Get Together Prep

Huzzah! I have a busy horsey weekend coming up with not one but TWO get togethers with collector friends!

The first one is here at my home with longtime hobbyist and friend, Susan Bensema Young. She is the owner of Timaru Star and makes FA-BU-LOUS tack - there is a link to her blog if you scroll down through the blog lists on the right. Just take a look at her meticulous work on everything from mecates to bosals to saddles, and parade outfits, snowshoes, and wicker chairs! Sue is one truly gifted artist.

She and her husband, George are dropping by Friday to spend the day with us, and she and I have more plans for things we want to do than we may be able to accomplish. In the meantime, I have been doing some sorting and getting things out for a little bit of show and tell in the horse room.

I've got my craft table out so that we can spread out on it - Sue wants to see my Circus Pony collection and I want to look through some of her tack binders.

 The card table with the vintage tablecloth is where I am putting other things to show Susan, like my tack trunk, a circus rider doll, and the ring that I made for an Anything Goes class at Great Lakes Congress.

My father made me the tack trunk way back in the mid 1990s. Laura Doll had one at the very first NAN in 1995 and she was seated next to me. I admired hers, and Laura graciously let me take photos of it so that my father could make me one, too.

It's heavy and a bit unwieldy, but I love it and store almost all my tack in it. (That's not much since I only briefly showed performance back in the 1990s.)

I'll post photos of our get together either Friday night or early Saturday (I hope.) Saturday morning I need to leave the house at 9:00 to travel to a small get together with some other Indiana collectors in the eastern part of the state.

It is going to be a fun weekend - as I told Sue, it feels a bit like Christmas around here!