Carrizozo's Hackamore: Begun

 

I appear doomed to constantly edit my blog posts even after publishing, at least for the first few days.  That is the case here, -- just worse than ever before.  I know there is a Preview function to blogs, and I do use it;  but the rush to post always feels so much stronger than my hard-earned wisdom about polishing.   Bear with me, and thank you for returning.

This hackamore will be for sale.  When it's finished, a sale venue will be announced, here (this post) and on my two FBs.  Currently [10.30] I'm thinking of taking bids privately;  if that fails, a straight sale will be used.  See the penultimate [second-to-last] paragraph for more details.  Meanwhile, enjoy an in-depth history of this piece.  :)

For my NaMoTackMo project of this year, in April, I made an orange and green bosal, inspired by all the fuss about the color olive (it does not take much research to figure out the source of that).  That bosal wound up being gifted to the rider in question.  I remained inspired by the color combo.

 I simply loved that bright neon orange.  Never mind that to get the thread into braid-able form I had to hand-spin two together; I'd done that many times in the past, to get special colors.  But this color was just, so,... exciting.  It harked back to all my buck fever years* and forward to my running races.  It had birdwatching in the fall memories going back decades.  It was a breath of fresh air.  I really did need that.

And then Breyer had to come out with all these small Traditional-scale horses.  Astrid was the first, although Dundee was really heading in that direction (oh, Harley D?).  Then this year we had both Elbe/Firefly and Nicholas.  (Today known as the Standing Quarter Horse Mare and the German Riding Pony, thank you IDYB!)  I confess I was shocked at first when Lynn Isenbarger blogged that Nicholas was the same size as the Pony of the Americas.  I conga the POA!  But I was very slow to unbox my Nicholas, so perhaps I deserved that shock.  Yet he is so beautiful I was inspired...  I came home from BreyerFest with Rapunzel, Elbe and Nicholas.  It took til October before their names coalesced.  (Separate rabbit hole:  Rapunzel is Salona, Elbe is Salorcha and the little golden German Riding Pony got stuck with a long one:  Carrizozo Sugarfire.)  

 By August I had done enough work on my next book to have spun off extra parts (above).  Recall that the book is about documenting and reproducing eight pieces of headgear, including golden oldies for whom no notes existed.  I had to find out by trial and error what their measurements had been;  and that's how these extras, mecate and fiador, came out too short for the standard Trad.  Small Trads anyone??

On August 30 I started spinning thread for another orange bosal, sized for my 3 new molds.  In all of September, only the above part got done.  'Hope springs eternal' that I could ever make tack on trips...!  Well, that part of this piece at least is well traveled!  The above nosebutton went from PA to AZ and back again...  crossing the Carrizozo Lava Field in New Mexico.  Future blog subject...

And then, in October, I was finally able to buckle down.

I had been focused on Rapunzel as the mold for this bosal (thus the unusual pose of the photo), but it became apparent that she wasn't the best bosal-making horse.  Her neck was too arched to comfortably work under.  I switched to Nicholas / Carrizozo.

Things went faster after this.  The upper sidebuttons were the biggest challenge because they were embedded, that is, woven into the ends of the 3B nosebutton.  That took a few passes, including taking out pre-existing cores!  There's no formula for single interweaves in a 3B;  it's mathematically impossible.  So how did I do them?  I cheated.  I passed under an extra third of each interweave ring around; and this extra thickness made an effective core.  To my pleased amazement, my normal Trad-scale lower sidebuttons (5P4B) and heel knot (8P5B) were acceptably in scale.

As of October 28, the bosal is finished, even to a metal concho on the end (an engraved pin). All that's needed is a hangar (I spell this the airplane way, having an ex-pilot in the family).  My vision is of a slit-braided single headstall, but for decoration, how about a braided ring at the off cheek?

My vision of the headstall is changing, especially after talking with a friend last night [10.30] (thank you Ann).  I now want a flat braid tasseled browband, as well as the ring in the offside cheek strap.  'Delicate' is the keynote here, for such small horses.  Such a vision will add days to the finish time.  Rumours of a short (4 day) trip are swirling in my family.  Make tack on trips??  Quiet chuckling choking laugh... but right now it seems reasonable to shoot for the second week in November for completion.  Thank you for your patience!

