Breyerfest 2008, Day 1 (Friday)
I've started going through my second horse-crazy phase. I loved horses as a kid/teenager, but didn't pursue the craze through college (even though the first college I attended had a stable! I really should have taken lessons… oh well.)
calicougar mentioned Breyerfest to me. I had been to a few model horse shows, thanks to calicougar, but the main draw of Breyerfest was the horses themselves! calicougar wanted to meet up there, and since I hadn't seen her for a couple of years I agreed. Yay, friends and horses!
Well, first a dog. This is Lucy, my dad's dog in the back of his Jeep, which I would borrow for the drive from Knoxville to Lexington. I borrowed the Jeep, not the dog.
I finally made it to the Kentucky Horse Park, rather late in the day (around 4pm.) As I waited around for Tracy to show up, I looked through the model horse show tent. I didn't feel comfortable taking photos of this (I prefer to take photos when I can ask permission). Eventually I was lured away by two horses grazing in a pasture nearby. Not sure what breed they are. They were quite happy eating their hay.
Tracy, of course, found me next to the horses. I hopped into her car and she took me around to show me where things are. The KHP is huge, and I got lost a few times. The signage wasn't very good and there is a lot of construction going on since the KHP will be hosting the World Equestrian Games in 2010.
We drove down to the Breyer buildings to see what was going on. As we walked up to the building, there were large paddocks on either side of the walkway. To our left were Friesians and of course they pulled me toward them.
I called and clucked to them but they would not come over to be petted. ☹ Too busy grazing.
We made it up to the main Breyerfest building. This is a large covered arena, surrounded by various vendors. We passed the Alborozo room where they were handing out the special model. (What's special about the Alborozo model is that supposedly, for the first time in the 60 years Breyer has been in business, they are breaking the mold.)
Stacks and stacks of Alborozo! I'm curious what will happen to any unsold ones.
It was about 4:30pm and people were wrapping things up. We glanced at the dealers lining the arena but I wanted to check out the Breyer store and eventually the room sales at the Holiday Inn before buying any horses. The Breyer store was closed, so we wandered around a bit more. There was a petting zoo with camel rides (we did not go for a ride!). We decided to go check out the Holiday Inn.
As we headed out to the car, we visited with the Norwegian Fjords who were in the pasture across from the Friesians. They, at least, were happy to be petted.
The Artisans' Alley was at the Holiday Inn, as well as the swap meet and room sales galore. I'm kind of unclear what the swap meet was about but apparently it was desireable because people were lining up well in advance for it. We didn't bother to go to it since we had nothing to swap.
First we stopped at the Artisans' Alley. The first table that caught my eye was Heather Downing's table (Mirror Bay Farms, www.mirrorbayfarms.com). She had some beautiful tack. I'm impressed by the detail on such tiny horse tack. When I was a teenager I made little show halters for my horses, but they were nothing compared to what's being made by the pros.
The next table had a cute customized border collie by Leslie Ann Rothhaar. I had to get photos for furtech!
Next I got a picture of the Arabian costumes at dnh_studios. (http://home.aaahawk.com/~dnh_studios/) Really marvelous costumes!
I took these next photos without knowing who did this tack. I'm amazed at all the little details on the saddles. I didn't see a business card nor anyone who looked like they belonged to this table. :/ Whoever you are, they are beautiful little saddles!
Andre Schutte from www.foxvalleyartist.com had some awesome kirin sculptures.
Finally, Bill Duncan (bdwagons.com) had some amazing little wagons. Well, little is relative- they were actually fairly big, perfectly sized for Breyer traditional models. I would love to have one of these, eventually. But which one? They were all so wonderful.
A swan sleigh for swandog!
A sled and caribou for saribou!
Wagon with beer kegs!
Eee a tinker's/gypsy wagon! I can just see this set up with a Gypsy Vanner.
Amazing stuff. Maybe I should save my pennies…
After the Artisans' alley we peeked into a few room sales, but were kind of overwhelmed at that point and decided to have dinner. We had Mexican food which was quite good.
I had left the Jeep over at the KHP near the model horse show tent, so we drove back there and parked. It was much cooler by this time, around 7pm, so we decided to walk around and look at the horses.
