As I mentioned in the last post, I recently left for the North American National model horse show with 16 of my self-painted models. I'm still not back home yet, but I have the use of a nice little notebook, so I got my NAN photos uploaded and I decided to do a write-up and post some of them.
2010 was amazing. It was like any model horse show in that, at times, it was exhausting, tedious, boring, pointless and depressing. But the caliber of the horses there was off the chain, and I took a ton of pictures (and had to keep going back and deleting some because I was an idiot and only brought my smaller camera card), enjoyed meeting people and was shocked by how well my horses actually fared.
We stayed at the Holiday Inn North (the official hotel of NAN and Breyerfest), which was insanely fun. Also insane. People sell models from their rooms all during NAN and Breyerfest, so there were excellent opportunities for wandering the halls, chatting with other crazy model horse people, getting lost, finding sweet deals, running out of money, getting lost, finding MORE sweet deals and cursing myself for not bringing more money, getting lost some more, and finally making it back to my hotel room after getting lost, forgetting that my room number was 337 and sticking my room key in someone else's room, 127 (hey, I was only off by one digit!). Room-sale-ing before and after NAN was actually the highlight for me, except for maybe the last ten minutes of NAN.
Speaking of. Earlier in the day, I managed to win two Top 10 awards, which I was happy about, although I was a bit disappointed overall. And tired. Very tired. Finally after about a million years, I put my last two horses on the table for the last class of the day. I really wanted to win a Champion or Reserve, but I didn't think it was happening. I did have two of my best horses in the last class, and there were only nine entries, a pathetically small class by NAN standards. But the class size meant they would only be doing a Top 5, so I had even fewer chances to win something. And every horse in the class was nice. A couple were outstanding. I knew one of my horses looked really, really good (I'd randomly found a place on the table where the light hit him absolutely brilliantly, and he stood out) but I was in no way assured of success. So I went back to half-sleep by an empty table and wait for my results. I couldn't half-sleep very well, though. I had that sick feeling of anticipation and really, really wanting something.
Finally they announced the Top 5. I heard my horse's name and started toward the table to collect my ribbon, ecstatic. Then they announced the Reserve Champion. Not him. Oh well, I thought. I'm not going to win Champion. At least I got something at the end of the day.
They announced the Champion. It was my horse. I seriously couldn't believe it. I got to take him to the award table and have his official results picture taken, and I got a revered "cookie" plaque. And my horse's picture will be in the NAN results on their website!
It was an awesome end to the day. The timing just rocked. Things don't often work out that way. I'm very thankful for it.
Picture time! Here is RR Concealed Weapon, the 2010 National Champion in Artist Resin Mini Brindle/Other Color Workmanship:
Here are my three little winners. From left: RR Greyt Expectations (Top 10 Custom Mini Other Solid Realistic Color), RR Concealed Weapon, RR Child's Play (Top 10 Artist Resin British Native Pony):
And here are my other favorite photos from NAN:
Wow! that is soooo awesome. I really wish I were able to go to more shows! Congrats big time on your winners, especially since you painted them yourself =D
ReplyDeleteAwww, I remember my Breyer days. The Holiday Inn North is sooooper stunning and it was crazy to see the entire hotel turned into some sort of model horse mall with people selling from almost every room!!! Of course, I'm selling almost all of my 300 Breyers now that I got a real ponifers to pour (and sometimes waste) all my money into haha(I'm keeping some very precious ones though, I'm not THAT heartless) so I won't really be into that fun stuff again :(
ReplyDeleteActually Breyers and Breyerfest are what got me into dressage in the first place. I never really fully grasped the concept of dressage (and I had seen the Lippizaner show twice before 2005?? I guess it just didn't click, I wan one of the many ignorant people that thought they were just very fancy trick ponies, shame on me) until I saw Fire Magic perform at BF 2005 and I said "I WANT TO DO HAUTE ECOLE!" I didn't know that you had to learn BASIC dressage before you learned all the fancy stuff... I just assumed they were different divisions of dressage. Oh... if only. Of course, I wasn't actually able to do any dressage until 2008. Really wish I had been doing that or hunters or SOMETHING English rather than barrel racing for seven years.... I would be so much further along now...... I'll be an old lady when I hit first level at this rate DX
But GAH those were some gnarly CMs!!! I wish I could do stuff like that! I'm just sticking to paper... I feel safer there haha. And congrats on all the WINNING!!!
That's really cool! I must be some kind of ignorant because I didn't even know they had shows for these things... The fact that people paint them by hand is SO COOL! I'm totally not artistic, but wouldn't mind purchasing one that looks like my horse.
ReplyDeleteLongtime fan of the blog! Only now commenting! Sofie reminds me of a pony I used to have and I think I'm a little in love with her because of it... that and her cute face!
Lovely pictures! Thanks so much for posting them and congratulations on your winnings. The little Chevyo is beautiful and a deserving winner.
ReplyDeleteThis post made my day.
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