Friday, September 21, 2018

Julip Live Online Photo Show 2018

Each year Miss Laura hosts an online photo show in the J-Club forum for those of us who can't attend the live show. There are five divisions - Scenes & Performance, Molds, Colours, Stable Pets, and Fun - with placings up to third for each division. I did surprisingly well this year with a second in Scenes & Performance, first in Colour, and first in Pets!

My ribbons arrived on Thursday with my left-over spares purchases. We're very proud of our critters and pub.

Julip Live Spares by Proxy

I've wanted to attend Julip Live since I started collecting Julips, but have yet to manage to make the trek down south. I thought this might be my year until my cousin set the date for her wedding; it was too close to show time and the trip to Texas was too expensive to allow another holiday. Maybe I'll make it down next year.

In 2016 Miss Stacey agreed to be my Spares Frenzy proxy and a few days after the show a parcel arrived with the pinto Connemara, Pandemonium By Proxy, and a few friends.


Thursday, July 26, 2018

Pet Shaming

I'm not sure when the pet shaming fad started, but my Facebook feed was teeming with these posts in early 2018, and when Stacey announced the pets-only scene class for Lake District, I knew what I had to do. Out of the dozens of posts I saved, I managed to narrow it down to ten per animal group, then thin it down still further to no more than five each for the final group.

Some of the props were from my prop box - hand-made items or Playmobil bits - but others, like the roadkill were specially made for this setup. All the pet shames are real, though some have been edited slightly for length. Each "post" is in an Facebook post frame.

Monday, July 16, 2018

J-Club Pen Pal Exchange 2018

This year on the J-Club Forum, a Pen Pal Exchange was arranged. Each participant received a Pen Pal from the organizer through private message - the pairings could be kept secret or not - with the person's answers to a questionnaire we had all filled out and their address. The idea was to have the people from our model stables write to each other. We were to send a full-sized letter with a 1/12th scale copy, and any other little bits and pieces we thought of.

My Pen Pal parcel arrived this past Saturday, but we were so ragged out from the Kirrie show, that I didn't have the energy to open it, much less take pictures, until the next day. The Kirrie show is our town's agricultural fair and each year we take a mess of stationary engines and tractors....oh and the threshing mill, can't forget my favourite toy. This is my husband's hobby, so the grunt work falls on him, but it's still a long day out in the wind and, this year, sun - it's often rain. The best part for me is driving our tractors to their home barn several miles away through the countryside. There's nothing like driving an old tractor with a top speed of 12mph - the wind in your hair, the bugs in your teeth. Seriously, it's bliss.

Aaaaaanyway... the Pen Pal exchange. This is Pearl Vagner's box, so I'll let her show off the contents.

Friday, July 13, 2018

Lake District Live 2018 - The Spares

If you've ever seen a school of large goldfish being fed in a small pond, you will have some mental picture of the energy of a Spares Frenzy. As soon as Miss Laura announced she was putting out the spares, we swarmed from all over the hall. "By chance" I was right next to her as she was putting out the models and snatched my first, a dark flaxen chestnut Cob Stallion, before he barely had time to hit the table. I then saw spots in the box, so naturally I followed her as she moved on as I've been wanting a Laura-era appaloosa for ages.

At one point I had in each hand a grey blanket appaloosa on the Dressage Horse and a chestnut appaloosa Shetland, in what we call semi-leopard in the hobby. I ultimately decided on the Shetland as the Dressage Horse isn't one of my top favourites. He passed through a couple of hands before ultimately ending up with EG.

Having made my choice, I left the others to the equine feeding frenzy and made my way to where Mr. R was quietly laying out the animal spares. There I was able to leisurely pick and choose my favourites.

Lake District Live 2018

This past weekend saw my fourth excursion down south for Stacey's always wonderful Lake District Live show in Storth.

The cats were not happy to see me packing
The first two years I would swing through Glasgow to pick up EG as a driving companion. Since she doesn't have personal transport, getting to the show would have been difficult for her and it's always nicer and safer to travel with a friend. On these trips we stayed in the adorable and comfortable George Washington in Warton, which is a tiny little town, but fairly close to the show in Storth.

The Fjord Horde

A year ago, right after Lake District Live 2017, I sent Miss Laura the first order for the Fjord Horde. A year later at Lake District 2018 I picked up the last of the horde and unveiled them in the Conga class as the Fjord Rainbow.

Fjord horses are almost exclusively dun with a base colour of chestnut, bay, or black. The cream gene is also present which, when combined with dun, presents as lighter version of the standard colours - buckskin dun, palomino dun, and smoky black dun (which is visually indistinguishable from black dun).

A double dose of the cream gene + dun results in an almost completely white, blue-eyed horse - perlino dun (bay base), cremello dun (chestnut base), and smoky cream dun (black base). This colour is considered unfavourable and is very rare in the Fjord population.

The five "official" and registrable colours in the Fjord breed are called: Brunblakk (bay dun), Grå (black dun), Rødblakk (chestnut dun), Ulsblakk (buckskin dun), Gulblakk (palomino dun). Double dilutes, or Kvits, are not encouraged or recognized. The vast majority of modern Fjords are bay dun, with a scattering of chestnut and black duns and cream duns as a rarity, but in the past, the other colours were more popular and therefore more prevalent.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

The Adventures of Southern Gothic Zirondelle - Bus Trip

In 2016 I needed to travel from Kirriemuir to Crieff to retrieve my jeep, Spot, from the dealership where he had been undergoing some rather extensive surgery. It's not what I would consider a particularly long journey, but it's a fairly tedious one from Kirrie as it involves changing buses in three towns. To while away the time with something other than the usual book, I brought Zirondelle along to attempt my first travel story.

We're just about to leave Kirrie and head to Alyth (a favourite location for fish n chips)