20M: Collars and Hames

 

By the 16th week, two collars and two pairs of hames had been made for the lead pair of the Twenty.  This post will examine these most challenging parts of a miniature harness.  Strictly speaking, collar instruction belongs in the Guide; we'll show half a dozen collar pictures here.  But wooden hames are not in the Guide, and I'm pretty proud of these babies.  This is a long post with lots of details!

By the 13th week, I had solved the 1:18th scale working farm harness collars worn by the mules.  Soft stretchy leather was critical.  The white buckstitching, done with waxed linen thread, is hand sewn and spaced by eye.  (Note the birch strips in the background.)

I had plenty of old garment leather that was perfect for the job.  It might be buckskin, I'm not sure.  The bottom face of the collars used one coat of Dark Brown dye; the top face, ultimately three.

The small curved strip in the background (above) was trimmings from collar edges.  It is always surprising how narrow the final collar turns out to be.

Stuffing for these collars was those thin strips.  At these scales one strip did most of the job; only the swells and shoulders needed a couple more little pieces.  No need to bevel, just cut to fit.  (There is a wire inside the rim, as in all our collars.)  

Note the sewn-in keeper at the front center or throat of the collar.  There was not space for two keepers (as with most Trad scale collars.)  This keeper is critical for the hame strap.  It holds the hames in place, and thus the whole harness.  Of course no such thing exists in real life, but that's model collars for you.  At these scales the slipperyness is vast and the pressures necessary to position the hames mean no alternative but permanent gluing,... which I detest.

Here you can see the top strap, which holds the collar together.  The reference indicates a latch:  a lever bar, like a ski-boot fastening.  I chose to use a leather strap for this and to use plain friction (a keeper).  You'd be surprised how often I rely on friction, the most basic of joining methods!   The little chafe at the top of the withers, a tiny scrap of thinned leather sewn to the underside of the collar top, is for the comfort of the animal.

Do you remember my Snowshoes?!  There is a blog post about making them:  Creating the Snowshoes.

Can you guess the hames are made from the same material as the snowshoe frames?  That's right, iron-on shelf edging!  I swear that stuff is a miniaturist's dream come true.  You can buy it at Lowe's in many different colors.  I prefer the Birch because it's so light it can be dyed but looks lovely all on its own.

Paper patterns are de riguer in my tack shop.  I planned to use three thicknesses of wood for each hame, a decision dictated by scale.  (Okay, by snowshoe experience.)  That meant that I had to be clever about flipping the pattern for cutting them out, since there was adhesive on only one side of the wood strips,... and since there could not be adhesive on the outside of the hame.  Fortunately with these hames, right and left did not matter. 

Can you guess the solution?  Two blanks to make a sandwich and the third coming down on the top of that sandwich.  This would leave wood-side-out on both sides.

Here are all four right after the hot-gluing stage.

Next was filing and sanding.   A lot.

I also started fitting the hames individually to each mule's collar.  There was some minor adjustment, due to the handmade nature of the collars and the shape of the shoulders.

By the 9th of October, the hames looked like this.  Modelmaking sleight-of-eye is responsible for reducing the number of slits, and rings!, from 3 to 2.  There was not room for 3; and one of those 3 was not used anyway [in the references].

Yup, remember friction?  Those pins and staples (made from wire) were press-fitted.  Alas, this is another model harness where actual traction would probably break everything.  This weakness is contrary to my principles but made necessary by the level of detail I am using.  You have to draw the line somewhere.  God forbid they suddenly come to life and actually start pulling.  The only real strength the harness has to have is to survive its own making and to be able to be installed on the mules, i.e. strap-tightening and adjusting.  I am somewhat worried about those lower hame clips.  Only silver tape holds them on.

Making 1:18th hame straps was an exercise in some of the smallest buckles I have ever built, using 26ga wire.  The keepers were managed by using punched rounds of leather from my hole puncher.

As a reminder of just how small these mules are, here's a shot of my Suerat with them.

As is usual for blogging, the tack pieces have progressed quite a bit further than shown.  Next up:  Traces and Bodies.

Entering NaMoPaiMo

 

Moved by I know not what, today I entered National Model Painting Month.  Perhaps some inner sense remembers that right about a month from now, I'm usually very intently painting a horse.   For 4 years in a row I've entered and painted a standing (or near-standing) Russian resincast.  They were all sculpted and cast by Margarita Malova, I loved them all and very proud I am of them.  Yet last year I had a very tough time choosing between two horses.  Laura Rock Smith's magnificent carousel horse seized me the moment I saw it and has been inspiring me ever since.