*I fell in love with deer in the early 90s, possibly as a counterbalance to overexposure [burnout] of horses.  "Hunting was next to horses in the bookstore" and I'd always loved antlers.  To my way of thinking, there is a vast difference between non-hunter and anti-hunter;  this distinction arose for me then.  Hopefully someday I'll publish my encounter with Crazy Legs, Pennsylvania's most famous elk.

Pins & an Ice Cream Bowl

The best place to start is where your heart is.  Here's one small attempt to break up my blogging logjam.  There are 5 new pins in my collection, plus a most interesting piece of Mink merchandise, the Ice Cream Bowl.  I have many other subjects to write about (blogjam?!), but this is the most colorful.  Pins are, I'm coming to realize, where my heart is right now,... although tack will always reign supreme, and is just around the corner!

The new ones are the two Celestial Unicorns (upper left), the Cinderella coach set (lowest left) and the third-one-down Carousel horse in the upper right.

Let's start with the amazingly impressive Celestial Unicorns.

They are, as Sarah claims, unlike anything she's done before.  And yet they are so her.  The moment I saw their stickers, back in June (June 30th, the day my husband retired), I knew I had to have them.   There was an elegant simplicity, a sparseness of riches and purity about them, that instantly appealed.  One more automatic collect!  Ah me, as I said to another pin collector, Sarah has us by the short hairs...

Looking at my collection as a whole, I'm struck by the similarity between Ayerron, the Celestial Sun Stallion Unicorn, and my old brass unicorn in the lowest right corner.  Across decades, this pose and this breed, even the color and gender!, are the same.

Aureo Unicornis Rampant.

Here are two shots of Ayerron, trying to capture the sparkles inside his big shoulder flower and hooves.  It's almost impossible.  I lowered my camera's light exposure to its bottom and then held my mini flashlight in my left hand, trying to pick out the glitter.  I know from decades of trying to photograph laser-flash holographic tape (prism tape) that you must start with very low light.  But it still is hard, and shaky hands do not help!  Ayerron's coppergold metal shows up very well, but his sparkles really are not that green.  I think the green is an element of his yellow and this method of shooting enhances them.

Now I hope no one would mistake me as a critic of Sarah's work.  I love all her stuff.  Yet Mystashani is one of the very few times I think I could suggest an improvement in one of Mink's pins.  The original stickers show this Lunar Mare with a white Moon crescent on her side.  By the way don't these stickers show how wild the ride is for a collector!!  What else could accompany a pin order of Celestial Unicorns, but their stickers?  But who could have predicted they'd be so different?!  My second stallion sticker was a half inch taller and the mare was a different color, much lighter!

Possibly for reasons of affordability, or for other reasons, the pin Mystashani's defining Moon came out the same silver as her border curls rather than the glitter-white of her hooves and stars.  It made me think about inescapable constraints...

Her own border metal is silver, of course.  Somehow these photos make it look gold, and indeed gold goes well with purple, just as sometimes the Moon has a golden glow.  But it is really silver.  Shooting pins is challenging...  Maybe I just have to catch the reflections right.

But collecting them is endless fun.  What should turn up on eBay but a match to my other 2 decades-old mini-conga of Carousel horse pins?!  Despite having carousel fever for the better part of 30 years (if not for life, hah!), I had not known it existed.

It is not exactly the same style,... no letters of the company such as are on my first two ("S&G", "PTC"), no loop on the finial.  But it satisfied every one of my collecting parameters.  Astoundingly, it had never been removed from its original sealed plastic.

When you find something that exactly matches your collection but you didn't know it existed!,... you're in trouble.  :)  How many others are out there...

