My Year In Saddles: 2020 Edition
Oh, 2020. I had such hopes - we’d finally gotten the most pressing projects taken care of in the fixer-upper we bought in 2019, our kiddo was a little older, and we were going to get so much done!
Enter The Pandemic (dun dun DUN).
Despite all of this, 2020 has been an incredible year. I am grateful more than ever for the online hobby community. Some of those friendships literally kept me sane! Now - on to the pictures!
JANUARY
We started off on a high note - this Portuguese set was a trade with Tiffany Purdy. It was such a stretch at the time - I’d never tried anything like it!
Themed western pleasure sets are one of my absolute favorite things to make. There isn’t a lot of room for personal expression in tack, so I love it when clients want to go all out. This Canadian-themed set has maple leaves in the tooling, on the seat, AND in the silver, plus red accents.
February
I made my first set for Josine Vingerling’s Lola in February and promptly started hunting for one of my own.
March
Ah, March. Life turned a little upside down, but still went on.
APRIL
In April, I think we all started realizing this wasn’t going to be a quick thing. Expectations were adjusted, International Model Tack Month got under way, Breyerfest announced that it was moving online, and I finished up a flurry of pieces for a long-planned sale. There were a lot of items offered, but the highlights were this Portuguese set (the prototype for the black one finished in January) and…
a circus set for Klaus!
May
This is literally the only thing I have listed for May. I have no idea what happened in that month - I was probably so exhausted from the chaos of single-handedly running an international tack challenge plus putting on my biggest sale in years AND watching the hobby short circuit over Breyerfest that I slept through it! They’re cute, tho!
JUNE
Oh, June was FUN. Saddles…
Kittens…
and bosals, oh my!
Western bosal for Vingerling Lola, donated to Mares in Black podcast.
July
I don’t remember exactly when Breyer announced the virtual Artisans Gallery. Whenever it was, I’d had time to think about it, decide that my April sale had been enough, and move on.
Except I didn’t. Which meant that I sent in my form and payment the day of the deadline and then spent the first two weeks of July frantically pulling together a sales catalog from basically scratch. For reference, I had spent parts of January, February, March, and April preparing for a sale that I held at the END of the month. I’m a little crazy, but I had a lot of fun throwing myself into work in a way that I hadn’t been able to do for years. My husband is the real MVP - he took a day off and gave up evening family time so that I could focus on prepping for the Artisans Gallery. Here are just two of the pieces I offered in July:
August
Besides western pleasure, one of the few places you can really express yourself in tack is eventing. My client wanted royal blue as an accent and wow - it looked SO nice! This was also my first ergonomic bridle. It took some fiddling, but the result was worthwhile.
I also started offering halter donations to any live show that transitioned to a virtual format. This one went to the revamped Lemmonade Live show.
SEPTEMBER
Back-to-back eventing sets were really convenient - I had plenty of practice on that ergonomic bridle and making the mini Hazel-sized one felt easy compared to the tiny Stone Chip!
October
This is a full set, of course, but I was so especially pleased with this bridle that I needed to highlight it.
November
Technically, November was supposed to be a sabbatical month. I was going to use the time to do all kinds of things - work on a new western saddle tree mold to replace the one that died over the summer, sort my collection, make some things just for fun, maybe even a sales piece! But pandemic fatigue, life, and the extra work I took on in July pushed my schedule back and I ended up finishing one last commission in November.
December
December was supposed to be a sabbatical month, too - a month of learning new skills, educating myself, and trying new things. It was actually a month of rest punctuated by spurts of busy baking. Apparently that’s what my soul needed, and I’m glad I scheduled this time to just be. I did make this little halter for a friend’s Christmas box, though!
