Getting Some Normalcy Back

Life is getting back to normal around here. Slowly, but it is. Craig is still under concussion protocols (and will be for some time) but he is back in his office and has more energy.

I'm still very tired but I am up, 

baking (Yum! Pumpkin bread!),

and cooking again. (Chili. It was very cold outside and sounded good to both of us.) We share the cooking duties so when I felt like getting back in the kitchen, I knew I was better.

I also got busy cleaning up Craig's clothes and our towels after his fall. While he could do that himself, it can be a bit unnerving to clean up your own blood. And there was so much of it.

The nurse at the hospital advised us to use peroxide and NOT wash anything until we had. 

That was good advice.

One hat, two gloves,

a jacket, a shirt, and four towels later, I was able to throw everything in the washer and have it come out stain free.

Although I still am tired, I felt able to get back into the sewing room and finish the men's trade shirt I'd been working on before I came down with Covid.

I can't look at a block print with elephants or camels but think of my experience last October at The Feast of the Hunters' Moon and the man with a license to ride camels!

I also started and finished a quick custom order for haversacks.

This is an XLT in Cave Horses, one of my all-time favorite fabrics.

A Hamilton-sized Traditional in Onaqui Mountain Horses.

This customer is just getting back into the hobby and will be attending her first live show this spring, so I have more to make for her. She wanted to see how these two sizes fit her models so she could figure out how many of each size was needed.

It feels really good to be getting some normalcy back into our lives. Grateful!

More Newly Arriveds!

I have two more pieces to share that I received from the Carolyn Boydston auction. 

Elephants! (And cute ones, too!) This is African Elephant Mama and African Elephant Baby in grey gloss.

The were sculpted for Hagen Renaker by Tom Masterson and released in matte brown (1953 - 1956) and grey gloss (1971 - 1972.)

The pair has beautiful shading, 

the price was right, 

and well, you know what happened. Now they're mine!

I'm amazed that those slender, delicate trunks have survived for over fifty years

and I am going to do my best to keep them that way. 

I also received the two 75th anniversary blankets from Breyer.

I think the Western Horse is the right choice for their anniversary logo; after all, he was the first horse or animal produced by Breyer way back in 1950.

But that odd 75 on the logo puzzled me at first. And then I saw and understood what Breyer was doing.

It's Breyer's 75th or diamond anniversary, and by drawing a line around the number, you can see a diamond. Clever!

The second blanket has various diamond shapes just like the logo uses. 

It also has five models on it, models that are celebrating their own anniversaries.  There's Smart Chic Olena (2005, 20 years), the Western Horse (1950, 75 years), the American Saddlebred Stallion (2000, 25 years), Lonesome Glory (2000, 25 years) and Esprit (2010, 15 years).

That Esprit puzzles me - this is his 15th anniversary which is rather unremarkable. I'm going to do a little research and some thinking about the reasons why he was included.

Stay 'tooned!

Back in the Sewing Room

My sales models have been packed away for the March Great Lakes Congress show - finally. That clears some space in the horse room, space that is rapidly beginning to fill with things for my other hobby, living history.

Kalamazoo isn't until mid March, but the Conner Longrifles is in two and a half weeks.

I'd forgotten about it - I'm not going, even though it is less than an hour's drive from my home. But Leslie and Rick are. They are setting up their 18th century business, Chien Noir, and Leslie called and asked if I'd like to send some things down to sell with them.

A quick check of my records show that my men's shirts sold very well last year. That's good. But the downside is that sales like that would take a big bite out of what I've already made for Kalamazoo, which is just a month later. It would be a challenge to sew enough shirts to restock for that.

So... I'm heading back into the sewing room this morning. I've got a really neat elephant block print fabric that I've been saving. (Elephants are period correct for the 18th century and are a very popular motif among living history folks.) I'm going to try to get a couple more shirts done, either for Conner Longrifles or for Kalamazoo. 

After those are done, hopefully I can cut some haversacks out of the new fabrics that I just got and stitch them up!

Finally, thanks for all the well wishes that so many of you sent after I wrote about my fall. Compared to Craig's, my fall was very minor. He was badly injured and is still healing several weeks later. (A big lump over one eye and a tender knot on the bridge of his nose remain.) 

I'm bruised and scraped, with my own big, tender knot on my shin, but it wasn't a serious and concerning injury like his. (No head injury protocol for me!)

Grateful for that!

 

My Elephant Trifecta

There are three Breyer elephants in my collection. (Four if I count the Corky & Bimbo who are still in their original box and tucked away in the closet.)

All three have something quirky about them, something that keeps me from selling them even though the elephant mold isn't one I actively collect.

This is the quirkiest elephant. Originally I bought him because he still had his blue ribbon, but when he arrived, I realized that he was not your run of the mill Breyer elephant.

He is a lot like the battleship grey color Breyer once produced on the donkey and on the hooves of early Man O'Wars. There is also a bit of a glow from under his paint.

The tusks have what seems to be a thin layer of white paint on them - you can see the plastic through it.

His mouth has the same light wash of paint.

Here he is compared to my other two elephants. See the difference?

The underside of his feet explain a lot - this piece is made of grey plastic, not the usual stark white plastic that Breyer uses. This indicates that he is from the oil crisis era in the 1970s when Breyer was having difficulty getting their usual plastic and so reground pieces and remolded them into new ones.

The bottoms of the feet are unpainted and you can see the color difference when you compare them to the tusks which have been.

He is definitely the most unusual of the three. Tomorrow, we will look at the chalky/not chalky one.

Stay 'tooned!