Packing & Buttons & Presales & Saddles (Oh, My!)

Second Post of the Day

A little at a time, the tubs and boxes in my office have been brought downstairs. I'm stacking them out in the garage so there is less distance to carry them to the car when I pack it on Wednesday.

Still to come down is the finished clothing.

There are nineteen (NINETEEN!!) bags of clothing still in the office. I want to keep them on the clothing racks as long as possible to minimize wrinkling.

Leslie and Rick are dropping my tent off Wednesday morning out at Fort Ouiatenon. Curt always helps me set my tent up, and since it's Fall Break for the kids, Ian, Mila, and Lukie are helping, too. Lisa will be, too. They will come here first and help me carry all those bags down and lay them in the trunk of the car(s). Then we'll be off to the fort!

Last week I picked up my Feast packet at early registration. The 2026 Feast button was inside.

I'll add it to my collection of Feast buttons in the sewing room next week after the Feast has concluded.

The Feast has received a very big honor this year. Coming to perform is The US Army Old Guard Fife & Drum Corps!

Coming from Virginia, this is our nation's fife and drum corps and it plays at every presidential inauguration and other official United States events.

They will be performing both Saturday and Sunday at 2:00. I am hoping that I will be able to hear them from my tent or that maybe they will march past it on the way to the arena. (The main marching route for the Feast passes close to me so I often get to see and hear the music.)

Even if I don't, I am so proud that the Feast is receiving this very high honor. I think of my Mom and all her hard work publicizing and helping grow the event for decades, of Leslie, director of it for 25+ years, and how the Feast is now the largest 18th century event in the Midwest and one of the very biggest in the entire country.

Their hard work has helped make the Feast what it has become, and I am happy for them and proud of the parts they played in that. Huzzah, Mom & Les!

I had another early sale yesterday - to Leslie!

She fell in love with this bedgown and it now belongs to her. We haggled over it - she wanted to pay for it, but I didn't feel good about that since she loans me her extra tent and helps me out in other ways.

So I suggested a trade. Two block prints for one bedgown. She countered with three block prints, and we sealed the deal.

I also finished a custom order for a repeat customer, Lucia. It's for her soon to be husband, Tim.

Tim asked for a white shirt (check!) with a specific length (check!), wider cuffs (check!), and bone buttons (check!)

They are getting married next month and it will be fun to see them again and hear more about their upcoming wedding.

Two more presales are in progress and if presales are any indication of how my actual at-the-event sales will be, I'm going to have a good Feast.

Finally, a photo of our garage which is stuffed full of others' belongings right now. When Nan moved, she gave us some of her furniture to hold for someone else who will pick it up later this Fall. My Feast tubs and boxes are piled in there along with packing boxes and materials for the friend who is taking Nan's furniture. Needless to say, we can't get our cars in right now.

But look closely. Do you see what I see? Something that makes me smile and my heart sing?

There are four saddles in my garage right now. My western saddle (bottom right, near the orange bucket), Leslie's 18th century side saddle (on the bed frame, bottom left), my English saddle (background, left of the Coke cooler), and my Dad's 1930s saddle for his pony Oh Boy (back right, against the wall.) 

When there are saddles in the garage, the world seems a little bit brighter and I sure feel like smiling. In fact, I am smiling now as I write. Because, saddles!

Stay 'tooned!

The Flip Side Part 2 & a Recipe

When I first started photo showing in 1971, my dad, ever supportive of my horsey side, offered to take the photos for me. He was a photographer with a darkroom in our basement, and so we went downstairs and set up my models on the pool table using old drapes to mask the shoe boxes and background.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to ask him to use photograph film; he used slide film instead!

Luckily (and rather expensively), Dad was able to turn the slides into pictures. And... I didn't think to tell him that I wanted  3x5 pictures! But the small photos showed just fine and I am still grateful to my father who helped me take my first show photos.

Believe it or not, this costume won a lot of ribbons for me. It was made from my parakeet's feathers. Whenever my bird, Buttons, molted, I would save his feathers for costumes. 

Me with my parakeet, Buttons, back in 1969.

Scojeadon wearing an early halter I made by cutting up a necklace and using some leather scraps and Elmer's glue.

The back of Scoj's show photo. You can see that I pasted a new sheet of paper on the back of the photo when it got full of writing and was all messy.

The next photos I took myself with the camera that Buttons is perching on above.

Equitabar, an early Hartland and made of tenite plastic like a Breyer, strutting across our horse pasture. That's the Wabash in the background.

My first Hagen Renaker. I love how they used to put the date on photos; for documentation purposes, I can document that I have had this piece since August, 1972.

