Stablemate Stalemate

I finally got the fulfillment of my Stablemate Collectors' Club pieces the other day -- just a week or so before Christmas.

I was really pleased with both" Priscilla" and "Corbin" (as I knew I would be) but what I was really looking forward to, after months and months of waiting, was finding out which colour of the Gambler's Choice "Iris" I would receive.

Alas, it was the decorator -- not the colour I liked least but not the colour I desired most either.

I really am trying to get better about decorators.  After years of hating them, I'm trying hard to find it within my heart to welcome them into my herd.  Some of the colours are, after all, really quite attractive and as long as I remember that that's just what these horse-shaped objects are supposed to be -- attractive and, um, decorative -- I can usually warm up to them.

That's what I'm trying to do with my "Iris."  Her colour really is quite fascinating.  It's one of those colours that change depending on the light she's standing in and the angle at which you look at her.

Breyer has described her colouration as being inspired by "Mojave turquoise ... with a gold basecoat layered with purple, blue and interference gold."  She doesn't remind me of turquoise as much as someone like Bisbee does, but I'm guessing the "purple, blue and interference gold" account for the colour shifts I'm seeing.

Because I can't break myself of the obsession of finding breeds for my horses, I've had to go into the worlds of mythology to find breeds for all the new decorator horses that are invading my shelves.  My "Iris," who I'm calling "Dazzle" is being designated as a Gnome pony -- since her gem colours suggesting mining and working underground, which is within the purview of gnomes in many stories.

Of course, now that my 2019 year of membership in the Stablemate Collectors' Club is completed, it's time to start contemplating whether or not I will join up again in 2020.  In fact, I have very little time left in which to decide, and Breyer is not making it very easy.

After the first two previews -- of the appaloosa rearing Lipizzaner "Klaus" and the glossy bay G1 Arabian "Sultan" -- I was pretty much convinced that I was going to be back in the club for another year.  Then they revealed "Chroma" -- a kind of rainbow-coloured clearware on the newer Cob mold, and I find myself stuck in a sort of stablemate stalemate, not knowing whether to go ahead and re-sign with the Club, or fall back and resign from it.

You see, this year was the first year I've been in the club where there wasn't a mandatory decorator purchase -- and I ended up with a decorator anyway.  It might have been possible to be part of the 2018 Club and get away without purchasing a decorator as well, but I wasn't a member that year and in 2016 and 2017 when I was a member, a mandatory decorator was included in the line-up ("Ricochet" in 2016 and "Allegiance" in 2017).  Do I really want to be forced to do that again?  Particularly since there's another way to get a rearing Lipizzaner, in black, in the new Stablemate gift set.

I just don't know.  I'm stymied, and that's the long and the short of it.  "Chroma" is pretty in that odd way that decorators can be, but I still resent the idea of having to buy him.  On the other hand, I already like him better than "Allegiance," which wasn't perhaps the right decorator for Breyer to foist on International members -- stars and stripes don't really do anything for us.  What to do?  What to do?  What to do?

Well, whatever it is, I'll have to do it soon or the choice will be taken out of my hands entirely.  So making some sort of decision will be both my last resolution of 2019, and my first resolution of 2020.

Wish me luck!