Eleanor's Birthday, Phase I: The Horse and His Girl

Eleanor's birthday gift was no surprise to her. I've had it (in one state or another) for nearly a year and a half, and for the past several weeks she's seen me working on it, even gone with me to buy supplies. I'm talking about an old, wooden rocking horse, purchased for $10 from a secondhand site, covered in hideous flat, brown paint, with dull black eyes and a coarse, matted mane and tail. As soon as I got it home I removed the mane, tail, and eyes, but that was all for many months. Eventually I realized I'd better tackle the paint. Martin removed the bulk of it, from the flat surfaces anyway, with a rotary sander. I then spent many evenings hand sanding the nooks and crannies. But the paint was so tenacious, I never got beyond about 90%. Which is how the stain colour came to be a beautiful dark walnut. The stain perfectly disguises the residual paint while letting the wood grain and blemishes show through. The resulting look is vintage-heirloom at its best. The mane and tail are fashioned from a cotton rag mop, and the eyes are the kind used to make stuffed animals with the posts snapped off. I couldn't be happier with the finished product. Nor, I don't think, could Eleanor. 

She approached it so gingerly before mounting. Mind you, she'd only ever seen it bald and eyeless.

But once in the (figurative) saddle, you would have sworn they'd been riding together for years...