At the Machine Again

Shoowee! I'm done making beeswax ornaments. More than five pounds of beeswax and three major pouring days led to 173 blackened beeswax ornaments.

Saturday's pouring results in the dining room - finished and ready be packed into protective mini tubs.

They have all been counted, the ones for family gifts have been wrapped (a job in and of itself), the inventory spreadsheet is updated, and I won't open their tubs again until I do final prep for Kalamazoo in early March.

I'm checking it off the prep list and moving on to something else (you can probably guess what) and so, with apologies to Willie Nelson,

At the machine again!

I can't wait to get back to the machine again,

The life I love is sewing fabrics for my friends,

Just can't wait to get back to the machine again!

Several weeks ago I was so tired of sewing that I welcomed the break for attending The Feast of the Hunters' Moon. That break from the sewing machine led to two weeks of unpacking, recovering, and completing the beeswax ornaments for the holidays.

But, I did come home from Ouiatenon with several orders.

~ 3XL trade shirt in orange block print  fabric, bone button closures

~ M trade shirt, navy block print fabric, 3" added to length, sleeve buttons

~ L trade shirt, multi colored block print, horn or bone buttons

~ XL bedgown, blue block print, domed or gold sleeve buttons

~ 3XL shortgown,  pink block print fabric

This last order is going to be tricky. The woman wanted a specific pattern but I would need to make some adjustments to it for fit. I wasn't comfortable with doing that, especially since she lives several states away and I can't fit the shortgown to her in person.

So, we've compromised on this pattern, and I am going to send the size measurements to her and have her tell me which size she wants me to make. 

Not only am I getting ready to resume sewing 18th century garments, but I had a recent sewing request from someone close to me, and it led to a (tearful) walk down memory lane for me.

Stay 'tooned!

A New Hobby Sales Site - BuySellHorth

Second Post of the Day

Spread the news, there is a new hobby sales site, and it looks to be fabulous. And it is most definitely needed.

For decades we all used Carrie Sapp's MH$P for buying, trading, and selling.

Then it went down in a hack in 2024 and came back as Model Horse Connection.

But that site was never quite the same, and it went down frequently.

Model Horse Place was created and I joined it but I could never quite get the hang of using it. And, it did not get the tremendous amounts of traffic that MH$P had received.

Honey Gibbons took over Model Horse Place a while ago,

but my experience has continued to be frustrating. 

Enter Shauna McDaniels and her husband Adam who have created BuySellHorth. It looks very promising.

One of the things that caught a lot of collectors' eyes was that a goal was to protect users from Generative AI. Shauna's husband works in the tech industry and has the capability to make that happen as he and Shauna designed BuySellHorth. 

I've got an account already but I won't be doing any selling or buying until after the holidays. (Although that could change if something I've been looking for pops up.)

Congratulations and many thanks to Shauna and Adam. I hope that BuySellHorth will be successful and a place that many of us, including myself, visit often. Best wishes for success!

Stay 'tooned!

Collections within My Collection: Josef Originals

First Post of the Day

My very first model horses were chinas, made in Japan chinas. I was six when I got my first one, and was so enchanted that they began accumulating. 

And needless to say, they broke. I played with them. All the time. But my dad would step in and make repairs and I'd soon be cantering them across the wood floors again.

I had Leftons, Shaffords, Clovers, Norcrests, Ucagos, Norleans, and more. 

But I did not have any Josef Originals. I didn't even discover them until I was an adult and my much loved/repaired early china pieces were all carefully wrapped in tissue paper and long put away.

An early California pottery started by Muriel Joseph and Tom George in 1946, the pottery produced horses and other figurines in the United States until the 1960s and then in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan in the 1970s and early 1980s when the pottery was sold to George Good in 1982. (The spelling "Josef" came from a misspelling of Muriel's last name.)

I have three Josef Original pieces, all foals.

In my post about Breyer's cake and candy horses, I mentioned that there are some Hagen Renaker pieces that remind me of candy bars. 

This bay color does the same!

The JOs that I have seen have oversized eyes

and that helps me identify sticker-less ones that I find.

This candy bar colored bay foal has colored slip, a characteristic of many JOs according to articles I have read about them.

All three of my JOs came from a dealer at a Great Lakes Congress show.

They are not sought out by many collectors so generally they can be found for a reasonable price.

But buyer beware - as I did research for this blog post, a lot of the photos of supposed Josef Original pieces were not Josef Originals. They were other Japan brands and they were mislabeled.

An intact label helps, but we all know that labels can (and do) get switched.

If you'd like to see more of them, a Josef Original Gallery can be found here at Jane Chapman's Eagle Ridge Collectibles site. 

I'm not actively seeking any Josef Originals or other Japan chinas, but were I to stumble across more of them, I'd certainly stop and take a look.

Stay 'tooned!

French Marble Cake

 Second Post of the Day

Continuing the "Sweets" theme for the day...

My sister, Jenny, was lamenting at this year's Feast that no booths sold French Marble Cake anymore. A favorite of hers,  she has been hoping for years that one of the food booths would have it, but from what I can tell, it's not been seen (or eaten) at the Feast since the 1980s. (Really.)

Well, you know big sisters. They love their little sisters and like to make them happy. So I went through the two Feast cookbooks that were published in the 1980s and guess what I found?

The recipe! I looked over the ingredients (had to look up a scant cup of butter; that just means to remove 2 T from a cup of butter. Easy peasy) and then the directions. Not too difficult. I decided to make one and, if I was successful, make it for this Thanksgiving so that Jenny could at last have her French Marble Cake

It looked good when it came out of the oven;

even better, it was delicious! I sent the recipe to Jenny and Leslie along with my pictures, now firmly committed to making it for Thanksgiving. (I did dust the cake with powdered sugar.)