The fact that I chose Orlik, the standing Orlov Trotter, then, made this year's choice extremely easy, almost fore-ordained.  For a long time now I've been aware it's time to start something different, no shame to the Tekes.  Growth under the snow?  It may be.  Have we all been frozen?  Silly rabbit.

His name is Coney Eye.

Here's my description with the now-obligatory Nudie Selfie:  

After 4 years of standing resincasts, I hope I’m ready for some action!  I haven’t designed the trapping colors yet but at least I know the horse wants to be ‘gold point Siamese,’ a white gray with maybe dapples.  The key here is “not an authentic portrait but deeply influenced by” historical Illions.

And here's some ideas I've been tossing about:

Giggleberry Farms Illions outside row jumper

Lise Liepman paint job

Giggleberry Farms

To choose a fantasy horse, however rooted in reality, for NaMoPaiMo, is very freeing.  To be clear, I'm not aiming to execute in miniature a real carousel horse, either one of today or a historical piece.  But I've been deeply influenced all my life by carousel horses and their music, and I doubt I'll stray too far afield with whatever he tells me.  This is a chance to see what the artist within will try to bring out, with the tools she has and the skills the previous 4 years have granted.   He's not prepped yet, I don't know what color the trappings will be, I don't have any gold leaf yet and I'm hock-deep in my latest tack project.

But I've got lots of jewels and a whole boxful of PearlEx.  I've leapt.  Come join us.

Puzzles: The Fourth Ten of 2020

 

In many ways the fourth quarter of 2020's puzzles was the most exciting and representative of the whole collection.  We did the largest one yet --a 3 Grander! -- as well as no less than 4 horse puzzles. One of the horse ones was a Panorama (my only, above), and another, one of my 2 most grounding, historical all-time favorites.  Think foundation stock!  We also did a famous old Springbok done only around Christmastime, and two puzzles whose quality was so questionable that upon completion, I promptly gave them away!  It was quite the furious fall on the puzzle board.  

This post records the last 11 puzzles we did in 2020, from September to December.  As ever, dates shot merely represent the day I finally got the camera together with the puzzle in daylight, not necessarily the date the puzzle was finished.  In every case the puzzle was finished BY the date shot, but usually one or two days prior.

Ravensburger 1500 Heiligenblut, Austria

Photo'd Sept 16, this lovely Ravensburger fifteen-er is a typical fill-in (above).  The collection boasts a dozen Ravensburger 1500s, and at this point -- one year in -- we had done all the exciting and favorite ones.  The ones left could be considered duplicates or merely good.  Of them, this one was a delightful green, with interesting mountains and cloud for me (I do all the solid colors).   I am not certain when we obtained this; it could have been as early as the seminal Ravensburgers, dating back to the sabbatical in Denmark, 1994.  Working it was better than I thought, and much enjoyed.

 Panorama is a line carried by F X Schmid of puzzles in wide format.  I'm pretty sure I got this off eBay sometime in the early 2010s; we first worked it in 2014.  The painting, by Ruo Li, was dramatic and attractive, although not strictly realistic in either its horse colors or its clouds.  Nonetheless I felt I had to have it, and it fulfilled my expectations of puzzle challenge.  The first time I did it I had to use 2 card tables!   Photo'd Sept 21.

 

Panorama 1K  Galloping

Here is another view of this wonderfully different size.

Everybody knows I love horses.  What they don't know is I love deer.  A desire and lust for pictures of deer, which always must have been latent, blossomed when I discovered hunting books in the early 90s.  You have to admit, a lifetime of concentration on one animal can lead dangerously close to burnout, and deer have a unicorn grace of their own.  There are so many different species!  (Yes, I have the Ken Whitehead Encyclopedia of Deer.)  This may explain why there are not one but two puzzles in this post featuring Moose.  Or you could just say we saw this really good puzzle in Peight's a few years ago and bought it.  Art by Mark Keathley, photo'd Sept 25.

