Red zebra halter

Well I just got her in a trade and I had some red leather lace lying around. Thank you to Jennifer Buxton's blog entry on rolled throatlatches! That was easier than I thought it would be!

It is for sale on MH$P.

In other news, we've been growing vegetables out back, and I picked our first tomato yesterday!

Not much to look at, but I'm proud all the same. We cut it up and split it between the three of us as a pre-dinner snack. One word: delish! 

And I'll leave you with a panorama shot out front. They're long here, but those shadows of the house and the trees can stretch almost to those trees in the distance, which are about a mile away, before the sun disappears over the hill.

Dogs and props

I love collecting in-scale dogs, not just Breyers but also Hagen-Renakers, various MIJ and MIC chinas and resins, and, as with "Dobby" the Pug up there, Schleich toys. Not all Schleichs are made equal, in fact many are very toyish, but enough are realistic enough that the brand should not be overlooked. They also make cats, poultry, goats, and other pets and farm animals.

They can make for cute interaction with the main subject. Titania always has her photo taken with her pal Bailey.

And they make nice background additions, like Bailey and Dobby watching Merlin doing some free jumping. 

A note on non-animal props: I'd been looking for a way to show Merlin in halter, since just having him positioned in the setting jumping nothing would have looked a little strange, at least in a "realistic" setup. (and I'm not much of a fan of neutral, "artsy" backdrops, at least not for conformation classes) Photos of horses free-jumping solved that problem. I took two empty cans that were destined for the trash: a small evaporated milk can, and a vienna sausage can. The wrappers and glue were removed, the cans washed, then spray-painted in stable colors. Topped it off with a cavaletti off an old Breyer jump and Merlin had his jump.  

 Not much else to post about this time, so I'll leave you with some baby Friesians and their mothers. They live along the route we take to get to the store and where my sister works. Aww! 

New photo backdrop

The view from the front porch at our house is just stunning, nothing but fields and forest all the way to the mountains 4 miles away. Unfortunately most of our yard is on a downhill slope so finding some level ground on which to set up a photo table was a chore. I finally found a good spot in the side yard and set up to take some sales photos as well as some new show photos. This setup works great for Traditionals, I'm still working on adjusting table and tripod heights for smaller scales.

Enjoy!

Christian taking Freckles Outlaw for a spin.

Really love how this one came out!

And Freckles after she ditched her rider and somehow 

wiggled out of her tack... she's rather exasperating that way

Cleopatra takes her invisible English rider out for a ride. I need more English dolls...

Cleo's halter shot.

 

Cleo's son Kharavanserai

Riddle gets a new halter photo after 11 years.  His gloss makes
photography pretty difficult, but the overcast conditions were
just right for keeping out those pesky glare spots.
I'm very pleased with how this came out. 

A few more:

September Shadows, a Colorado Rangerbred. 

Lady Charlotte, who shows well as a Standardbred.

Copper Chime, a QH mare and apparently the name of an Indian
cuisine restaurant in Christchurch, New Zealand. 

White feet are sometimes a problem with the camera exposure blowing them out. Reducing light intake on the camera helps but sometimes makes everything else too dark. I have a Photoshop lighting and layers trick that I use instead, which I will be sharing in a later post.

Oh, and the bridle and bareback set pictured are for sale on MH$P.

Until next time!

Simple is nice

Especially when I've been working my fingers off on harnesses.

Although I had to put a buckle on the lead. Because it looks nicer than just a foldover, and because I can.

New tack from old material

I decided the bridle from the previous post needed some sprucing up (Rio Rondo conchos on the browband brads and bit), and something to go with it so it would be a complete performance package.

I do have a saddle in the works, but I'd come across some online photos of real bareback riding pads with latigo ties, and I had to try it in miniature. The "natural" 3/16 width lace I had on hand just wasn't accepting dye well (it has a glaze finish to it), so to make the overgirth and latigo straps I cut strips from some nice russet color garment leather I have on hand (same leather I cut the rein poppers from).

I've had this particular garment leather hide for almost 20 years. I bought it at the San Antonio, TX Tandy Leather store as a teenager and made some of my very first (very crude and long ago thrown away in disgust) saddles with it. I gave up on tackmaking for awhile, tried to sell the hide but there were no takers. So it was folded up and stored with Mom's sewing scraps.

It's held up very well, hasn't dried out or stiffened. When I started making harnesses thirteen years ago I found a use for it again as blinker lining, it's the perfect color. I still use it mostly for just that, but occasionally, as shown here, I find another use for it. I've still got several square feet of it left, so there's many blinkers still to be made. I hope, when this one does run out, I find another one as nice.

Set is for sale at MH$P.

A couple new tack items and some silly pics from the Chili Fest

These are for sale, you can see them here at my MH$P page.

GG Valentine and her foal Heartbreaker are such fun to build tack on. (apologies for the text in the first photo, it's a sales photo). I really like the pearl thread for making braided reins, it looks much neater than DMC floss somehow. And I've started threading leather end poppers instead of simply tying off the braid and making a tassle, as well as making leather buckle attachments on the bit ends:

A matching set of halters...

The mare's is actually from 2010, and was made for the FAM. Yep. Tack made on the Family Arabian Mare will fit the GG Valentine mold, too. The adjustable chin and jaw straps probably help...

The foal's comes with a "catch me" strap instead of an actual lead, but I will make a lead with hook for $1 extra on request.

 And now for some shots from last weekend's Winter Carnival and Chili Fest in downtown Middlebury! We decided to take Penny the Breyer Basset Hound along just for the lulz and some silly shots.

Signing in for our "chili taster" badges:

First booth, Two Brothers' Tavern's beef chili. Hmmm. Hot!

Next was the Three Sisters' seafood chili. Yum, calamari!

Stopped to chat with a fellow canine:

"So then I was, like-"

"...and then she was all-"

Had to get a shot with the girl in the chili pepper costume:

And the fire truck!

"Only you can prevent forest fires."

Then we walked over to the Marble Works via the Otter Creek bridge. Enjoying the view with Mom and Meredith:

"You shall not pass."

Then it was time to head home. "Oh, drat these darn snow storms. Anyone got a shovel?"

A couple of new horses and a little improvising

I got some belated Christmas money and added a couple of new horses to the herd. I've been wanting GG Valentine and Heartbreaker for awhile now, mostly for tackmaking, but also because I love Eberls and this is the only way I can afford them at the moment.

This is Cleopatra, a new body for an old ID that once belonged to a "Tara" CWP (who is now re-ID'd as one of Cleo's daughters):

And her son "Kharavanserai":

The new place offers some nice outdoor photo backdrops, unfortunately at this time of year the sun's position in the sky tends to cast tree shadows everywhere. These were taken in the driveway in about a five foot long and four foot wide patch of shadow-free sun. The foreground "snow" is simply a white bath sheet.

And since my hobby tables were still packed at the time I took these, I had to improvise the platform a bit and used a TV tray table, a keyboard tray taken off a long-gone computer desk, and perched them both somewhat precariously atop a cooler. I think it all worked out, but I also think I'll bring home those folding tables on our next trip to the storage unit...