things existed, and though I could not attend in person I enjoyed web-browsing the various artists' sites.  You gotta hand it to the Internet: it makes such things possible!
Heather showed her Hummingbird Silver Parade saddle, her Opus and a braided bridle she'd made for Anna Tackett.  She said the two saddles were for sale.  When I heard the price asked for the Opus (it broke four figures) my hopes took a nosedive.  I had made up my mind to make an offer, but as so often happens, what was immensely expensive for me (more than I'd paid for any other saddle) was considerably lower than her price.  Nonetheless I made the offer.

There would be very few more blog posts from Heather up to the present.

That fall (2016) I hung on to the promise that if the saddle did not sell, I would have a chance at it.  Unfortunately Heather was hard to contact, and I didn't find out the answer to my question until many months later.  My finances felt strained with other model pieces I wanted, the NAN stipend landed in my mailbox, and I had just found the YouTube video.  What with one thing and another, I was the closest I'd ever been to long term annoyed with someone who was normally a dear friend.

There was an exchange of calls in February 2017, and we must have worked our way back into contact and understanding, because my questions were answered and I had a path forward by then.  I was greatly looking forward to BreyerFest this year.  As readers of this blog will know, Heather was kind enough to let me purchase the Silver Acorn at last, in July.  Here's my BreyerFest Loot picture:

And a close up  of the Moreton saddle:

This photo shows that there was no saddle blanket.  It also shows there were no breastcollar dees.  This wasn't even the first time I'd spent a great deal of money to get a saddle that had no blanket (Corbett wins that one).  I guess the hobby is becoming more specialized.

Towards the end of my snowshoes-making, on October 4th,  I started a green cross-stitch saddle blanket just for the Silver Acorn.  I used Chris Armstrong's "Pinky Lee" pattern (which really IS pink) but cast in several shades of green.  I tried to match and/or enhance the greens of Opus.  Some of them were surprisingly dark; my choices were perhaps excessively bright, in compensation. 

Like most of my personally-made saddle blankets, it is not cross-stitch per se, but needlepoint, as each 'cross' is actually two straight stitches side by side.  In this case the stitches slanted, alternating each row, in a herringbone pattern.  I find lined blankets much too thick and for some unfathomable reason I detest withers-notches.... probably because I think the blanket ought to be realistic enough to rise off the withers under the gullet, just like the real ones.

My next task on the Silver Acorn was to attach breastcollar dees.  First I had to decide what to use for them... and fortunately the saddle itself told me, with its use of engraved photo-etch Rio Rondo buckles on martingale, curb and stirrups.  Then I had to attach them with minimal damage.  There was only one place for the operation.  For reasons of pride I wanted something of the construction to show, but it had to be minimal and tasteful.

I peeled off part of the lining, made slits in the only space available, and strung the uncut buckles on black lace.  It was a relief when it worked, and, best of all, with the breastcollar actually on, nothing of these "dees" even showed.

The happy task of finding the right horse to "photo-op" this splendid example of the miniature saddler's art landed on Minyalucca the Minuet, wife of Xanadu the Bouras Arabian.
I am sure there is much more to the story of this fabulous saddle!!

Thank you, Heather.  I will try to take care of it.