SunsOut  1K  Into the Mist

The thirty-fifth puzzle worked in 2020 was this one, a Ravensburger 2-Grander.   The collection has nine 2-granders and I must have thought it was time for another.  Again I'm not sure whether this Ravensburger came back from Denmark or is a bookstore find from the 2000s.  The photo shows I was still using a pillowcase for a protective sheet (for the next puzzle), something I blush at now:  it was much too small for the job.  Photographed October 13.

Ravensburger  2K  Salzbourg

Here's the second Moose puzzle, again purchased at Peight's a few years ago.  Art by Terry Doughty.  It's hopeless to deny that I am fascinated by antlers!  This puzzle was particularly challenging with the dark background and many tree trunks and branches all alike.  But by this time in my puzzle life, I'm easily up to a good challenge.  Photo'd Oct 21.

SunsOut  1K  Rumble

Only one day after shooting the 2 Moose, this puzzle was completed.  Sam Savitt's Mares & Foals Springbok Octa is only equaled, in my heart, with another Springbok from the same era, a circular one with Carousel figures.  These grand old classics were in toy stores in the 1960s.  I'm reasonably sure this one was a gift in childhood and I'm certain that my Carousel puzzle was purchased in Tucson, during one of Grandma B's gift shopping trips for the granddaughters.  The same grandma and the same shopping trips gave me some of my earliest Breyers, so you can see why I consider these 2 puzzles the rootstock of the entire collection, almost sacred.  Doing them brings back strong memories of a card table in the back room of my grandparents' home; I can almost smell the orange trees and floor wax!

Springbok Octa Sam Savitt's Mares & Foals

All the Octas and Circulars were around 550 pieces.  The piece out of the Thoroughbred Mare's head was lost in childhood.  For some reason, this Thoroughbred Mare reminds me of Colette Robertson.

Springbok Mares & Foals detail 1

My copy is showing its age; the fit is loose.  Nonetheless it still goes together with the most satisfying feel, polished with age.  I'm familiar with every piece.  The stock is thick and the color excellent; plus, it was a great way to get started on knowing the breeds.  In my undoubtedly prejudiced opinion, there just is no better longer-lasting and quality puzzle than these old Springboks.   Finished Oct 22.

Springbok Mares & Foals detail 2

 This next puzzle is an oddball, if colorful.  I'm not at all sure where we got it.  A flea market somewhere, a hobby sale?  It appears to be of Lake Como, Italy.  Suffice it to say that once completed, I took it over to GoodWill, and thus cannot look up its details -- my photo is too blurry to read.  Despite being a lovely picture, it did not hold us;  too thin, too flimsy, too cheap.  Photo'd October 27.

Fame Puzzles 1K  Lake Como?

After that little jaunt, I settled down to a real stumper, a puzzle I've only done once before.  This is my favorite of the four 3-Granders and the only Clementoni I own.  This is a puzzle company based in Italy.  I think of them as Italy's Ravensburger.  The title is 'Sunset on the Coast' but I think of it as my lighthouse puzzle.  It's a photograph of a famous lighthouse and headland somewhere on the Canadian coast, possibly Brunswick.  As I said in an earlier post, this one took us a month and 6 days.  It was not easy!!  but that's what we want.

Clementoni 3K  Sunset on the Coast  Unfinished

Oddly, the puzzle itself stopped before the edges of the picture on the box.  I detest this and drew, in pencil, lines on the cover indicating the real edges.  The above picture shows how large these multi-grand jigsaws can get.  Photographed Dec 2.

Clementoni  3K  Sunset on the Coast

The fortieth puzzle of 2020 was this one.   Why I bought it, at the ever-popular Peight's in Kishacoquillas Valley, is obvious.  What's less obvious is why I let it go to GoodWill.  The quality is excellent; Cobble Hill is one of my favorite makers.  I worked it twice, once when we got it and again here.  I wanted to give it one more chance.  But all it did was confirm my original disappointment.  Despite obsessive detail on the harness, there were little things wrong with it and I just couldn't stand it.  Go figure!  Today, without the box in hand, I can't quite point out an example.  Maybe the reins (there are no offside reins) or a clip somewhere (the traces attach with no safes, not even a stitch); maybe the oddly formed bitheads.  The nearside checkrein is weirdly extended to the back or rump (?).  I guess I'm a harness snob.  Photo'd Dec 8.

