My first harness-

I was really obsessed with harnesses last winter… for some odd reason. I think it had something to do with the snow and listening to songs like “Sleigh Ride” and wishing I could set up a scene with a miniature one-horse-open-sleigh.

Well, that never happened. But I made the harness!

And because I’m insane, I decided to make my first ever harness in SM scale. O_O

I quickly learned that harnesses are very complicated pieces of tack. At least they are for me, because I have NO knowledge of all the seperate harness parts and have never seen one up close to get a good look at how they all attach to each other.

So I spent several days searching for images on the internet (thank goodness for Flickr!) and drawing the pieces I could find, and somehow figured out how to assemble them. I have NO idea how that happed, to be honest.

This was my end result:

It’s far from perfect, and boy, what a headache to fit onto the horse! It’s not even FITTING the poor guy right. The girths are too far back, the bit’s not in his mouth right, and the throatlatch is pushed too far forward.

BUT, even with it’s flaws and my inability to see my mistakes until AFTER I’ve put the pics on my PC, I’m quite happy with the result.

It’s a pleasure harness, breastcollar style, with a simple snaffle bridle. It has about nine different pieces, but since it’s in such a small scale (the horse is about 3 1/2 inches long) I “cheated” and attached some of them together. The only buckles that work are the ones on the girth and bridle- the rest is stuck on with sticky wax! 😀

Someday I’ll find that sleigh to put behind him…*sigh*

I definately want to make more harnesses in the future, but next time, in the traditional scale! *grin*