Spring Star Stable Hodgepodge

As May made its graceful exit and June drifted in, Canadian wildfire smoke drifted into Michigan too. Consequently, we've been mostly staying inside this weekend, even though it's beautiful out otherwise. This inspired me to write this now rather than putting it off another week or two, so here we go!

On Star Stable, we're still riding a welcome lull between any time-consuming special events. Camp Western was going on around this time last year, but I'm assuming it is moving to sometime in mid to late summer. (Knowing our luck, part of it will fall during our week of camping in July...) Next on the horizon is a festival called "Summer Daze." Per Star Stable's blog, it's going to feature Fort Pinta beach and a shark named Bruce. Fingers crossed that there will be more to do at this one than just a short one-time quest and shopping. 

Our club on Star Stable is also pretty much dormant right now, since the leaders continue to be MIA. On many Monday nights, though, we still sometimes hang out with one or two other holdout club mates for a short dressage practice. This could for sure use more participants, and maybe we'll get there someday. For now, it's nice to have some fellow players to talk to and not have anybody causing drama or chaos, which tends to surface in larger group settings. ;)

That's Wichapi (Whinny) and her Pintabian Ashy on the far left.

Then Clara on Des, obviously.

Amelia is the instructor. She's riding her Arabian Teddy here but also has a Pintabian.

Once, we had a twin day dressage lesson, where Whinny and Clara went all out! It had to have been confusing for Amelia, ha ha. 

One fun quest we participated in recently involved going on a trail ride with NPC friends. We rode east from Silverglade, crossed the bridge, met up with Emma and Muddy, and then headed north to for the main event, riding the Red String Trail. 

It's interesting because Luciana (rider of the black Lusitano, Sirio) has had an appearance revamp like Clara's. Emma and Sonja (rider of the pale dun Fjord, Kasper) have not and are still very slim and more cartoony.

Thanks to a rock slide, in order to finish the trail, we had to cross that big log over the chasm one by one. Luciana and Emma had no trouble. 

Clara's had plenty of experience with this already - it was a piece of cake for her and Tigertin. It was super daunting for Sonja, though, since she has a fear of heights. With encouragement, she and Kasper eventually made it across too.

I found it kind of sad that Clara was only granted "honorary membership" in the club that these girls forged, the Flying Foxes. (We even had brought along one of our fox pets, totally by coincidence...) But I guess Clara is kind of a drifter and has too much going on to commit her allegiance to just one club. 

We are happy spending most of our time with just our horses and assorted pets, though of course it's always interesting observing what other players are doing. Here you can see a persistent anomaly we see from time to time when another player walks away from her horse, elasta-reins. 

We finally completed all 12 levels of crafting/delivering crafted items for Farah in Valedale! The prize well-worth all the deliveries: we were entrusted with a young owl, the offspring of Farah's owl, Toby.  

We love him! <3 It's super fun having another flying pet. When he doesn't feel like flying, he perches on the saddle bag, as you see here. So cute!

We continue to participate in championships from time to time, both for the practice and the shilling rewards. Tigertin went up against a quartet of Welshies in this particular Pony championship...

...and showed them she can hold her own!

Finally, we had willpower of steel when the latest bazaar set up shop in that familiar grassy expanse near Moorland.

Okay, not really. The only one we had to resist was the Dartmoor Pony, since we already have our dream Paso Fino and Icelandic. 

All of them were quite good deals! The Dartmoor is Star Stable's newest pony and super cute....

...but we just don't care for the frequent lip curling. So, it was pretty easy to say no.

Hence, we still haven't filled the final empty stall in our stable. 

I'm not sure what we're going to do once we have more than 18 horses. (Because let's face it: we all know we're going to get there within a month or two.) Even though it's not totally fair, we think we might let the original 3 keep their stalls permanently and rotate everybody else. 

It would be sad not to have our faithful first horse, Frosty, there to greet us every time we enter our stable, Tiger is our go-to for the pony championships, and Des is our club dressage horse. 

May Flowers and May Mules

May has been a month of some chilly, rainy days where all we want to do is cocoon on the couch...

...but also a month with some glorious mild or warm days with spring beauty in spades.

Star Stable's Jorvik is as beautiful as ever and also continues to change week to week. As much as we enjoyed the Equestrian Festival, it has been a relief to play less and at a slower pace in the weeks that have followed. Another Trailblazer Track is going on now, giving us good incentive to log on daily. The outfit will likely sit collecting dust in our closet (not Clara's style), but the free stable care tickets certainly will not! 

Star Stable introduced mules to the game in mid-May! 

We confess we did not vote for them a year or so ago when there was this "which breeds would you like to be added next?" poll, but apparently a lot of players did. The game was abuzz with mule chat in the weeks leading up to their release. We think Star Stable did a fantastic job on them - they turned out super cute! Not only do we love their color choices, but they also look great whether idling or in motion. 

In addition to the regular gaits, they have two special moves:

"Floppy Groove" is aptly named: a happy walk with lots of ear flopping

"Hee-Haw"means lots of donkey-like braying, of course.

The other equines in Star Stable rear if you press "X" while walking or trotting. Mules buck instead! Not sure how I feel about this, but it has been entertaining to watch.

If/when we get one of these in a bazaar someday, it's going to be so hard choosing just one! Both the appys and the duns are so cool! Other players think so too, clearly.

Here are a few other fun screenshots from our recent wanderings:

Another 1-player championship! (We won.) 

Wow, cartoon forest fire! 

Don't worry: Clara and Tigertin quickly put it out.

An APH and rider chilling Lion King style. XD

We finally spent some Jorvik shillings to give our stable a more cohesive look. 

Since we like the stone floor and Blue Oaks banners, we gave it a somewhat medieval look, but without the darker, more gothic look of the medieval default.

It was Mom's birthday last Sunday! (Hooray for weekend birthdays!) Des was Clara's mount that day, and he won first place in the one championship they entered. 

Thank you, Des! <3 What a good boy!

Here are her gifts!

Before opening...

...and after!

The backpack and suitcase were not actually wrapped above, if you were wondering, just notes about them. XD We're most excited for Mom to sew together the little sloth, though we're also eager to watch Wicked. =)

Nightnimbus

Hooray for May! =) This time of year will always be my favorite - I just love watching all the vegetation come back to life after a long winter. The flowering trees in our neighborhood have been blooming like crazy!

The sad, scraggly weeping cherry in our yard had its fleeting few days of glory before going back to looking sad and scraggly

Week 2 of Star Stable's Equestrian Festival featured yet another horse bazaar! Since its usual area was full of festival booths, this one got moved across the road near the lighthouse. There were only two breeds on sale this time around, but both were crowd favorites.

Not wanting to leave any display stalls empty, we got to see two Belgian Warmblood variations and two Selle Francais variations. 

Belgian Warmbloods have been on sale multiple times before. While not new (Star Stable Wiki tells me they've been on the game since Nov. 2022), they seem to be quite well-liked due to their sleek, athletic appearance and gaits. They also come in more color variations than many breeds: 11 currently, I think?

We can see the appeal too and likely would have purchased one long before now if it wasn't for their air chomping idling animation. Alas, we just can't get past it.

The other breed on sale was the Selle Francais, the second-newest warmblood on the game, debuting back in March of 2024. This was the first time they'd ever made a bazaar appearance.

Since we just took home our wonderful golden Ladyluck back on April Fool's Day, we didn't really have any business taking home another horse, especially another warmblood, so soon. We still didn't have a fancy pinto warmblood yet, though, and Felicity's birthday fell on the second-to-last day of the bazaar...

So, yeah, to Lily's chagrin, a spirited, spotted Selle Francais became our horse #17 on April 22, the day after Felicity's birthday. The two pintos we were torn between getting: the black and the sooty dapple buckskin. To see how similar they were to our existing pintos, Panda and Brighty, we rode each out to the Silverglade sale stable for side-by-side comparisons.

These two are somewhat similar from the front, but there'd be no chance of confusing them since Panda has so much floof, not to mention a bald face and a blue eye. It's not pictured here, but they look totally different from the back: Panda's rear is mostly white, while this horse's is mostly black. 

These two are even less similar than we predicted, both being buckskin pintos.

We loved both, but in the end, we chose the black pinto because of the extra cute markings.

Meet Nightnimbus! 

He has two domino-like dots on his left side...

...and a little dark cloud raining 3 raindrops on his right side, hence his name.

His gaits are less dressage-like than Ladyluck's but still quite nice. My favorite is his canter. =)

Thanks to the Equestrian Festival, he rocketed through his experience levels in just a few days!

He got to wear many different colors during his debut, including pink and purple (sorry, buddy) to satisfy the daily festival theme. 

On pink day, peach qualified, so it wasn't so bad, plus the flying pig ribbon got to come out. XD

Hanging out pre-championship with 3 other gorgeous warmbloods.

The red string trail returned! We haven't forgotten to pick up the ribbon before starting this year. (We sure learned that lesson the hard way!)

All of the horses went back into Clara's riding rotation after Night reached level 15, so everybody got to experience the festival activities at least once. Below are some entertaining screenshots we took along the way. 

We had major issues for a few days in a row with sinking through the top of this ramp during the daily race against Sabine and Khaan, as demonstrated here. We eventually learned how to time a jump to avoid it, and even though I think it's fixed now, we still always jump at the top just in case!

Lana Northray and her horse appeared to be stuck in this same spot for several days in a row!

We never asked any other players if they could see this too or if it was just us.

Shout out to "Coalgate!" What a great name for a prancy black Friesian!

A Daisy Coyoteclover sighting! Good to know she does actually exist and is not just made up to beat us invisibly in sparsely-attended championships.

Another ribbon-awarding ceremony: we impressed the Baroness!

Clara celebrating her victory with NPC friends

The ribbon in that last screenshot wasn't it. This is it!

Even better than a ribbon, we were also awarded with a fluffy tuxedo cat!

Thanks for such a fun festival, Star Stable! We'll be sad to see it go.