PING: Ellice.

Horse hugs????

Joan

Yes. See her earlier post on nasty bosses, on a horse farm.

We went to email, and I described a Hungarian horse farm run in the traditional *csiko* (think cowboy) style. One horse with foals, one human associate for life. We saw the horses respond to commands like "sit", "play dead", "hug me" and so on.

In "sit" they do just that, like a puppy. "Play dead" and they flop over on their sides and go still. "Hug me" and they get behind the rider, rear up on their hind legs and gently put their forelegs on his shoulders, giving him a "hug".

I told her I thought we had the pix somewhere, and we finally found them. I scanned them today and will send her "Sit", "play dead" and "hug me" as well a shot of some of the traditional csikok (Cowboys).

ON topic: Csiko (chee'-ko)is the Magyar word for stripe. The word for cowboy is csikos (chee'-kush), which mean "striped". This is because the traditional cowboys there did not wear levi's, but blousey pans of striped fabric, cut in the old Turkish style. The striped pants have passed into history, but the cut of the garment and the name has persisted.

Cheers,

Alex

The things I learn in this group never ceases to amaze me. Thanks from someone who loves to learn.

Lucille

Il n'ya pas de quoi. (It's nothing...)

Life is a tapestry, is it not? Many designs, many patterns, much beauty. This NG is an avatar of life, as needlework has always been.... a mirror of life.

Alex, still a Newbie ...

Please! Did I miss your introduction, Alex? If I didn't, why don't you tell us a little about yourself? In fact, maybe it's time for another round of "Who are we?" I'll start a new post for that.

Joan

I totally agree!

Joan

Very interesting! I wonder if these were the forerunners of the gauchos of South America? Especially since the style seems to be similar.

I did a bit of googling...quite interesting!!!! Thanks!

Joan

snip

I watched a program a few years ago where a horse trainer talked about jumping up from the breakfast table after seeing one of the horses fall over while running out in the pasture. As it turned out, they had been training the horses, for movies, to run and fall as if shot in battle. This particular horse apparently really liked that trick and had begun doing it on his own - just for fun. :-)))))

Liz from Humbug

Not much to tell, really. I'm retired from the business of hospital administration (logistics and management engineering). Trained in science, B.S. CHemistry, M.A. Biology, all but dissertation (ran out of time) for PhD in Comparitive Biochemistry. 70 years old, decidedly male. Conservative in most things, especially investing.

Main hobbies are trading on the stock market, photography and cooking. Married to SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed), whom I met in grad school. My cooking interests are Central Europe, Eastern Med (including Italian) and North African.

Four kids, all grown and married. Two are career army, both Lt. Col's, one medical corps & the other a Ranger (Intelligence).

I live in SE Texas, close enough to Houston that I can shop there when I wish. I live closer to the Johnson Space Center (NASA).

Love to travel and have been to Hungary twice. My interest in embroidery/needlework arises from Hungarian traditional folklore patterns. You can see samples on line by googling "Hungarian embroidery". The best known pieces of requinal work are refered to as Kalocsa (Kuh'-lo-CHa), named after the town, and Matyo (Mutt'-Yo, Maht'-Yo), named for King Matthias I, who favored three towns (largest is Mezokovezd) with free-autonomous region status during the 16th century.

Incidentally, I don't use google directly. I use Dogpile (not what you think), a meta-search engine that simultaneously searches Google, Ask, Bing and Yahoo with all the proper syntaxes for each. See it at Dogpile.com... it's free. Some samples of Kalocsa/Matyo work can also be seen at magyarmarketing.com, a family owned importer of Hungarian Products.

Hungarian blue work is also attractive. Once you see some Matyo and Kalocsa embroidery, especially the stuff on a black background, I'd like to point out that there is a Hungarian Reformed Church in the 300 block of Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ, whose front doors must be seen to be believed. They appear to be dark bronze, with floral designs cut into the doors. Not cut into the surface, but completely through the doors, which are basically sandwiches made of heavy sheets of metal. In the center of the "sandwich", stained glass is used to fill the holes. From the interior of the church, the doors seem to disappear and the flowers are backlit by the sun and seem to be hanging in the air with no support. Each cutout, whether petals, leaves or stems, receives its own proper color as in Matyo/Kalocsa embroidery and the effect is truly stunning. The technique is a metal equivalent of Central European vests, in which the outer cloth layer is cut in decorative patterns to allow the contrasting backing cloth to show through.

I have recently come into two sewing machines, a Brother XR7700 and a Bernina 930, both in excellent condition. Building my toolbox, and have just purchased my pizza cutters and cutting boards, various fabrics, and decent scissors. Going to start with really simple stuff. Would love to get a Bernina embroidery unit, but SWMBO has different opinions at this point. I think it would be a blast to develop software template programs from the Hungarian work and make them available to people who are into folk-art embroidery. Maybe later. Crawl first, then walk and then run.

That's about it. Everybody was a beginner once.

Alex

I love the Hungarian embroidery. We went on a eastern Europe tour some years ago and stayed in Budapest. I admired a beautiful embroidered lace table runner in a shop. That table runner did come home with me even though it cost nearly 100 UK pounds. I hung it in the back of my display cabinet, could not bear for it to get spoiled on the table. The colours are so vibrant. Hugs Shirley

In message , Chemiker writes

Alex,

Thanks - I've been busy not allowing myself to come and play on RCTN. You can grab the addy from this e-mail.

ellice

FWIW: Can't reach you because my local email verizon server suddenly thinks my computer is snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net, an invalid address.

I posted the link to those pix on Photobucket here at r.c.t.n on 8/4. I also posted them to alt.binaries.pictures.original, where Barney in NZ tweaked them and reposted to that same group.

Sorry my outgoing email is down.....

Alex, who did get your addy. Thanks.