Between the Pages: Gonna Paint Me a Pony, Stick it in a Closet, and Call It ‘Reckless’

But seriously.  Have you ever had such a bad idea that you and your company laugh and laugh, and at the end of the humor you realize it will definitely happen someday?  

Last winter Dave and I were walking through an excellent antique store when I spotted a smallish carved horse in their window display.  And I just laughed and laughed at the outlandish idea of opening a random door in your place, and *bam* there in the back is a carousel horse for no good reason.

I’m so in love with carousels that I have rules and preferences.  And designing a real full-custom carousel horse would be a dream come true.  So naturally, it was going to happen.

I didn’t purchase that one in the store….it just wasn’t right.  Too small, carved, I wanted something ruin-able without disturbing history.  Carousels have a vibrant history.  (And for the record, a Merry-go-Round is strictly horses.)  ’Etsy’ provided an excellent alternative to the real thing.  So I present to you……the horse on a stick.

On a three cone lamp, to be exact.  A perfect base model.  And made of sturdy plastic: no damaging historical craftsmanship here.

It's in a bathtub.  Nothing wrong with that.
I began collecting pieces and fabrics, imagined color schemes, and got to work repainting.  (I have a side occupation. Reckless was personally funded.)

(Not at the BK Lounge.)

And so I was ready to post this how-to blog on Reckless, and the stages of putting a horse like this together, but distractions popped up.

 (This is what progress looks like.)

 (Serious progress.)

 Mission: Success.

 Final resting place:

Then we had the fire.

It’s a relief that us and our lamp weren't responsible for the fire, and for pure humor’s sake I included the horse on the salvage and insurance paperwork, but the pony was gone and that was that.  To be fair, there was far too much in that closet for it to continue existing, such as four paper birds and two Christmas trees.  And if we had been home during the fire, I'd have thrown the horse out a window to "safety".

However.

Apparently the origin of Reckless is a bit more antique then I thought.  It was actually a 1960’s toy called the springer horse, by a company called Wonder.  If you check eBay, you can find a variety of their designs, including mine.  Someone somewhere went through a lot of effort to attach the lamp to the horse and I was lucky enough to find it.  I didn’t have the energy or the same resources to redo Reckless, until spotting this little beauty.

A ‘charger’.  Most wonder horses are pick-up only, but these lovely people were willing to make an exception for just the horse.  I foolishly thought re-creating horse-on-a-stick was possible.

Found a three cone lamp and realized problems.

You can’t just walk into Lowes and use their drill-press.
And you can’t disassemble your lamp thinking the horse will slide right on.
And your battery powered Dremel isn't made to drill through half an inch of plastic.

But if you know someone who is generously awesome and has the right drill tools and you know someone who is patient enough and super awesome to teach you basic electrical re-wiring, then you can make your own carousel horse on a stick, just like Reckless and Charger.

I am extremely careful about not leaving it unattended.



So this is Charger, that horse in the closet.          












Thank you Mom and Dad for being super awesome.
There may be more carousel-ing in the future.
Like maybe a reindeer...