I'm trying to focus on horse pins that appeal to me, that have a high level of detail and realism and are well executed.  Animation is an obvious target because the way enamel pins are made emphasizes line art and pure-colored spaces.  The intersection between realism and animation is large, and here I must rely on my own desires to keep from buying everything horse-shaped I see (or even cute-animal shaped!).  Why not the portrait of Maximus from the movie Tangled?  Why not most of the Breyer pins?  Because I don't like them, that's why.  I only collect what I like.  The problem here is even such controlled things as my desires are so likely to shift, to evolve, to morph... We have a track record of hundreds of model horses... That collecting experience can only stand me in good stead.  I hope.

I spent several weeks trying to decide about, and then to purchase, this gem from an earlier time.  The seller was hard to contact. 

It turned out this was a set of 2, and ipso facto, I had to get both.  The second pin is the castle and can be seen in the group shots.

Now let us move on to the Bowl.

The Ice Cream Bowl came along right at a moment when I was realizing I'd passed up a bunch of chances on Mink's Dancing Horse pins.  I was reasonably flush (at that time!) and I'd never seen anything like it (are we just going to wear out this phrase?!).  Mink has offered a lot of stuff over the years, and I'd turned down drinking glasses, tree skirts, blankets, socks, water bottles and who-all knows what-else useful items, so why did this grab me?  Hard to say.  I cast around for a use for it --- it would not fit in the kitchen cabinets.  And then I knew.  I needed a better place for all those pin backs and cards that have been accumulating along with my growing collection.

Aha.

This bowl is really a mug;  it has a handle on the side you can't see.  Not a problem.  This may be my only way to possess a Sayida (the chestnut appaloosa Dancing Horse).

When I know them by name, that's a sign.  I'm smitten.

For now.

People & Places BFest 2022

 

I promised a post on people & places at BFest.  Most of these pix are impromptu and previously unseen.  Here you will find some of the friends I was so glad to see, places I have not shot before, and, of course, horses both live and model.  I am trying to document, rather haphazardly, my BFest, which was so unlike any of those that have gone before... recalling that I am a veteran of 29 BreyerFests, including the first.  I should lay these pix out chronologically; but instead, I'm going to start at the KHP on Friday morning.  Such haphazardness is truly indicative of the overall spirit of this year and captures pretty well how I felt.

I got onto the KHP grounds each morning by walking.  Not through the famous gate, but by the Rolex pond dam road, which was held by a single distracted guard against cars.  All I had to do was stroll over to the United States Dressage Federation headquarters and photograph its beautiful bronze sidepasser [above].  If the guard saw me, she didn't react.   I had paid for my ticket like everybody else.

Rolex Lane, facing the parking lot

Between the Federation headquarters and the lane, there is a lovely lawn, with a charming little cottage-looking house in amongst the trees.  For some reason this scene strongly reminds me of family vacation places in northern IL (Channel Lake) and central MO (Lake of the Ozarks).

There are many ways onto the KHP.  In the course of the weekend I would converse with others who did not pass through the "official" BreyerFest gate, but came in on foot by various roads.  On Saturday this habit would deliver me to the Special Run tents forty minutes ahead of time -- early enough to get chased off by BF officials.  On that day I discovered some classes being held in the Rolex, and was drawn like a magnet.

Carrying a camera around your neck is a grand way to get closer to the arena.  Even better, the hour was early enough that there was nobody around.  That was my primary goal anyway.

There has been a time in my life when this kind of action would've compelled my most focused attention.  I love a harness pony!  I'm afraid I don't recall whether this was the winner.

Oh, what lovely harness!  :)

I'm going to go back to earlier in the week now, and start with my arrival on Monday.  To actually be there, in person, in KY, was almost overwhelming.  I have shot this view many times over the years, capturing, one by one, our cars; this time it was Moxie's turn.

See the pair of second-floor windows just left of center?  That was where I had my eyrie.  The first thing you do is put a horse in the window,... and make it visible.

Upon arrival my first real encounter was Teresa Rogers, whom I had never met.  Fellow blogger!  We stood on the asphalt, properly masked, and talked.  Over the course of the week, my defenses evolved to the point where, had I the chance to talk with her there again, I would not have masked.  Yes, this whole post is an emergence story.

