Home from the show

We got home from Ozark Mountain Live last night, tuckered out. It's the one live show a year that's close enough for me to attend, although I may make it to the show near KC this fall.

Anyway, I sold two horses (Duke and a TH Silver) and came home with four - a repainted H-R Quarter Horse Stallion, a bay Clover china, an old red-chestnut SM Morgan Mare, and the new pinto G3 SM Mustang that I got as a door prize. I was tempted by Cindy's Lakeshore's, as usual, and a couple of PS Chips. I resisted the temptation, so far. The Chips are nice-looking, as far as that goes, but they're tiny and the prices that the new ones go for seems out of line for the size. Especially if it's true that they're now made of the same rubbery stuff that Schleich horses are made of.

As far as show results: I took about 50 horses and came home with 19 ribbons and 8 NAN cards. I missed the class for my Silver Lining resin, darn it, and one SM class. My SMs seemed to do better than the Trads, for whatever reason. I got firsts with my Rubicon and two SM G2 stock horses. My HR Mini Morgans both took seconds, along with 3 other horses. I took half a dozen Palouses, but only one placed - Echo got 3rd. Very strange. My one artist resin got a 3rd, but my only good CM plastic only got a 3rd in a 3-horse class. (I'll admit, though, the other two horses were stunners. This same horse got the Gaited Champ or Reserve Champ a few years ago. I guess he's out-dated or something.)

But, by my calculations, 40% of my horses got ribbons, and 16% NAN'd, so it's not a bad trip.

My pipe dream is to show a bit of performance, enough to get a NAMHSA Merit award for one of my horses. But, with one show a year, and a slightly limited budget, I don't see it happening any time soon. Oh well.

Pictures to come later.

New (and not so new) horses

Another box in the mail today - a Ruffian and Nokota that someone picked up for me at the Tuesday Morning sale. My local TM had Breyers, but not those two.

Then I unboxed almost a dozen horses that I bought over the holidays. I was hoping to take a few of them to the show this month, but I found more issues than I expected. I opened a beautiful Madison Avenue, only to find a nasty box rub on her non-showing side. My Blue Gold and Cloud's Legacy sets also had paint issues, mostly from rubbing against other horses in the set. Luz de Luna is gorgeous, on the other hand. Too bad the mold doesn't live-show well, but I love it anyway. I also opened up an Ethereal - Earth (heavy 2-piece base!) and Harmonie, who was perfect except for one tiny paint flaw.

New Stones

More new ponies! I got a box in the mail today, from someone who offered to pick up some of the Stones that Tractor Supply had on sale last month or so. Bless her for doing it. She found two Breeze ISHs for me - consecutive numbers, long mane/long tail versions. She said one was glossy and the other matte, but they both look about the same to me. Then, at a different store, she found an Arabian, Twist I think - $11 instead of the $5 that the ISHs were, but that's cool. PS doesn't seem to do "regular run" horses anymore; everything's a limited run, so they're all freakishly expensive.

A new Stone horse

Just got this guy in the mail yesterday.
He was a great deal on Ebay, $9.99 plus $10.50 shipping/handling. Of course, I'm trying to avoid Ebay, since the latest "upgrades" to fees and feedback. But, sadly, they get a lot of traffic, both from buyers and sellers.

Anyway, the PS woodgrain is really nice. The matte finish makes it look more like real wood; I've got a Breyer woodgrain (SM Andalusian from Breyerfest) that's more on the glossy side, and it makes the wood look a little more unrealistic.

Pictures

As promised, pics of the Hagen-Renaker Mini Morgans.

The mare, who is beautiful. The first picture is more her true color, although I'd love it if she'd been closer to the color of the second picture.




And the stallion. He's very sooty, for lack of a better word, especially on the "show" side. Not what I would have picked if I'd had a choice, but that's the way it goes. And I wouldn't order something online and expect the seller to go through all 50 horses to find one in a certain shade, either. You pay the bill, you get the horse that was on top of the stack or whatever. He's still gorgeous, and I wish I had a safe place to display him. Unfortunately, until we move, he and the mare will be living in their shipping boxes. Sigh.

New horses!

The mailman knocked on my door today, and left three boxes. Okay, one's for DH (my Valentine present), but the other two are horse-related.

The small box has my Hagen-Renaker mini Morgan stallion and mare, in a sooty-looking palomino. This is the second set that Ed sent; the first set went into the PO's Bermuda Triangle and still hasn't reappeared. But they're beautiful!

The big box is the 3 ISHs that I ordered from P.S. Cord - Pretty Consecutive, Andrea's Answer, and Definitely a Dunnit. Still have to pry them all out of the boxes, so pictures may appear soon.

Horses on the way

I've got a few horses on the way again. Ed Alcorn is re-shipping my palomino HR Morgan pair, since the first ones are lost somewhere in the postal system. Hopefully they'll surface at some point. And I got the shipping notification for my P.S. Cord order. They're having a sale, so I got three ISHs - Andrea's Answer, Pretty Consecutive, and Definitely a Dunnit. Hope they're nice ones.

The Stone company is getting a little outrageous, though. They aren't making any "regular run" type horses that I can see, just a lot of limited-run SRs with very high prices. From what I saw on their website this week, $90 seems to be the minimum for a Trad-scale model, and the smaller Pebbles and Chips aren't far behind. I can see why there aren't many CM'd Stone molds around anymore (other than factory CMs).