Cobble Hill  1K  Buck & Babe

Since it was December I felt we should give the old family favorite, Coke Is It!, a run.  This is really a wonderful puzzle and a deep pleasure, even if you don't drink Coke.  Santa Claus is here, How not!!   For the third 2-Grander of the year, here is my largest Springbok.  I honestly don't know when this came into our possession:  not during Denmark.  Probably the Hallmark store in the mall, which would date it to the late 1990s - early 2000s.  It turns out this puzzle is the second of a series.  Somewhere out there is a similar Coke puzzle, oh boy!  The collection depicted belongs to the Coca-Cola Company and surely was a lifetime work of love to assemble.  Photo'd Dec 17.

Springbok  2K  Coke Is It!

This picture shows, again, how large these puzzles can be; that's a chair next to it.  It also shows I'd graduated to using a larger piece of cloth for my cover sheet.  This gray fabric was originally for model horse backdrops...  Still not large enough!  but that would be solved in 2021.  We also see, in the center, 2020's last puzzle and one of my most beautiful horse puzzles, Ravensburger's Arabisches Vollblut or, as I call him, the Silver Arabian.

Here's what's under the sheet.  Oh the warmth, the safe place in a life.  Of course I'm leaving up the Coke puzzle for a while, since it took so long to finish.  And of course, the black background is the last part to be done on these figural Ravensburgers.  I can't complain to the king of puzzlemakers but all that black is a boring waste.

The official title is Arabisches Vollblut or "Pureblood Arabian."  The English translation on the box is thus very bad:  "Arabian Thoroughbred."  This image has long been familiar to me; a tack customer first mailed me a clipping of it back in the early 90s.  (Remember the perspective makes his nose large.)  Yes, I have made that bridle!  When I saw it as a puzzle I must have leaped like a lion.  Photo'd Dec 30.

Ravensburger 1K  Arabisches Vollblut

By the end of 2020, the family habit of puzzles before bed had become set in stone.  It really is true that I can make time for puzzles but not for tack.  It is pair-bonding time and a quiet predictable interval most needed in the storms of a pandemic...  as well as a workable controlling of a near-uncontrollable addiction.  2021 saw fewer puzzles completed (31 instead of 42) but only because I tackled a 5-Grander, which took me more than 4 months.  Yes, there will be posts on 2021's puzzles.  Until then, have patience with my long list of desired-but-overcome-by-higher-priorities projects. 

Here are the three previous posts on 2020's puzzles:

Puzzles: The First Ten 

Puzzles: The Second Ten

Puzzles: The Third Ten 

 I think my New Year's Resolutions boil down to only one, yet how grand that one:  Start again on the next book.   And that may pinch the blogging even more.  We'll just have to see.

My Xanthian, with movies

 

Now that the Xanthian Coloring Contest entries are out in public view (they're on Studio Minkiewicz LLC's FaceBook page under Photos), I consider it high time to show mine in a much better format:  MOVIES!!!!

The Contest's rules for commenting on your entry were "two to three brief sentences."   This wasn't much obeyed.  I forced myself to boil my comments down to the essence -- obedient! -- but compression generates heat, and so, here in this blog, everything will come foaming out.  

The contest was announced November 1 and registration closed on the 5th.   I entered and was given access to the drawing on November 2nd.  I chose hand-drawn (instead of digital) and was obscurely pleased to see the hand-drawn entries outnumbered the digitals by two to one (78:35).  I started quite faithful to my packet of colored pencils.  By the 7th I had done a first pass.  However, within 24 hours, the prism tape had moved in and taken over, as neat a conquest as ever I've seen.

I am the fortunate owner of a Hillingar, and when this contest was announced, I originally saw it as a chance to practice for him.  My Muse had come up with the most astoundingly audacious idea for that unicorn -- a Dragon in Green and Gold -- which I can only attribute to looking at Evelyn Munday's FB feed, combined with having Carousel dreams for years.  But however I looked, I couldn't find a dragon I really liked in those colors.

This shot (below), taken on the 15th, and the above (16th) are the only ones documenting the work in progress.  Here, as nowhere else, you can see the glint of the gold gel pen in the edges of the forefeet, tail and ears.  Later on this detail would be swallowed up.

Xanthian has two sets of wings, and I wanted to make them notably different.  I started out pairing the lesser wing with the cheek (gill?) wing.  It must have been here that the prism tape made its appearance, with the dark green spines.  The gold stuff I had lying around for Parade set insets.  It had been rather unsatisfactory.  But by gar it was perfect now!  I had a small quantity of a very strongly pearlescent/opalescent tape, and that just seemed perfect for the horn, the best and most powerful part. 

