A Visit with Kelly Weimer, Part I

On December 2 my husband and I had the great privilege of visiting with Kelly Korber Weimer and seeing her famous collection.  Ever since I'd first caught glimpses of this magnificent assembly (on FB, through zooms and elsewhere), I had privately yearned to see it in person.  That seemed impossible, despite the fact that she lived less than 3 hours away and in the same state.

Yet everything had come together.  That day the weather was decent (always a consideration).  My navigator husband wanted to get out of the house and go far away, but not have to worry about hunters.  Unspoken but real, we had finally reached the stage of being able to trust small numbers of friends indoors not to infect us, (so this is a covid emergence story).  On top of it all, I had the best excuse:  I had a horse to deliver.  And so it was settled.

In the basement of an ordinary-looking house is one of the wonders of the model horse world.  Kelly kindly let me blaze away.  My aim from the start was not so much documenting every beast, (which I felt was an impossibility), but to grasp their overall arrangement and layout.  How did the rooms (if they were rooms), fit into one another?   I wanted to keep their general outline in mind, which might help keep me from getting totally drunk and lost.  This was a skill I'd gained at BreyerFest over many years.

But there was a lot to get drunk on.  Be warned:  these 2 posts have a total of 64 pictures.

Starting in the basement, there were a couple of normal rooms, including this photography stage area.

The entrance to the mysteries is to the right of this.  Turning a corner, one sees a pair of doorways, and through them shelves can be seen going on to the end.  Left doorway:

And right.  The right hallway is intercepted by a cross corridor that leads to a side chamber, a space opening off the right side of a hall running parallel to the main hallway.  Even that corridor is lined with horses.

Here's a view straight into the side chamber, a place with some furnace ducts.  This room held miscellanea on 3 sides:  horses that were not Breyers, one of a kinds, overflows and extras (i.e. new molds) or those who did not fit into the general order.  That order, I realized, was congas.  The horses are arranged by mold.  Pretty much every shot was a conga shot.

I will be showing this chamber and another, far more formal, upstairs room in a second post.  For now, just going down those hallways was enough and more than enough for sensory overload.  I confess that no logical order was used while shooting.  I just grabbed!  (Any order you see here came along afterwards, a product of post-processing.)  

Right off the bat, at lower right through the left doorway, I found my current desired horse, a white foal.  Kelly wouldn't part with it, imagine that!

Then my progress became a sort of amazed swinging right and left, and just went on and on.  On the right:

On the left:

 The aisle or hallway that led to the side chamber resulted in some shelves being corner units.  I thought this very clever.  See the Emersonii above (10th photo) - they are below the Vermeers here.

Naturally, shorter horses took places on shorter shelves.  High on the right:  Shetland Ponies.

 Further on down this same lengthy aisle, the process repeated itself.  What? only one Alborozo?

(Above) The blue Lonesome Glory is a repaint.  (Below) Ahah, here is the mother of the foal I wanted, standing with others of her shape (Corazon, or Celeste:  Andalusian Mare).

Clearly a collection as large as this one has been years, decades, in the making.  I never did get a head count but it must be in the thousands.  For contrast, my own collection, over nearly the same span of time, tops out at about four hundred, not counting SMs.

Deeper and deeper into the mysterious depths.  The chestnut PAS on the end is by Kathy Maestas, and was found in an antique shop.

The zebras were on a cross corridor corner. 

At last, at the ends of the earth, I saw the back wall.   These two shots give the atmosphere of the place pretty well.

With a wide brim hat, a long tail and a camera around my neck, I had to be careful how I turned around.  At first I kept muttering, "I didn't know it would be this small."  I meant the space they all were in -- I felt they deserved a great deal of room.   Memories from the Patagonia Museum of the Horse in AZ n the 1970s, and, further back, winding through the tourist alleys of Nogales, Mexico, were in my brain.  This was before I realized there was an entire room on the first floor with a lot more horses.

And when I did, the first thing I said was, "So that's where the other Alborozos are!"  She laughed out loud.

Pin Sale Post

 

When you collect pins as assiduously as I have, you're bound to wind up with a few extras.  Some of these were purchased with resale in mind; some are duplicates; and some, like the earrings, were genuine mistakes on my part.  This post will be a close look at all the pins I currently have for sale or trade.  Trade wishlist is at the bottom of this post!

There's one big caveat:  Unless you grab these by Dec 15th, everything's on hold til late January.  I'm old enough to invoke the ancient hobby habit of no mail order during the Christmas rush.  (We were afraid we'd lose our precious ponies;  too often, we did.)  I'm out of town from Jan 2 to 26 and cannot post packages while canoeing down South.   (Which doesn't mean I can't mail off Christmas letters.  But I digress...)

