Kristian Beverly

Purple and Skirts

February 5, 2015December 28, 2024Kristian BeverlyLeave a comment

So the saddle has started to come together. The pattern was spot on except for the skirts. I had to redo them a couple of times to fit the tree.

For the Thoroughbred series, I finished number fourteen and fifteen. I have to wait until number sixteen gets to my house. 🙂 I really need to put them in order to see if anything else is missing because I will finish this series.

Long Intervals

February 4, 2015December 28, 2024Kristian Beverly4 Comments

It was a happy occurrence to get onto the internet , see Harper Lee trending, realize it was for a good reason. It was announced that To Kill A Mockingbird would have a sequel that will be out this summer. To Kill A Mockingbird is one of my favorite books and is going to be Harper Lee’s first new work in more than 50 years. Breyerfest won’t be the only thing I’ll be looking forward to in the summer!
While it hasn’t been 50 years since I’ve completed an English saddle, it’s been a while. I feel like there is always something to improve on. So I’ve been working on fixing my pattern.
The last couple of weeks has surrounded the attempt to do just that.
There was this saddle. It’s supposed to fit traditional ponies. I bought a couple of tooling tools and experimented with those on it. I didn’t make the under flaps and the panels kind of fell short, but I learned from it and took note of the things to change.

Then there was this saddle which is to fit larger models. There’s still tweaking ahead of it. I saved the pieces of this saddle and will go back to it to finish that pattern.

I finished tweaking the pony pattern today. Or I think so!

Along with the pattern I also decided to dye a piece of my lining leather purple, since purple is my favorite color. I used RIT dye.

It worked well and fast too. I didn’t listen to the ratio directions and dumped dye into hot water. The back of the bottle said something about teaspoons to gallons of water. I know my ratio was far from that! 🙂

The Missing Link

February 2, 2015December 28, 2024Kristian Beverly8 Comments

It’s funny how time moves and how sometimes something that felt like it happened yesterday actually happened many years ago.
Some summers ago, my mom and I went to a yard sale.
It was the best yard sale ever. A) There were Breyers B) There was a huge case of horse books.
I bought the case of books and most of the Breyers. There was a range of horse books, but one series caught my eye. The Thoroughbred series.
The Thoroughbred series was created by Joanna Campbell in 1991 and lasted 15 years. It ended with 72 books, other authors, and spin off editions .
So I bought them home. Read them. Got to number thirteen. Finished it. Went to start number fourteen….and…there was none. By this point I had been reading two or three of them a day. So not having fourteen put a major damper into the reading binge I was doing. I put the series aside and started on another book and Thoroughbred was pushed to the back of mind. For years.
Of course the logical thing would have been to go and buy number fourteen. Sadly Borders didn’t have any and online shopping never crossed my mind.
But I don’t do easy. I do difficult.
Difficult meant years later I finally bought the book. I was working in the book store today and decided to check and see if number fourteen was there. And it was. I was told that it had been put away the day before. I’m not 100% sure what made me see if it was there but it must have been meant to be. So here’s number fourteen. While I feel like I am passed the intended age group…but better late than never….right? (At this point that’s what I’m telling myself!)