I spent an ungodly amount of time (days!) worrying about where to visit with Eleanor on Wednesday.  All for naught.  Jennifer P. showed me the perfect place.  This partially-caught photo can be put down to nerves and shyness (I'd last seen her in 2020);  afterwards, it reminded me of the famous book jacket portrait of Terry Gross ("All I Did Was Ask").

Caroline was, surprisingly, an easier target.   (Kim BT evaded, I'm not sure how.)

Among many wonderful things to come out of this meeting was learning how to post FB pictures with my cell phone.  Thank you, Eleanor.  Two years is too long.

A place that hadn't always existed, but which came to be exceedingly useful, was this corridor:

It ran from the base of the 500-600s wing to the corner of the Paddock, and at the end a side door led outside.  Now you were at the Outback, ("the north side of the 300s") practically at the other side of the hotel;  you had completely skipped the central area and the 100s.  The cold white lighting and scarcity of people made it look haunted, and I started thinking of it as the Science Fiction hall.  I wound up using the SF hall quite a lot.  For example, I used it to quickly reach Paola Groeber's room in the 400s:

She is another great hobbyist I'd never met.  At least these ships didn't quite pass in the night--!

I regret I didn't get a shot of Heather M.  Visiting her was a milestone in terms of companionship, tackmaker-hood, and emergence from covid-fear.  That really was the first time I was unmasked inside (tho not the Clarion; another hotel), in the presence of another (who was not family [but should have been!], for the entire afternoon.  Our visit took place on Tuesday, the same day I was shooting the Coldstream Campus rather obsessively.  Other blog posts record this indulgence :) but here are a couple more:

Heather knows how to comfort you when you've cracked your first cell phone screen.

Wednesday evening saw me take another small step, literally across the hall.  Someone new was there, Danielle Feldman, a truly wonderful friend (and customer!).  In the course of that lovely visit, I learned to sit still in someone else's room with the door open, while strangers wandered in and out.  (Recall I could not do this with my own room.)  Danielle helped tremendously by masking.  In the course of BFest I would make her a gift of a white KN95 with gold bling on it.  Yea, it's just these small steps that mark my path back towards normalcy.  Two almost-strangers entered, Danielle introduced us, and one said, "Oh we know YOU! the LEGEND!!"  I hid my face in my hands -- I didn't know them from Adam.

Thursday was a transition day.  All days were, of course, but this one more than most.  On the one hand:  Of course I hall-crawled, this was BreyerFest, what did he expect??!?  I went out, I plunged through crowds (none of them fully masked), I stuck my head & sometimes my body into strange rooms, I even spoke to strangers.

On the other hand:  Every trip out was planned.  (Very early Tues reconnaissance of doors helped!)  I kept them short and they had definite targets:  Paola Groeber's room for Bond tack, 143 for stickers.  The Resin Show to give gifts to Jackie Arns and Jennifer Buxton.  Over the course of the day it became obvious I had bought the line, Just wear your mask and carry on as normal.  As much as 30% at times were masking with me; no one else blings them though!!  I stopped and talked with people I knew; I dropped in on Linda Walters long enough to buy a book.  I hunted and found Stablemates.  I went to 143 twice, until I caught them open, and bought more than a dozen stickers.  They didn't know me from Adam.

Plunging into crowded halls after 12 noon became my limit.  Here I do not go.  I did stick my head into the Artisan's Gallery for about 2 minutes.  Most of the time, though, I was alone in the room.  It's restful, I ate and surfed and watched movies, napped and slept in there, and it allowed me to internalize my purchases.  Walking outside, another trick, encountered Liz LaRose, which was a pleasure.

Friday I went to the KHP and tested myself against crowds outdoors.

About the closest I can quantify it is as "three people at 30 feet."  This, like all else, is flexible and very rough.  Almost the first place I wound up was inside a tent!  I actually asked Darlene if she was vaccinated;  this was the first time I've asked anyone in more than a year (and probably the last ever).  (She said yes.)  The ventilation was good, and, after some pondering, I took off my mask and sat there, reveling.