With these successes the prism tape ran away with me.  Xanthian has a somewhat confusing rear end, a natural result of depicting a 3D spiral in 2D.  I wanted to try and clarify this area by making the spine dark and the underneath light: to show the curl.  Such coloring is what deep sea creatures have, anyway!  The place on the withers, where the wings transition to the neck, was my least happy.  Prism tape does not "shade-into" very well.

 All the rest of these pictures were taken the 25th, the day of finish for me.  The early ones show I hadn't gotten around to coloring in the webs of the belly fringe, nor to doing the background.  It was only well along that I decided to use pearl prism tape for the belly, the closest I had to white.  Its rainbow effect just made me faint:  "my heart is stoln."

I am the sort of person who saves the least little bit of prism tape, this sparkly plastic thin film used, in the wider world, to make fishing lures.  The process of tracing and cutting created, you may imagine, dozens of tiny snippets.  I stuck a few onto his scales and then got the idea that some could be thrown off by the horn.

The process used to create this entry was entirely by hand.  Prism tape comes with its own backing paper:  "peel-and-stick."  I first traced each part-of-a-shape with tracing paper and pencil.  (I had to break Xanthian's parts down to fit within the 4" x 1" tape pieces, saving as much tape as possible in the process.)  Next I inverted the paper over the back of the tape and went over the lines with a blunt point, usually the letter opener (high tech here).  This transferred a dim print, whereupon I cut out the tape and its paper with my tiny scissors.  Miraculously right-side-to, each shape was peeled and stuck down, and trimmed if necessary. 

I had to take some small liberties with the outlines due to the thicknesses involved.  The degree of transfer error was just barely acceptable.  I do not know if my sheets of prism tape are replaceable.  But I could hardly find a better home for them than this.

The work generated a huge pile of paper scraps as well as tiny bits of prism tape.  I reused some of the tracing paper -- a sign of obsessive recycling.

(See the letter opener... it has a bullet casing for a handle.)

My finished entry photo was chosen for the look in his eye and the coloring of the belly fringe.  Here's my text:  "Colored pencil, gold gel pen, prism tape (holographic laserflash film) of various colors (belly different from horn), textured gold tape.  My Muse for Hillingar said: Dragon in Green & Gold;  I saw this contest as a chance to practice.  Everything was traced and cut by hand; I'm frustrated that a camera cannot truly capture it.  I saw him as a deep sea creature, dark above, light below.  The bits around his horn are sparkles thrown off by his power."

As it turned out, no one else used the word "dragon."

Now, a camera has captured it!!  Finally, movies!!!  This first one is only 9 seconds long.  Think of him swimming in the deep dark ocean, appearing out of the blackness.

The second of the three movies is 12 seconds long.  I'm tilting it a bit here and you have some more close-ups.

The third and last movie is 17 seconds long.  This is the best one, showing all the rainbow richnesses as the moving light reflects. 

I stand in awe of Sarah's gift.  I believe this drawing of hers sprang from assuaging the grief of the death of a pet rat.  Seeing 40 Xanthians all together was amazing, an experience to lift the heart.  They are so beautiful, and the variations absolutely fantastic -- things I never would've thought of, like bioluminescence!  Maybe I'll learn about digital coloring, eh.  I look forward to the next Christmas coloring contest, although I've no idea how to top this year's effort.  I've also no idea how I'm ever to paint my Hillingar!  Maybe design, not execution, is my strong suit... 

but man, that was fun.  Thank you, Sarah, and everybody.

Christmas Letter Overflow

 

Stack Overflow is what happens when you put too many items into a defined space.  In this case it's what I'm calling all the pictures in my Christmas Letter folder that didn't make the final cut.  I've decided to share them here, in roughly alphabetical order.  If you receive my Christmas Letter, then you'll have the full panoply of my 2021;  if not, you'll get a pretty good taste.  There is one here anyway from my Letter, because it is so very striking.

We begin with AT4, my fourth Akhal Teke Presentation Set, shown above on Orlik, my fourth NaMoPaiMo horse.  (I just realized that symmetry:  two fourths!)  I was surprised at how much tack was produced over 2021.  Two complete Akhal Teke sets and a neckpiece were only part of the tally.  Below is Orlik in AT4 again -- clearly I'm very proud of him!  This was experimental wallpaper for my new smartphone, showing that I actually got one, Hah!

