The Show!

The Pocket Change For Ponies Show was held on February 28th, 2015 in Becker, MN.  My friend and I hit the road early Friday morning and made the 9+ hour drive, getting into the motel right about dark.  On the way there, a big milestone happened for our little road trip car:

Yep, that's a quarter of a million miles.  My little chariot is a 2003 VW Jetta station wagon, with the turbo diesel.  It averages between 45-50mpg on the highway and is a wonderful car. 

The morning of the show it was bitter cold, below zero.  We made our way to the place where the show was being held and unloaded everything.  Here's how the table looked once it was all set up:

Laser stuff, my mini custom herd, and my Pacers, who I don't trust to stand up on their own.

Most of the OF herd, all arranged by class...

The rest of the OF herd.

Unfortunately the show was very chaotic for me, because they decided to run both of the divisions I was entered in at the same time.  (OF Breyer and Custom) then they started running them on multiple tables.  Luckily I had packed everyone up by order of their classes and I had unpacked them in that order.  I didn't actually have everything unpacked and the table set up until well into the show.

The very first custom class was Arabians and my pretty little mare, Ashley, won the class!  She is the only custom I have that I didn't do.  I bought her many years ago after falling in love with her via a picture.  According to a date on the bottom of one of her hooves, she was created in 1989.  The ol' girl still has it! 

I had taken a selection of our laser stuff too and I ended up selling a bunch of ornaments, as well as talking to a couple of people about custom orders.

Here's a closeup of my little custom herd.  I've arranged them in different ways at each show, but I think this was kind of a neat way of doing it.

I didn't do very well at all overall with placings.  My only other NAN card for the day was won by Days In Avalon, my little custom Thoroughbred mare.  She's an old one too.

My luck did turn around though when they started drawing for the raffle.  I had bought 6 tickets...  and I won three times!  They had a huge bowl full of tickets and drew my name three times.  The first time I was excited, the second time I was surprised, and the third time I just laughed.  I think winning Lionesse back in October might have broken my "I never win anything" streak.

Here's what I won:



A new horse!

Pony pouches - two big ones...

...and two little ones!

I also had the last minute winning bid on a couple of things in the silent auction.  There were two stacks of Just About Horses magazines that had no bids, so I put my name down on them.  I flipped through all of them back at the motel and there are a lot of great articles about customizing and prop/tack making.


And now, my really exciting news... nope, even winning a bunch of raffle prizes can't top this...

The entire show was a benefit for the Minnesota Hooved Animal Rescue Foundation.  Toward the end of the show, they announced that they'd had another thing donated.  A day in the studio with...  Candace Liddy!!  They opened it up for bidding and - I won!  I talked to her for a little bit afterwards and she was very nice.  When I was a kid, I remember I had several horses she had sculpted; the original micro minis, and the horses with the interchangeable manes and tails, etc.  I was (and am!) so excited for this opportunity!  We exchanged contact information and she said that we can work on whatever I want to.  For instance, I can bring some of my work if I want her to critique it or if I'm stuck on something, or we can start something from scratch, or she can show me resin casting or bronze casting.  Eeeee!!!  I am SO excited for this and so thankful that I'll have the opportunity to learn from someone like her! 

That's about it... Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of other horses there, I was feeling pretty frazzled keeping up with the classes.  I'll try and be better about that at the next show - especially since the next show has a performance division!  (this one was Halter only)

Only a few days to go until I'm on the road again.  I'm still feeling really sick, I'm desperately hoping that I'll be better by this weekend.