Isn't this a cute pin (above)?  For all that he's 1.25 inches tall, I had to get this one when I first saw him!  It's a Daniel Muller Indian Pony, and I hadn't known this pin existed.  As luck would have it, I found a Stein & Goldstein Stander pin I hadn't known existed either, and had to get that one,... and with him came this.  So it's a genuine duplicate in my collection. 

Almost the same story applies to this graceful blue and white Stein & Goldstein Jumper (below).  I already had one, from long ago, but that Stander came accompanied.  Each of these carousel cuties should be priced somewhere around $15 plus $5 postage.

You'll have to forgive photography of these two in their cellophane.  Each one comes with a brass pinch clasp for the back.

 I suppose it had to happen sooner or later!  I thought those Minkiewicz earrings would be dandy little pins on their own;  I thought I could disassemble them and display them by themselves.  But when they arrived, I changed my mind.  A rare thing happened:  I didn't like a Mink pin product.  I suspect not wearing earrings had something to do with it,...

In themselves these are absolutely charming examples of what can be done with Mink's art.  They really are tiny;  the zebras are one inch  high.  They and the Quaggas are hook earrings with silver hardware.  I am willing to let them go for $50 a pair plus $5 postage.  (The release price for these hook earrings was forty.)

The size of the Quaggas is 1.13 inches high, a smidge bigger than their friends the zebras.  But you should see the Unicorns!  These mini miracles are just half an inch!!  Rose gold in color, these are pinback earrings.  The pins stick right out of the package.  Yup:  right through the cellophane...  It's another miracle that they traveled safely in their bubble envelope...

These are versions of none other than Mink's very first pin, Unicorn One, first sold in January of 2021.  Here's a close up:

Aren't they charmers!  The release price for these pinback earrings was thirty-five, so I'm thinking of charging $40 + $5 postage.

 The remaining three pins are standard Mink issues:  Faleadon the Imperial Unicorn (released August 24 of this year), Driving in Style Gelderlander from BreyerFest 2023, and Runicorn III, released December 8 of 2022.  I'm asking $40 each + $5 postage.

You can read more about Faleadon and the Gelderlander in my latest blog post on pins:  Fibonacci Pins.

They both have fantastic sparkle backgrounds!

The same sparkle applies to the mythic Runicorn:

 Trade and Wish List:  repeat after me:  Any of the above, up to three pieces, for Mink's Dancing Horses Bastian and Trinka.  These pins were released in January of 2022 (Bastian) and Sept of 2021 (Trinka) and were the second and first Dancing Horse pins ever released.  That has something to do with how rare they are, but not all:  I suspect the news just hasn't migrated far enough.

Thanks for looking!

Polar Vortex

 

This is yet another FB post gone blogspot, because despite my best efforts to keep things short, it's too tempting to babble about everything in these 3 pictures.  Whatever's easiest, whatever's simplest:  That's what gets blogged about, not the long-promised stuff, not the carefully researched history ones nor the memorial ones, deserving though they be, and as fun as it is to blog.  Those take time and work and right now the time is nearly all going into the next book.  Soon I'll be making tack again and that is a pleasure too long denied, as well ---!!

So Vail finally arrived.  I'd received a delivery notice on Friday the 17th, went downtown on Monday the 20th fully expecting him to be there, and picked up instead -- a boxful of puzzles from Bits & Pieces.  "That's all I have for you," begged the clerk.  Unhorsed, I went home.  The next convenient opportunity for going downtown was today, Friday the 24th.  Lo, not only was Vail there, but so was a huge box that turned out to be from Germany.  "Vuca!" cried the wargamer in the house -- and I learned this was a company he'd least expected to deliver the goods, not after the war in Ukraine!  (It was a Ukrainian war game, with phenomenally bad timing in its release -- unintentional of course.)  Well, good things come to those who wait.

Yes, that's a copy of Driving Digest magazine.  Since it's Black Friday, there should be some package-opening to counterbalance all the purchasing (even though none of these was bought today).

Now, I already had a Totilas.  Back in 2017, I'd taken the time to make a special base for this horse, thanks to guidance from N. Hertzog.  

I detest horses on stands, and as a rule, there are few in my herd.   However, for this delicious palomino, an unusual effort was made.  I made a permanent stand from Masonite and Fimo and embedded a nail and a screw, one for each hoof.  One can disassemble it with a screwdriver, if required;  but why?  I painted it brown and thought I'd never need another Totilas.

Well, I was wrong.