To emphasize the Akhal Teke aspect of 2021, here's the single neckpiece made for my BreyerFest Giveaway.  It wasn't really a giveaway but a sale,... when 18 people entered for it and I merely sold it to one of them, drawn by chance,... you should be glad I didn't auction it.

We have reached photos starting with B, and now swing into a bunch of people pictures.  This is me running my BreyerFest 5K.  The race was virtual, run in my neighborhood, the same as last year.  Amazingly, my time was about 5 minutes faster (than last year).  Disgustingly, my time was not accepted into the official records (I'd submitted it too late).

Continuing with B, this is from our Colorado trip, blogged about back in August.  Bowsaw at Goodwin.  This is yer faithful correspondent crouching below the horizon at Goodwin Battle Memorial, today known as Legion Park, east of Boulder, Colorado, on Arapaho Avenue.  Yes, the sky really was that smokey.

Here is something nobody's seen yet.  This is a shot from our hiking on the Coalton Trails.  This is a place well south of Boulder (near Superior) which we found and fell in love with.  We went there, I believe, four times in the course of about 11 days, surely a record.  Each time the great wilderness expanse of the prairie meant more to us.  This was taken with my smartphone!

While I was in Boulder I had the fabulous opportunity to get to know certain people better.  This shows three extremely important fellows in my life, left to right:  Nephew, Brother, Husband.  Of course George is closer than close, but the other two I get to see only rarely, and the nephew almost never:  not since 2008.

The next shot is referred to in my letter but not shown.  This was taken the night of June 27, 2021, in the first hotel we'd stayed at since the pandemic had begun.  Consider this a psychological thing;  normally I don't bother to shoot hotel rooms.  In the "old days" we'd stay at dozens every year.  Something the same from back then is that I've put model horses in front of the flatscreen.

A more recent shot is this haul of Imperial Unicorn stickers from Studio Minkiewicz.  I've said this elsewhere:  you won't believe how much you get with one of her sticker orders!  Talk about getting your money's worth.  I'm going to try and collect all the Imperials, holographic or not.

This next is from a hike to NCAR hill while we were in Boulder.  Behind me you can see some of the red-sandstone buildings of CU campus. The photo appears to be using a zoom background, but this one is real:  I am up on one of the foothills above west Boulder, and you are looking east.  Can't see the horizon too well, can you?  smoke...

Back home in Pennsylvania, we get to yet another landscape that's part of a people thing.  This was taken from Penns View Overlook, Centre County, start and finish of my self-set 10K race in early November.  (11K 122 minutes!)

Back to horses!  What would you expect from a model tack shop famous for silver parade sets?!  This parade set is very old, part of my own collection:  TSII #12, originally built in 1983, rebuilt in 1997.  The bit is by Sue Rowe.  Sorpresa hasn't worn anything else yet!  I just think this is a good horse for both parade and harness.  I'm really hoping to play with more harness next year...

Here is a piece of tack made this year, so you'd think I could fit it in somehow, but there wasn't room.  It's the new romal reins for the restoration of TSII #413.  Not much about this challenging tack project got into the Christmas letter; part of the reason is because I started it so late, and had so much else going on.

Down to the Ws, here's yet another view of my entry for Morgen Kilbourne's Wycked Wynd Coloring Contest, in May.  I had way too much fun with this!  Like all my coloring contest entries (all 2 of them so far), a single photo does not do the job!

Last shot.  This is the one that is in my Christmas letter.  This is a very appropriate picture for 2021, as it depicts something that I spent many, many hours watching, from March to September.  Can you guess?  It's Fagradasfjall from the air, a drone shot of the Icelandic volcano at night.  This particular view is pretty early in the progression, April, when there were the two original vents.  By September I had bookmarked more than 270 videos of this volcano.  I was mesmerized.

photo credit:  The Reykjavik Grapevine

Now you have seen a wide sample of my 2021.  It was a strange year and not what we expected.  Much was learned.  I am hoping that 2022 will be a more positive year for everyone; we deserve it.  I look forward to more time with my dear husband and more time for my beloved hobby.  Hope springs eternal that I will be able to meet with more friends and family more often.  Stay safe, seek understanding.