All these pieces are still with me. While I would not say that I am a black hole collector, I did and still do love my carpet herd and just about every one of them are still with me.

Now, on to my absolute FAVORITE sugar cookie recipe. I just made these with Lukie for Halloween!

Lynn & Lukie's Favorite Sugar Cookie Recipe

Cream together 1 & 1/2 cups powdered sugar (not granulated!), 1 cup butter, 1 egg, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 1/2 to 1 teaspoon almond extract. (I use the full teaspoon, but then, I love almond flavoring in holiday baked goods. You can also omit the almond extract.)

Mix in 2 & 1/2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon of soda, and 1 teaspoon cream of tartar. Chill a few hours. (You can skip that step and be fine. The dough also freezes well. Often I make a few batches and freeze them during the holidays. Grands come to visit? We just thaw the dough and bake together!)

Roll dough out and cut into shapes. Place on parchment paper or greased cookie sheet and bake 7-8 minutes at 350 degrees. 

Easy Creamy Frosting

1 cup powdered sugar, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, 1-2 tablespoons of milk, and a couple of drops of food coloring. Stir with a spoon. To make a thinner frosting, add a little more milk; to make a thicker frosting, add less milk.

Decorate those yummy cookies with your favorite folks and then eat 'em up!

You can bet I will make this recipe several times between now and New Year's Day!

Collection Cleaning and Rearranging: Old Hobby Buttons!

As I go through the tubs and boxes in my closets, I have come across items that I've tucked away and forgotten. I opened a small tub with old photo showing pictures and discovered these buttons with them.

BreyerFest attendees waaaaay back used to receive buttons with their tickets. (Before that, it was a bandana.) Their purpose varied over time, with some being just for fun, while others indicated what time you were to get in line to get your Celebration model. 

These Stone buttons are from 1997 if I remember right. I don't know if they were simply freebies or if they had a purpose, and I could not find out any information about them.

When personal computers began coming into homes and the hobby started shifting to connecting online, the Yahoo Group Haynet was the granddaddy of them all. We got to know each other pretty well on Haynet, but since photo sharing wasn't available yet, we would not be able to recognize each other at BreyerFest.

 I think it was Nan Wagner who solved that problem by creating these buttons for Haynetters which made us easily recognizable to one another as we traipsed around Kentucky Horse Park.

As time went on, other online groups popped up. MooNet was one that I enjoyed, and we, too, had buttons made for BreyerFest.

Everyone got a nickname and mine was Isis - a permutation of my last name that connected to an ancient Egyptian goddess.

There are more buttons tucked away, but I haven't come across them yet. When I do, I'd like to gather them all into one spot so that I can find them more easily the next time I want to look at them.

Identify Your Breyer has a great section devoted to pins and buttons. If you are interested in collecting them, or just want to get more information, it's a good place to start.

That's a rabbit hole that I am staying away from as I do not collect buttons and pins! (Or Stablemates, or dogs, or...)

Dad's Slides: Evidence of Horseyness

My sister has been going through our father's photos and slides, scanning them into her computer, and then sending us the files. It has been interesting to see just how much horses have dominated my life, even as a child.

Eight years old and with my sister, Leslie. I have no idea where this was taken; I think we may be at a summer day camp held locally in one of the parks.

Our cat, Figaro, had a litter of kittens when I was eight. This is Tinker Bell and Wednesday (their brother, Thursday, was born a day later.) See that book?

I loved Scholastic Book orders and would buy every horse book they offered. I no longer have Born to Run but I remember that because of reading this book I learned how to spell the word "separate" correctly - it was on the main character's spelling list and she was practicing it!

Speaking of books, I almost missed the book on top of the things I am carrying in this photo. It was Christmas Day and we had driven over to my Grandma and Grandpa  Honeywell's home for dinner.

Sand Dune Pony by Troy Nesbit!

And it is still on my bookshelf in my library upstairs along with other childhood favorites.

Buttons was a wonderful parakeet - very friendly and people oriented. He learned to talk and loved to play with us. I almost missed the horse I had cut out and taped to the wall behind him.

Another almost-missed. I was smiling to myself at my brother's long hair before I noticed Cee down the moraine in the pasture behind him.

Me at eleven on Gambler's Maid, my favorite horse to ride at the stable where I took a couple of riding lessons. 

I also had my first bad fall in the same spot another day. We were cantering and Gambler shied at something along the trail. I fell off, hit my head, and was knocked out. (No surprise, I have a model named after her, too.)

How I wish my Dad was still alive. I'd love to talk to him about all these old photos that he took and tucked away in our basement. But that's not possible, so I will be content with enjoying the legacy that Dad left behind on film.