Virtual Brush Box

Riding Journal

Awareness of the outside world. Wildfires in the western US. Terrible floods in Europe and China. Extreme heat everywhere. If only we’d had warning.
~~~

tldr: Amount of rain up; amount of riding down.

Rain. So much rain.

We’ve had gully washers.

This is a walk in a local park *after* the flood had subsided. This was NOT us. When we have big rain, it makes a mess and then goes away, draining down the hill, taking our driveway gravel with it.

We’ve had days of rain. Days and days and days. Even a light rain day means heavy cloud, which means no sun, which means no drying time. The sweltering Southern summer sun is usually at least good for this.

We’ve had thunderstorms.

My mother was worrying – as mothers do – about storms in my area. I reassured her that afternoon thunderstorms are a standard feature of summer.

That was a few weeks ago.

Standard summer storm pattern. Show up on radar. Blow in. Go boom. Blow out. Get on with your life.

Lately the storms have been unsettled. Unpredictable. Blowing up from nowhere and then disappearing. Wrecks havoc on outdoor planning.

Why all this weather talk?

We don’t have the footing for these conditions. We haven’t ridden in days. Not even a quiet walk around the field. Rodney hikes up his skirts, minces along, and spends the entire walk going Eww, Eww, Eww. After a while, the level of annoyance grinds me down. Usually by that time, the ground has started to dry out. Now, not so much.

He has a point. Footing is terrible. I don’t walk in it. [Little Walking]

However.

I would have more sympathy for Mr. Princess Paws if I didn’t get to watch him canter downhill in the mud for breakfast. Canter. Downhill. In mud.

Anyway.

We could go somewhere with footing, but then you have the storm factor. Don’t want to get caught in the middle of an XC field during a thunderstorm.

I’m not whining. Okay, I’m whining a little. We had finally (finally, finally) gotten to the point where we could actually ride our horses. Now this.

The good news. Our temps have been ridiculously low for summer. It’s still hot & sweaty out, but not the incapacitating oven that summer around here usually is. [Summer Routine]

… and probably will be soon.

… and then I’ll complain about the heat and the hard ground.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine

The Horse World

Kori approves of horse show programming. Cat and TV belong to …

[Macho Dresses Up As Dr. Whooves]

… Michelle, of Tardis dress fame. She and I each bought the Richfield Video livestream of the Lexington Junior League Charity Horse Show at the Kentucky Horse Park. We spent the week cheering …

… the Stepping Stone Farm entries. Pictured, Coach Courtney, acting as header for Buster.

We watched. We texted. We shared from afar. I realize this is old hat to you hyper-connected digital natives, but this old fart was vastly amused.

Michelle was kind enough to ask questions, which gave me the chance to pontificate, which is a horseperson’s second favorite activity. [MGD Archive]

Show your horses!

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine

The Horse World

Awareness of the outside world. “Lunar Communion Sunday is still celebrated annually at Webster Presbyterian.” History.com: Buzz Aldrin Took Holy Communion on the Moon. NASA Kept it Quiet, Blakemore, 2018, updated 2019.
~~~

Last week was a festival of passive participation. Television coverage of the Tour de France. Livestream of the Lexington Horse Show. Virtual Breyerfest. Three events; three modalities.

Naturally, the Tour de France had the best production values. Full-time reporters following the race. Professional commentators covering every move.

Personal favorite was Lexington because I knew people. More tomorrow.

The most varied content award goes to Virtual BreyerFest. Hours of live and recorded coverage. Talks. Workshops. Art contests. Demos.

Wouldn’t it be fun to combine them?

Imagine a horse show with a virtual component to watch from the comfort of your couch. Full coverage of the ring(s), of course. Real-time results. Barn tours. Interviews with riders, trainers, and owners.

RVP tries to add value to their coverage. They stick a microphone on front of every winner as they come out of the ring. While I admire the effort, this is not the optimal time for quality interviews. Trust me, you will not get anything coherent.

On the way out, the folks from Richfield Video interviewed the winners. I talked five times to the poor man holding the microphone. I managed a usable soundbite once. The rest were the same ‘It was great. The horse was great.’ drivel that I used to get when I covered horse shows.

Team Awesome, Pro-Am 2016

Much of the information exists, but one has to cobble it to together. Schedule from the show. Results from a horse show recording page. Livestream from the videographer. Stills from the photographer.

Wouldn’t it be fun to have a landing page with all of this accessed from one place?

Okay, not every horse show, but the top handful from each discipline. Local shows tend to get watched by family members. Although, would grandparents pay to watch a few classes? Would a parent who couldn’t get off work? Fellow barn rats?

And maybe not TdF-level money, because then we get TdF-level scandals. But take some of the coverage ideas.

It wasn’t all watching. There was shopping.

Say what you want about content and fan-engagement, Breyer is a business. Their prime directive is to sell plastic ponies. BreyerFest makes it disturbingly easy to buy plastic ponies. I went a wee bit nuts with the shopping. I will confess to the extent once they arrive.

An outsider’s view,

Her horse is the lightsaber and Han Solo in Star Wars; the ring as well as Samwise in Lord of the Rings. The call to action and the companion.

Gizmodo: 72 Hours in Model Horse Mecca, Menegus, 2016

Later,

Make a horse walk funny and horse people lose their shit.