Well, plans can change. On Friday, Jenny sent Leslie and me this text:

Guess who is now bringing a French Marble Cake to Thanksgiving? 

If you are looking for a new recipe to try, one that has roots in the 18th century and is really good, try making the French Marble Cake. The recipe calls for a bundt or angel food cake pan, but Jenny and I both used 13 x 9 pans and it turned out fine.

If you do, I'd love to hear what you thought of it!

Stay 'tooned!

Collections within My Collection: Breyer's Sweets

First Post of the Day

Me? Like candy and sweets? Surely you jest. 

I have been known to eat a maple cake or two (or three),

And I do have an 18th century sugar cone on my shelf.

But after having lost so much weight, I find Breyer's cake, candy, ice cream, and gum horses much "safer" to have in my home. Some are deliberately meant to be an emulation of sweets; others just make me think of food. (A trait I share with Pepper who is very much a food motivated Labrador retriever.)

Here is a look at what I have in my collection.

Ice Cream and Sherbet Horses

Mint Chip

One source calls him a Dessert Decorator while another lists him as part of the Sweet Treats series. He was produced 2025 - 2026. (With that green, I use him as a Halloween decoration, too.)

Neapolitan 

A nod to neapolitan ice cream, you can see the chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry flavors plus she has pearly icing topped with sprinkles. She was produced 2023 - 2024.

Merry Dance

The 2025 Holiday Surprise horse, Merry Dance was not intended to be anything but a holiday decorator. But I see strawberry sherbet

and lime sherbet in these two. 

Gum Horses

When I was growing up, most kids constantly chewed gum. Why? No clue, but we did.

Fruit Stripe gum was very popular. (Although I preferred Doublemint.)

So when Christmas Candy, the Zebra in four colors (plus a Coal) was released in 2019, I saw them as Fruit Stripe gum Breyer style. 

The same with Short & Sweet, the 2025 Holiday Blind Bags. Gum ponies!

BreyerFest 2024's Better than Revenge is another Gum Pony to me.

Candy & Cake

And then there are the candy and cake horses and ponies.

Kohl was never intended to be anything except a Christmas Pony in the 2022 Holiday Collection. But that blanket sure makes me think of candy canes!

Black Forest  is beautiful.

The deep rich colors on him are stand outs. He was made to look like a Black Forest cake, and Breyer succeeded. He is from BreyerFest 2022.

Cupcake 

Produced 2019 - 2012, no doubt that Cupcake was emulating food. Glitter and sprinkles, my first through when I saw her was, "Who would buy that??"

Well... me. I actually bought two, one for a Pony Pal and one for me.

Red Velvet was the next cake horse. Released 2021 - 2022, I bought two of her, too. By now I was totally enamored of the cake horse line.

Sadly and as far as I know, that was the end of their cake horses line (my name for it, not Breyer's) although I have wondered if Neapolitan was included in it. Makes sense that it would.

I did a quick walk through of my collection, looking to see if I had any other horses that reminded me of sweet things to eat. I do have some Hagen Renakers that remind me of candy bars in their coloring (think of a Three Musketeers Bar.) I'll see if I can't find pictures of those - anymore, I really don't want to handle my chinas too much so I won't be bringing them out of their cabinets to photograph them.

Stay 'tooned!

Melt, Pour, & Repeat

Second Post of the Day

The blackened beeswax ornament making continues apace. There are ornaments in various stages around the house - in the kitchen, the dining room, the laundry room, and the garage.

I've never made so many at one time that I needed the dining room to hold them, but I am on a roll and hoping to get all the ornaments needed for Christmas and Kalamazoo made now rather than later.

That has required a two page spreadsheet (I have 72 molds) and a count of everything I have left from the Feast.

I found the 7 fleur de lis (bottom left) and the baby bear (top right) as I unpacked from the Feast - they'd never gotten put out in my tent. Including those, the total left in stock was 33 ornaments.

I've made a count of them and added them to a fresh spreadsheet, and then added the amount of ornaments from each mold that I want to make.

That included the Christmas ornaments I needed to complete before Thanksgiving for my grands, their parents, and other family members.

When those ornaments were finished, I logged them into the spreadsheet, washed the molds, and set them on racks to dry before putting them away.

The family gift ornaments are all completed, wrapped, and ready to be packed up and mailed. 

Unfortunately for me, the weather here finally got cold - it is below freezing this morning. I spray a sealer on the ornaments when they are finished and that step is always done on a covered table in the garage. If the garage gets below 55, then I cannot do the final step.

The garage is well insulated and even on the coldest days of winter, our garage never gets below freezing. But, when the garage door is opened as happens several times a day, it will drop below 55 degrees, the lowest temperature recommended for the sealer that I use. 

As I prepared to head to the hardware store to get an outdoor thermometer to monitor the garage's temp, Craig offered to go do that so I could keep working. (Thanks, Craig!) 

Thus far the garage temp hasn't dipped below 60 degrees so I have been able to continue to work.

I do that step in batches as the ornaments are finished one side at a time. These are nearly done and ready to come back in the house and be logged and put away,

and these are waiting to go out to the garage for the final step.

Thus far I have made 149 new ornaments, 29 of which are set aside for the family and leaving 120 for Kalamazoo.

Midweek I ran out of beeswax and had to order another 5 lb bag. It arrived last night, so today I will be back in the kitchen pouring more ornaments.

There are 37 molds that I have not yet used for this pouring, but I have them on my spreadsheet and know how many of each that I need to make.

It's going to be a busy day.

Stay 'tooned!