Tack by Darlene Stoddard.  Excuse the fingerprints; he is inside a Plexiglass cage.

Outdoors is free, no mask.  Wandering over the familiar grounds, I came across the Master of Volunteers, Robin Briscoe.  She let me take her picture.  I think all those pins on her lanyard have influenced me subconsciously.  :)

An astonishing thing happened on Saturday.  Just below the center of the next picture is a hillside.  I was camped out there for lunch, looking out over the beer garden, when a fellow picnicker approached me and introduced herself as Kathryn Johnson:  She for whom I had rebuilt TSII #413, the saddle I'd worked on for many months last year.  I had never met her.  That was glorious, to say the least!

Rolex dam pond road looking north towards the arena

I started out this post promising Places.  Here are some I found Saturday and Sunday.  I have, over the years, extensively wandered the KHP, but I'd never been in some of these.  This first place was near the edge of the parking lot.  I was sitting on the stone wall, under the giant trees, using the phone.

I was quite close to the American Hanoverian Society headquarters.  The bow on the head says everything.  :)

There is a graveyard on high ground to the right as you travel from the Visitor Center and Museum of the Horse in the direction of the All-Tech.  I had honestly never seen this before.

It seemed so peaceful. 

It is a fitting tribute to a great horse of the past.

At this point I can make a prophecy for people like me.  Go about your normal business, wear a mask and nothing else changes.  The world has done it all along.  Open your doors, mingle with the crowds, all will return.  And somewhere in 2024 or 2025, I'll hang up my mask.  And then the Great Pandemic will be over for us.

**********************************************************************

In Other News:

 My promised trip to Boulder has morphed, courtesy Dad's Covid fears about having our nephew in that house, into a trip to Tucson instead.  No model people visits are planned, most sorry;  I need to be with my parents this time; we don't know how much longer we will have with Mom.  This means a near-month hiatus with the book (furious frown).  It also means a great chance to work on my Nikolas-sized bosal hackamore (delighted grin).  The nosebutton is well along.  This piece will be sold upon completion.

Happy Valley Fun Show is undecided, although I'm leaning towards cancellation again.  I don't see me strong enough to demand, let alone enforce, masking of all entrants, and at this point that's still what it would take.

But I can wait four years for a show.

Lot of Loot, Late

 I came back from BreyeFest with every horse I'd intended to get, a few more Stablemates than I'd intended, a surprise puzzle, some fantastic tack and the typical 5K race swag.  I also picked up some books that somehow did not get photographed.  Really this was a restrained BFest for me.  I did not fall in love with a model horse, which is kind of unusual.  But I did achieve my goal of visiting with friends, as many as possible, under difficult circumstances.  I did talk Heather into selling me her smashingly beautiful braided bridle.  I scored well in the race.  And -- most important of all -- I didn't get sick.

Stein enamel pin

A few months ago, I was wanting Stein quite a bit.  He is so gorgeous.  The grulla color is a lovely nick with that mold.  Not every color is great on every mold; but this was a marriage made in heaven.  Yet by the time I made my SR choices, I'd changed my mind.  I already had Fireheart.  I was taking him to BFest with me to console, distract and reassure.  No more space and not much money did I have to spare for a horse I already had the mold of.  I needed Astrid/Rapunzel as a new mold (with harness potential!); I loved her warm color and thought the new mane was charming.  (Yes, that is Sergeant Reckless's blanket.  It fitted!)  I needed Elbe, a Western pony type.  I no longer needed Stein, and when I saw his price climb to $400, I quietly indulged in a little JOMO.

On Saturday of BreyerFest I wandered into the KHP gift store, a place I rarely go.

Ostensibly I was looking for enamel pins, or for a horse to catch my eye.  In fact I was practicing being in a store that wasn't the grocery store.  Over pandemic I had unearthed and greatly beefed up my jigsaw puzzle habit.  Imagine my delight upon discovering several puzzles in the gift store!  I passed up on the 500pc Breyer one... I already had so many little images of Breyers in so many other venues in my life; and I've become seriously picky about my puzzles.  For one thing they have to be 1000 pieces or greater!  Lo and behold, a lovely painting of racers leaning around the curve grabbed my attention.  This puzzle was by a local company I'd never heard of, Depot Street.  Perfect!  Jigsaws, like boats, can be outstanding when manufactured by small, specialized companies.