The first horses we found were some Friesians in a large paddock. Friesians are one of my favorite breeds, and they were near the fence so we had to go over and do some petting.
As we were petting them we seemed to trigger some sort of grooming frenzy. Here are a sample of the grooming photos- there are more in the directory.
I even got some video of the grooming: .avi files.
First video of the grooming Friesians.
Second video of the grooming Friesians.
Eventually the Friesians grew bored with us and wandered off.
We walked over to the barn where the guest horses were. We did a lot of petting and looking, wandering aorund. It was a little difficult taking pictures as most of the horses were locked up in their stalls.
This fellow had a piece of hay stuck on his forehead.
This nice man stopped and let us take a picture of and pet his mule. The mule is a 3 year old molly (female mule). He was going to train her for driving eventually, but I think he had her at the KHP for the mule presentation and to get her used to the crowds. He was walking her around as we peered into stalls.
Then we found an adorable miniature horse foal.
This horse looked very proud of the ribbons s/he had won.
Some people were harnessing up their minis to go for a ride.
Then we discovered the cutest donkey foal ever. Her owner/caretaker was kind enough to open the stall and let us pet her and take pictures. We tried to keep her in the stall but she was determined to get out. Once she got out, though, she just stood there and looked around. So woolly and soft and adorable.
The jack in the next stall was very interested in the donkey foal, and brayed to her a few times. He was three years old and feeling his oats.
We found the special guest horses- DZ Weedo, Bluegrass Bandit, Fox Valley Oliver, and Pimlico RCA and Alborozo! We did some nose petting of these horses. DZ Weedo almost bit me, but I am wise to the ways of studs. I told him he was naughty. I teased Tracy that DZ Weedo was her "boyfriend" becaue she likes Appaloosas. Alborozo ws my "boyfriend" because I have a weakness for the baroque breeds.
We petted some more horses, but then realized it was close to 9pm. We decided to head back to our places to get some sleep. I was in a hotel not too far away, and I needed to get to sleep because I had my "special run time" at 9:30am on Saturday. I started writing this report, but it's been so long it's taken me several days to write it all and prepare the photos.
Part 2 coming up… hopefully soon, but might take a couple of days!
calicougar mentioned Breyerfest to me. I had been to a few model horse shows, thanks to calicougar, but the main draw of Breyerfest was the horses themselves! calicougar wanted to meet up there, and since I hadn't seen her for a couple of years I agreed. Yay, friends and horses!
Well, first a dog. This is Lucy, my dad's dog in the back of his Jeep, which I would borrow for the drive from Knoxville to Lexington. I borrowed the Jeep, not the dog.
I finally made it to the Kentucky Horse Park, rather late in the day (around 4pm.) As I waited around for Tracy to show up, I looked through the model horse show tent. I didn't feel comfortable taking photos of this (I prefer to take photos when I can ask permission). Eventually I was lured away by two horses grazing in a pasture nearby. Not sure what breed they are. They were quite happy eating their hay.
Tracy, of course, found me next to the horses. I hopped into her car and she took me around to show me where things are. The KHP is huge, and I got lost a few times. The signage wasn't very good and there is a lot of construction going on since the KHP will be hosting the World Equestrian Games in 2010.
We drove down to the Breyer buildings to see what was going on. As we walked up to the building, there were large paddocks on either side of the walkway. To our left were Friesians and of course they pulled me toward them.
I called and clucked to them but they would not come over to be petted. ☹ Too busy grazing.
We made it up to the main Breyerfest building. This is a large covered arena, surrounded by various vendors. We passed the Alborozo room where they were handing out the special model. (What's special about the Alborozo model is that supposedly, for the first time in the 60 years Breyer has been in business, they are breaking the mold.)
Stacks and stacks of Alborozo! I'm curious what will happen to any unsold ones.
It was about 4:30pm and people were wrapping things up. We glanced at the dealers lining the arena but I wanted to check out the Breyer store and eventually the room sales at the Holiday Inn before buying any horses. The Breyer store was closed, so we wandered around a bit more. There was a petting zoo with camel rides (we did not go for a ride!). We decided to go check out the Holiday Inn.