The names of these three reflect the sky in some form or fashion.  The Huckleberry Bey Technicolor is my darkest modern Copenhagen, an incredible royal blue color-shift, and (how many times are you going to hear this) very hard to photograph.  I named him Orion after the constellation, a celestial name.  The Clock Saddlebred I named Cirrus Floccus.  (C'mon, my husband is a meteorology professor ---!!)  Note from the future:  I remembered his name.  Polar Low was close, but now (as of Dec 8) it's Polar Vortex.

I have always loved the Copenhagens.  I shall always be grateful that I have a couple of the original vintage ones, collected in the 1980s.  These three contemporary Decos are fantastic, incredible horses:  Dreams come true. 

Progress Report 2

 

It's time for another progress report on my next book!   Heaven knows it's been a slow slog,... only a year and a quarter!  still not done yet!,... but progress has definitely been made.   My vision for it is so much clearer now;  and it keeps getting clearer as more and more gets done.  We're up to 27 Plates (pages of drawings) now.  We've gone through the alphabet and are starting over at AA --!!

This exciting book originally intended to profile eight pieces of headgear:  Meet the 8.  As that post reported, of course, the project kept getting bigger and bigger.  As it stands now, there's a 5-page Table of Contents, a 9-page Introduction, and three of the 8 pieces (Ricky's, Duke's and Malaguena's) plus supporting chapters such as Braiding Sinew.  Malaguena's has been by far the most monstrous effort, spawning 10 Plates, 23 pages and 41 photos.

For comparison, Ricky's only took one Plate and Duke's has two,... 

Today I am proud to announce that the chapter on Braiding Thread Buttons (as opposed to Sinew) is almost finished.  It has 8 Plates!  Following it is something I'm calling the First Interlude, consisting of five Plates.  Four are already done.  The First Interlude covers subjects I really did want to include in this book but which weren't headgear per se.  These parts and procedures contribute to the 8 pieces but could stand on their own.  The five Plates are Braided Curbstraps, Connectors, Hobbles, Braided Rings and one I'm slipping in early, Peet's Romal Reins.  Peet's is very advanced, but only one button off of Tissarn's, piece no. 7.  I couldn't resist including it, but put it next to the parts about braiding sinew (e.g. Malaguena's) because that's what it was.

Sneak Peek of Plate T,  button formulas

Oh yes, using bold font on certain words just means they're important, or else it's the first time the reader sees them, and they get defined shortly thereafter.

These two chapters, Braided Buttons and the First Interlude, have sometimes just about made me cry.  It's been very frustrating working only a few hours per week, week after week after week, on this 25-year dream.  I just don't seem able to carve out big chunks of time.  There are so many other fun things to do,... plus so much adulting and other responsibilities.  FaceBook is one, but not the only, extreme time-waster out there.  I am really hoping Winter will solve some of this,...

Sneak Peek of Plate W, Curbstraps with Braid

On the good side, everyone who sees this mock-up in person has been very excited about it.  I printed out the pages and stuck them in this Binder for my own convenience.  When it's finally ready, this book will be published in pdfs, just like its elder brother, Guide To Making Model Horse Tack.

On the good side, the next piece up is the Peach Rose Bridle, and that one should be the easiest of all.  I've looked pretty hard for its photo in my files and finally found it:

Why would a bridle built in 2004 be filed under (and photo'd in) 2009?  Worse, how could I lose track of a picture used on this blog just last March??  Eh well, perhaps we shouldn't ask these kinds of questions -- !!  Just look at this beauty.  It only has 2 kinds of braided buttons on it, a 9P 4B with three rings of IW [Interweave] and a 7P 6B with two rings, for the tassels.  We already have those formulas on Plates in the Braided Buttons chapter -- plus how to read them, and all my methods!!  No wonder this book has been creeping along,...  there's so much in there.  Now I gotta remember where I wrote up about the Hill Tribes Silver beads (Bali beads) which form so prominent an element in this charming little bridle.

Of course, we're only barely at the halfway point.  There will be a Second Interlude, containing all the rest of the Formulae for the remaining headgear pieces.  There will hopefully be something about Braidwork on Western Saddles.  The Peach Rose has a whole saddle to it:

One decision I have to make is how much, if any, of this saddle to include.  I've got 5 pieces of headgear yet to go, including Mecates and Bosals, surely giant subjects and worthy of their own book.  (That's what I said about Malaguena's!  And that's what I'm saying about the Braided Thread Buttons chapter -- !)  The Snow Shoes, I can say with relief, merely need to be inked;  they're already drawn up.  So this effort is going to be a bigger book than the Guide, I think.  The more this saga goes on, the more I'm not backing down from a $25 price tag --!!

Slowly we are progressing.  As ever, I can only say:  Thanks for your patience.