In the gift store I also plumped for one of the Unicorn Foal Surprises.  This is impossible to understand unless you know that I collect palomino Stablemates.  Boy do I collect them!!  It's a larger collection than the enamels, but hasn't been going on so long.  How they do tend to sneak in!  (Now where on earth did that black foal get his color from?) 

I wound up taking home 4 palomino Stablemates, the gold-&-black dapple Prince Charming unicorn, and Wittelsbach, the blue-&-white Bavarian-flag Arabian.  Perhaps the prevalence of SMs is indicative of the restraint I was operating under, both physical and psychological. They seemed the appropriate scale:  they are small and easy to get.  The Magnolia Unicorn is a partial repaint by dear Jennifer Pomerance.    The Wittelsbach represents the results of my first real hall-crawl (an activity I had been much afraid of, so was gradually working up to).  The other SMs were targets of opportunity:  The Tennessee Walking Horse (bonus points if you discover I already have one) is actually the 2009 Gold Charm.  Believe it or not, this is my first Gold Charm ever.  See the end of this post for photos of my palomino SM collection.

Early on Tuesday I located Jaapi (Jody Powers) and purchased a fistful of halters.  I had honestly forgotten that she would have made halters for the 2 missing years.  I was particularly pleased with this year's cockaded halter.

 What an original idea:  Real feathers in the colors of the German flag!  Thank you Jody for a relieving and inspiring conversation.

The pony pocket was also a target of opportunity.  I wound up buying two new pockets, one for my cell phone, which then turned out to be a duplication of the size I already had. 

As far as tack goes, on Thursday I scored big by making it to Paola Groeber's room, acting on a rumor I'd heard.  (BFest is like that.)  Despite already having a goodly number of Kathleen Bond saddles, this opportunity was irresistible to me.  I bought two more.  Not only saddles but piles of matching breastcollars, back cinches and -- oh joy! -- saddlebags, were mine to pick over.  This was history.  I tried to get parts in patterns I didn't already have.

Kathleen Bond saddle

You can tell I took these with my cell phone.

Kathleen Bond saddle and accoutrements

Something small but amazing came out of those swift minutes hunched over Paola's bed.  I found a Light Breed Show Halter that I wanted.  Paola had made it herself; --- I had not known she made tack.  I love the browband concho.  Of course, this horse is not a Hartland --!!  But the size was right for what I had with me that day, a Stone Pony.  (This is the pearlblue version of Judge Judy if you want to know.)

July 16, Saturday, at the Park, saw my greatest loot pile.  ("The mighty hunter returns.")  This awesome display consists of both my SRs and those I was picking up for a VIP friend back home in PA.  My stuff is the lefthand third; you can see the puzzle and Unicorns box together.

My favorite loot for this extraordinary year is undoubtedly Heather Moreton's beautiful braided bridle.  This fabulous piece was acquired Tuesday afternoon, during my first real friend visit at BFest.  We had arranged to meet in a hotel room other than the Clarion.  It was here I practiced being indoors in the presence of a friend without a mask.  That was such a relief.  We did what we usually do:  talk tack, show off tack, and make tack!  Thank heavens, this fascination is undimmed.

I would not know until I'd returned home and undertaken a 5-day home quarantine whether or not my gambles with Covid were correct.  As it turned out, they were.  I won this time.  I passed with flying colors;  without symptoms, I didn't even have to test.  Here's hoping for a much better next year.

Now that you've read this far, here are the Stablemate collection pictures I promised.  These were taken before I left for KY.

Honestly, I sometimes think I should enter a Collector's Class.  Alas, I'm short on foals.

I could really carry on about metallics in palomino SMs...

As if I didn't have enough to blog about, this post is inspiring me to do one on People and Places of BreyerFest this year.  Stay tuned!   

... and thanks for your patience.