As we headed out to the car, we visited with the Norwegian Fjords who were in the pasture across from the Friesians. They, at least, were happy to be petted.
The Artisans' Alley was at the Holiday Inn, as well as the swap meet and room sales galore. I'm kind of unclear what the swap meet was about but apparently it was desireable because people were lining up well in advance for it. We didn't bother to go to it since we had nothing to swap.
First we stopped at the Artisans' Alley. The first table that caught my eye was Heather Downing's table (Mirror Bay Farms, www.mirrorbayfarms.com). She had some beautiful tack. I'm impressed by the detail on such tiny horse tack. When I was a teenager I made little show halters for my horses, but they were nothing compared to what's being made by the pros.
The next table had a cute customized border collie by Leslie Ann Rothhaar. I had to get photos for furtech!
Next I got a picture of the Arabian costumes at dnh_studios. (http://home.aaahawk.com/~dnh_studios/) Really marvelous costumes!
I took these next photos without knowing who did this tack. I'm amazed at all the little details on the saddles. I didn't see a business card nor anyone who looked like they belonged to this table. :/ Whoever you are, they are beautiful little saddles!
Andre Schutte from www.foxvalleyartist.com had some awesome kirin sculptures.
Finally, Bill Duncan (bdwagons.com) had some amazing little wagons. Well, little is relative- they were actually fairly big, perfectly sized for Breyer traditional models. I would love to have one of these, eventually. But which one? They were all so wonderful.
A swan sleigh for swandog!
A sled and caribou for saribou!
Wagon with beer kegs!
Eee a tinker's/gypsy wagon! I can just see this set up with a Gypsy Vanner.
Amazing stuff. Maybe I should save my pennies…
After the Artisans' alley we peeked into a few room sales, but were kind of overwhelmed at that point and decided to have dinner. We had Mexican food which was quite good.
I had left the Jeep over at the KHP near the model horse show tent, so we drove back there and parked. It was much cooler by this time, around 7pm, so we decided to walk around and look at the horses.
The first horses we found were some Friesians in a large paddock. Friesians are one of my favorite breeds, and they were near the fence so we had to go over and do some petting.
As we were petting them we seemed to trigger some sort of grooming frenzy. Here are a sample of the grooming photos- there are more in the directory.
I even got some video of the grooming: .avi files.
First video of the grooming Friesians.
Second video of the grooming Friesians.
Eventually the Friesians grew bored with us and wandered off.
We walked over to the barn where the guest horses were. We did a lot of petting and looking, wandering aorund. It was a little difficult taking pictures as most of the horses were locked up in their stalls.
This fellow had a piece of hay stuck on his forehead.
This nice man stopped and let us take a picture of and pet his mule. The mule is a 3 year old molly (female mule). He was going to train her for driving eventually, but I think he had her at the KHP for the mule presentation and to get her used to the crowds. He was walking her around as we peered into stalls.
Then we found an adorable miniature horse foal.
This horse looked very proud of the ribbons s/he had won.
Some people were harnessing up their minis to go for a ride.
Then we discovered the cutest donkey foal ever. Her owner/caretaker was kind enough to open the stall and let us pet her and take pictures. We tried to keep her in the stall but she was determined to get out. Once she got out, though, she just stood there and looked around. So woolly and soft and adorable.
The jack in the next stall was very interested in the donkey foal, and brayed to her a few times. He was three years old and feeling his oats.
We found the special guest horses- DZ Weedo, Bluegrass Bandit, Fox Valley Oliver, and Pimlico RCA and Alborozo! We did some nose petting of these horses. DZ Weedo almost bit me, but I am wise to the ways of studs. I told him he was naughty. I teased Tracy that DZ Weedo was her "boyfriend" becaue she likes Appaloosas. Alborozo ws my "boyfriend" because I have a weakness for the baroque breeds.
We petted some more horses, but then realized it was close to 9pm. We decided to head back to our places to get some sleep. I was in a hotel not too far away, and I needed to get to sleep because I had my "special run time" at 9:30am on Saturday. I started writing this report, but it's been so long it's taken me several days to write it all and prepare the photos.
Part 2 coming up… hopefully soon, but might take a couple of days!