Ibid

Model Horse [Archives]

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine

Horsekeeping

Awareness of the outside world. Huffington Post: Everything You Know About Obesity is Wrong.” Hobbes. Counterpoint, USNews: Everything You Know About Obesity Is Not Wrong, Markey. All of this was back in 2018. Still a worthwhile discussion. I want to say both sides have good points, but we can’t use the term “both sides” anymore can we? Anyway. “Just as horrifying as the disease itself (scurvy), though, is that for most of those 300 years, medical experts knew how to prevent it and simply failed to.” Hobbes. “What messages prevail isn’t just about what doctors put out, it’s also about what consumers pick up.” Markey. Assist to friend who posted on FB.
~~~

Me. (Goes out to check footing for possible afternoon ride.)

Milton: I vote for bath!

Rodney: Yes. Bath.

Me. (Considers weather. While temps not as hot as they will be later, humidity says summertime. Considers horses sweaty from simply standing around.)

Me: You are not wrong.

(By bath, they mean rinse off with hose. One of their favs.)

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine

Images, Little Plastic Art

Awareness of the outside world. BreyerFest Artisan’s Gallery 2020. Sales pages, but it doesn’t cost anything to look.
~~~

Additions to the herd since BreyerFest last year. [Model Horse Archives]

Classics, i.e. what you think of when you think of a Breyer model. Only one (two) new, La Molina & Masella. Silver filigree mare with blue filigree foal.

Breyer, Products: La Molina & Masella, 2020 Winter Decorator Web Special

Model Horse Madness: Black Beauty and La Molina & Masella!, December 2020

La Molina, Identify Your Breyer: Andalusian Mare

Masella, Identify Your Breyer: Andalusian Foal

Freedom, i.e. the middle size that seems neither fish nor fowl to me. One that I won in a raffle and am hoping to rehome. Two model lines is enough for me to keep track of.

Stablemates, i.e. the little dudes. At first, I was only tracking the big horses. Therefore my Stablemates records are spotty. Valiantly resisting the urge to get lost in a data update. These are the ones I know are new within the year.

Stablemates Club

Atticus, bay

Breyer History Diva: Atticus, Cassidy, and the Box of Mysteries

Identify Your Breyer: Clydesdale Stallion

Hendrik, palomino

Breyer History Diva: The Latest in Stablemates

Identify Your Breyer: Standing Friesian

Tobias, Appaloosa

Model Horse Madness: Tobias is Here

Breyer History Diva: Getting Artsy

Identify Your Breyer: Appaloosa

Miscellaneous

Justify, who jumped into my cart when I ordered Atticus in February. Identify Your Breyer: Thoroughbred

Prince, arrived with strained leg, at vet for repair. Collector’s Club bonus for 2020. Identify Your Breyer: Fighting Stallion

Conga

Magnolia (purple), arrival date uncertain, came as part of Mystery Unicorn Foal Surprise in a random treat yoself purchase.

Silver Magnolia, my first MH$P purchase, end of 2020

Pearl, Triple Mountain, March

Identify your Breyer: Magnolia

Border colors from this year’s BreyerFest logo

Tempus Continues To Fugit
Real-life intrudes on the model horse world.

Breyer is saddened to hear of the passing of Janice Cox, a longtime model horse hobbyist best known for being the creator and webmaster of the reference site Identify Your Breyer.

Breyer – My Collector Story: Janice Cox

Spoke with her once by email. After citing IYB extensively for the 2020 post, I asked if she had a donation button. She said no. Quotes and credit were fine. [Carpet Herd 2020]

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine

Words … of a sort

🧍

🏢 🍽️ 🛏️

🏢 🍽️ 🛏️

🏢 🍽️ 🛏️

💡

✈️

🗽

✈️

⛩️

✈️

🗿

✈️

🏠

⌨️

📚

💰

🎥

💰💰

~~~

🧍

🏢 🍽️ 🛏️

🏢 🍽️ 🛏️

🏢 🍽️ 🛏️

💡

🔫

🏦

💰

🏃

🚓

🏃

🚔

🔒

~~~

🔗 (Links)

🌎 😀 ☀️

🐪👁️

Driving

Awareness of the outside world. Dueling chyrons. CNN, ‘Biden speaks out on Trump’s Big Lie’. Fox, ‘Unhinged Biden goes on tirade against election fairness measures.’ The words may not be verbatim. I was too mesmerized by the difference to think of taking a photo. You get the idea. It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.
~~~

This year’s membership brass from The National Horse Brass Society (UK).

Horse brasses float in a sea of topics that fascinate me, but that I never get around to doing anything about. I feel mildly guilty about this. I should fish or cut bait. Not leave so many loose ends flapping around.

Each year, I join the NHBS. I get the membership brass. I hang it up. I write a blog post. And that’s about my level of commitment to the topic or the club.

The newsletters arrive. I ignore them, both digital and dead tree. Oh, I enjoy the newsletters, both the content and how the club feels slightly different than a US club would feel. A slim, brown mailing envelope arrives with foreign postage. I think ‘Oh, goody. I’ll read that.’ And then I put it aside and never do.

Other interests that hover at this level are beads, stamps, Geocaching, The Braid Society (also UK), Postcrossing, and so on, and so on. I jump in, poke around, find a way to wedge it into the blog, and wander off. I’ve even had to stop myself from buying new LEGO sets when I have so many unbuilt ones.

Today is the first day of Virtual Breyerfest. I sense model horses slipping into the loose ends category. I will “attend” this weekend’s festivities, walk the virtual 5K, and then probably not think about plastic ponies until next year.

And that’s ok.

At least, I’m trying to tell myself that.

I’m trying to give myself permission to do as little or as much as I feel inclined. First do no harm. If I want to join, get the horse brass, and then ignore the rest of it, who am I hurting?

Anyone else’s brain work this way?

[Bold As Brass, National Horse Brass Society 2019, 2020] with links from previous years.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine