Red-Tail Designs

The carpet is in and the walls are painted. Yeah! Here are the results of phase 1 of my studio remodel.

This project began with repainting the peeling ceiling in my husband’s office. Before we knew it, the project blossomed into an entire 3rd floor remodel.

This is the closet wall without carpet. I finally got my orange wall! I nearly painted my daughter’s room orange a few years ago, but my husband had the foresight to see that our pink-&-purple-aholic wasn’t going to outgrown that anytime soon.

My new Ikea Norden table folds down on both sides. I imagine this being very versatile with kids crafting on one end and me on the other end.

This is the sewing corner with walls painted but no carpet.

And the sewing corner with sewing machine in place. The crates of fabric will have a new home soon.

Finally I can have my sewing machine out ALL the time.

Ripping out the stairs carpet was an exercise in frustration. Each surface had a separate piece of carpet held on with about 50 staples. Ripping it out without throwing myself down the stairs was the most strenuous part of this whole project.

The stairs going to my studio were covered in a lovely pinky-red carpet.

Every dot is where a stapled needed to be pulled out with a pliers. Fun!

I ran out of momentum after the carpet went in. Where to put all my crafting and business supplies? Luckily help is on the way. Monday I meet with Chris from In Order to help me figure out how to organize my studio.

Hello!

Yes, I’m still here. Not hiding under a rock or in a cave. Not even still buried under the blizzard from last week.

I have, however, been lost in painting and ripping up carpet. My studio is getting a makeover, as is my husband’s office. So all this noncommunication has been the result of spending every free minute scraping, spackling, painting and putting up new lights.

We’re reaching the home stretch. Paint is on the walls (color, even!), new carpet stretches across the vastness of the 3rd floor and my husband is anchoring bookshelves to the wall in his office this weekend.

Photos of the transformation will follow shortly, so stay tuned!

As you gather with your family and friends during this festive time, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank you all–family, friends and customers–who supported me through this year.

May you enter 2010 with warmth in your homes and hope in your hearts.

The eagle design consists of natural and dyed porcupine quills embroidered onto black deer skin.

Every week I begin with the intention of posting another blog entry and before I know it another week has passed. I’m not sure where the time goes, but I need to find an easier way to get my photos up and get posting. Any suggestions? The eternal struggle, I suppose, of intention versus time available.

Here are some more details on the custom knife sheath I embroidered with porcupine quills for a customer recently.

Proud recipient: Corrine in her regalia holding her new eagle knife sheath.

Corrine conceptualized the idea of the knife sheath. She bought the eagle head knife at a powwow last October and then moseyed over to my quillwork demonstration and inquired about a custom knife sheath to keep it safe. Corrine knew exactly what she wanted: the colors, the design, all in an effort to match her black and white regalia. I was intrigued by the new project.

Ready, set, cut! Stiff leather the shape of the knife act as the inner core of the sheath and keep it rigid.

Of course when I got home, the reality set in: I knew how to do porcupine quillwork, but I didn’t know the first thing about making a knife sheath. I consulted a friend who’s an ace at such things after years of trial and error. His Cliff Notes version of knife sheath construction sent me in the right direction.

Quilling the design onto leather. I started taping my fingers to save them from needle pricks. The tan object on my middle finger is a leather thimble from Alaska.

The sheath has 6 layers of leather in all. Two thick pieces of leather act as stiff cores, and then I sewed a layer of deerskin onto the front and back of each core with glover’s needles and waxed nylon thread.

After quilling the design onto the deerskin, I glued the leather to the stiff core so it didn't move while I stitched it.

The frontpiece of fringe and quillworking are one solid piece of leather. First I quilled the design in the middle. Next I sandwiched the thick core leather between the design piece and a deerskin backing and stitched. Hot glue and clamps held the piece in place while I stitched the pieces together.

Now I had a complete back and a complete front, but I still had to stitch those together to make a pocket for the knife. As I stitched the front and back of the knife sheath together, I added the white quillwork edging. Talk about multi-tasking! Pushing the needle through all the layers of leather was tough on my fingers, but wearing a thimble on every finger was clumsy so I started taping my fingers with waterproof tape, which gave me some amount of protection.

The knife sheath is sewn together. Now it's time for fringe. I eventually cut the "wings" off the leather so the top piece is essentially a rectangular.

Cutting the fring was my favorite part. It transformed the the project into a completed work. Or maybe it just reminded me of the fringed black suede keychain with silver roses I had in high school. I wonder where that got to. Maybe I’ll have to whip up a new one with the extra leather.

Ahhhh! I'm half fringed!

8: number of glover’s needles broken stitching knife sheath together

50 plus: number of porcupine quills used to make the designs on the sheath (eagle, zigzag,  cross and white edging)

20 plus: number of times I was sure I was going to cut the leather wrong and mess up the whole project.

7.5: square feet of black deerskin leather used to make the knife sheath

6: number of times I drew blood stabbing myself with a glover’s needle while sewing on the porcupine quills

1: number of times I stabbed myself in the leg with a glover’s needle because I was watching The Matrix instead of paying attention

23: minutes of cutting fringe

40: average temperature during the powwow last weekend where I delivered the custom knife sheath

1: very ecstactic customer

I am so excited to announce that I will be running the Horse Hair Earrings  Jewelry-Making Class at My Father’s Beads inn Coopersburg, PA!

Join me on November 1, 2009, from 1:30 to 4:30 as we create a stunning pair of earrings using horse hair, plus beads and baubles from My Father’s Beads. The class costs just $38 plus supplies and you can choose from a variety of earwires, beads, cones and charms to include in the earrings. To signup, go to My Father’s Beads Website or call the store at 610-282-6939.

I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with. With a whole store full of beads to choose from, every pair of earrings will be completely different. This time, I have to take pictures. (I forgot last time).

Also coming up this weekend…I’ll be demosntrating quillwork at Wildlands Conservancy as part of Emmaus, Pennsylvania’s 250th anniversary celebration. Stop on by and say hi!

Full moon over Lake Champlain.

Goodnight, Island.

Goodnight, Moon.

My girl in braids watching the horses at Duck Harbor Pond.

Last week I slept in my bed exactly 2 times. Every other night was spent sleeping on the ground somewhere in Pennsylvania with my kids, husband, family and friends.

We packed 3 camping trips into a week and a half, and my kids still didn’t want to come home. That makes me smile. I’m glad they enjoy the outdoors as much as I do.

A few of those nights involved a trip down memory lane as the kids and I camped with my parents at a lake in Wayne County.

Our connection to this lake reaches way, way back. My mom vacationed there as a kid. When she had kids, she brought my brothers and me to the lake, as well. We refer to it as “going to the mountains.” My son is the first to question why we call it “the mountains.” He also wanted to know if there would be snow there. Not in July.

We do the normal stuff you do on an outdoor vacation…boating, fishing, hiking, hitting trees with sticks, playing lots of games (Traffic Jam, badminton and chase being the favorites right now), catching lightning bugs and picking flowers.

Of course the bugs love us, too. As I write this, a mosquito bite on my big toe is particularly itchy. And this time we had an unfortunate encounter with ants.

One other game we play is guessing how many deer we’ll see as we drive around each night looking for all manner of wildlife that may be moving about at dusk. This tradition started out many years ago as a way to scope out deer for the hunters in my family.

As we drove about the bucolic areas of Wayne County looking for deer and rabbits (we even saw an egret!), watching one farm melt into another, I realized the origins of my fascination with farms. Maybe this is why I long to live in a stone farmhouse or converted barn. This is where my admiration of stone fences came from. This is why I love horses and cows and sheep and all things animal.

The lake where we play is home to a bustling horse farm and a cow farm. As a kid, daily I walked down the dirt road to the horse farm to check on the foals. This is where I stole a pat on the head from a horse curious enough to come to the fence.

As I got older, I worked hard at home to earn money to buy a $13 trail ride from a another farm a car ride away. I scooped dog poop and painted, mowed grass and picked up sticks (awful job!), just so I had enough money to take a trail ride or two in the week we spent at the lake.

I still remember the day my mom got on a horse and proceeded to get right back off. She was NOT going to ride a horse. That farm still has horses, although the house we called “Little House on the Prairie” is gone, and it doesn’t seem they give trail rides anymore.

Too bad for my little budding horse lover.

Still, she watched the horses eat hay and waited for a passing pat last past week. As I watched my daughter wait patiently by the fence I saw myself in her. Not just in the braids and love for horses, but in my dreams. As I kid, I wanted to be a jockey and ice skater (just like Dorothy Hamill). Tall dreams for a short, fat little kid. My daughter says she wants to be a “horse rider” and ballet dance. Maybe not too far off for a tall, skinny kid…

P.S. Don’t forget you need to pre-register if you want to attend Sunday’s horse hair jewelry class at the Museum of Indian Culture. Click here for more details.

See all that yummy juice at the bottom? Relaxation in a jar.

Sometimes I think about those cordial glasses. I wish I’d kept them. We came across the colorful collection of tiny glasses while cleaning out the my husband’s grandparent’s house. The glasses were tiny and dainty, stemmed, widely hued, on a little tray .

I didn’t drink cordials. Bleck! Overly sweet stuff. The cordial glasses were odd and fun and I thought about keeping them.

But I was trying to be restrained and practical. The pack rat in me wanted to take every treasure from that house and stuff it into every every nook and cranny of my house “just in case” I needed it sometime in the future. I’d already acquired a sewing machine and dining room ensemble, china and funky green mixing bowls, plus a myriad other things from their 90 years of life.

So I put the cordial glasses in the “to sell” box, so as not stuff them into some nook and cranny of my house. How I wish I kept them “just in case,” because just in case has come.

About 2 years ago in the middle of winter a friend gave me a small glass of strawberry cordial. I took it to be polite since Bleck! cordials are overly sweet alcohol.

It was the best drink I ever had.

Despite the chill outside, I could feel the June sun warming the straw-covered field, the scent of strawberries in the air.  I was hooked. The best part was she made the cordial herself.

Since that fateful day, I’ve been making fruit cordials with summer’s bounty. I just made my first batch of strawberry cordial for the year and I’ll be making more. Last year, the strawberry cordial never even made it to the liquor cabinet. Upcoming will be peach, blueberry, raspberry and cherry cordial.

Once you see how ridiculously easy this recipe is, you’ll wonder why you never made this before.

Strawberry Cordial

Ingredients:

• Strawberries
• Sugar
• Vodka
• Large wide-mouth jar

Directions:

1. Wash and hull strawberries, then slice in half or quarters. If the berries are small, no need to cut them.

2. Place a layer of strawberries in the bottom of the jar. Sprinkle sugar over top. Layer more strawberries, then more sugar. Repeat until you get to the top of the jar.

3. Pour vodka into the jar slowly until it reaches the top of the jar. Put lid on tightly and store in a cool dry place for 2 weeks.

3. Strain out the strawberries and put in freezer for future use (more on that in the next post). Enjoy the cordial. If the cordial is too sweet, stir in more vodka. If the taste is too strong on the alcohol side, add more sugar.

There are no quantities for this recipe because you can do this with any size jar and any amount of fruit, be it strawberries, peach, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries or any other fruit you want to try.

Last year's collection of cordials in the works: peach, cherry, blueberry and raspberry. Sadly, they are all gone.

This daisy, which opened its petals yesterday, was a result of my Darwinian Gardening. But I'll save that story for another day.

I am a Darwinian Gardener.

There. I admitted it for all the world to see. And this year I’m going to embrace my role as a Darwinian Gardener.

What is a Darwinian Gardener, you say? We are the people who don’t plan gardens, but rather spontaneously create then, on the spur of the moment, without very little forethought or attention afterward, so the garden becomes an experiment in survival of the fittest.

Here’s how it works: One random day the sun is shining and I think, “I have 2 hours to plant some seeds.” I dig into my seed jar that has seeds from my previous residence (circa 1999), pick out some seed and plant it.

Is it past the frost date? Who knows?

Did you remember to water the starts? Water? Isn’t that why we have rain (even though we haven’t seen a drop for 3 weeks)?

Does it need full sun, partial sun or shade? Huh?

Lettuce doesn’t like heat. Hey, you’re only a quitter until you try planting lettuce in June.

Are those two going to cross-pollinate? Maybe I’ll create a bigger, better more amazing hybrid that will take over the world! Bwah-ha-ha (that’s my evil Darwinian Gardener laugh).

Lamb's quarters getting a drink of rain this morning. And look! Some onion grass, too.

I didn’t become a Darwinian Gardener on purpose. I grew up among 3 enormous gardens. My mom is an amazing gardener who had many things to teach me, but I ignored her because, while my body pulled weeds, my mind dreamed of playing in the woods. And I complained a lot about how hot it was and how hard it was to bend over. Complaining takes a lot of effort.

It’s not as if I couldn’t be a good gardener. I could, if I put the time and effort into it. But right now, my time and effort are spent elsewhere, raising kids, running a small business, maintaining a 100-year-old house and being the craftiest girl on the block.

Oddly enough everyone thinks I’m a good gardener. In my wildlife rehabilitation days, I nurtured all sorts of critters back to health, from red-tailed hawks and great blue herons all the way down to bullfrogs and baby bunnies. So people assume I’m as careful and attentive to plants. I’m not. But that doesn’t stop them from asking me for advice.

My advice: “Put it in the ground and see if it grows.”

And really, I want to have huge, lush gardens. I want to live off the land and say, “I grew that and fed my family.” I dream of vegetable gardens and cutting gardens, terraced with rocks, flowing with fountains, erupting with interesting vegetative textures and colors, filled with whimsical garden ornaments.

A rather funny dream since my yard is barely big enough to accommodate 2 kids, 1 dog, 2 adults, a couple of pea plants and a massive amount of toys.

I have not given up these dreams, but this year I’m letting go of the expectations for big gardens. I’m letting go of the guilt of not getting my peas in by St. Patrick’s day or my lettuce in by… whenever lettuce was supposed to be in the ground.

As my friends discussed seeds and starts, height of pea plants and when the radishes will be done, I realized that Darwinian gardening isn’t just about survival of the fittest plant, it’s about embracing opportunities as a gardener. Two of my grand gardening friends have huge, beautiful gardens and they could use a weeder. A few more friends dove into the deep end without life preservers, signing up for large plots in the local community garden. They’ll definitely need help.

Rather than struggle to get my own garden in, I’ll show up at their gardens with a “Will Weed For Food” sign around my neck. I’ll help them be great gardeners and be paid in cucumbers and eggplants.

The opportunities in my “weed patch” abound, as well. The progeny of last year’s pumpkins and tomatoes always sprout up and the birds plant sunflowers up and down the yard. Uncultivated areas are rife with lamb’s quarters, a local weed that is also edible. Think native spinach. Yum.

Don’t worry, I’ll still be throwing seeds in the ground to see who survives. But this year, I’ll do it with pride as a Darwinian Gardener.