Red-Tail Designs

Channel 69 Reporter Melanie Falcon shows off the horse hair bracelet she made with me on live TV this week.

As a journalism major, I dabbled in all areas of media to see what worked for me. One semester of Havenscope, our university TV show, made me realize broadcast journalism wasn’t for me. This week, I finally got to put to work those few skills I learned from Havenscope when I appeared on Channel 69′s Sunrise news show talking about my horse hair jewelry. I had a great time with reporter Melanie Falcon, as we did three live segments in which we demonstrate the steps to creating a singular piece of jewelry.

If you didn’t get to see the program you can check it out here.

Melanie was a whiz creating jewelry on the fly and she headed out of our TV segment with a horse hair bracelet with beads. I’m teaching that class this weekend, February 4, at the Museum of Indian Culture. Melanie and I had a fun time working together and the live TV aspect wasn’t as stressful as I imagined it would be.

Response due to the television exposure was so great that I scheduled a second horse hair jewelry class for tomorrow afternoon. The power of television is immense! I can’t believe how many folks saw the segments.

Hanging out at the Museum of Indian Culture with Melanie Falcon between TV segments. The war shirt in the background has horse hair locks hanging off the sleeves.

We’ll likely run the class again in April, so if you didn’t get to make it this time, you’ll have another chance. Email me to put you on the waiting list and I’ll let you know when the next class will run.

My kids got a kick out of watching me on TV. When I got home my son wanted to know if I was going to do this job every week. Sorry, buddy, my TV career isn’t happening anytime soon. I’m happy with my 15 minutes and leaving the rest to Melanie.

Join me this weekend for a Porcupine Quillwork Class at the Museum of Indian Culture. Sunday, January 15, 2012, I will offer Quillwork Part 1 from 10 am to noon and Quillwork Part 2 from 1 pm to 3 pm. Signup is required so contact the Museum or me by Friday, January 13. Snowdate for the class is Sunday, January 29. More information..

I’ve been getting calls about Christmas gifts since the beginning of October. And as soon as Halloween is gone, it seems like Thanksgiving and the Christmas are here in a flash!

Check out some fun styles I created this year:

I just sent this custom piece off last week (can you tell by the pumpkin in the photo?) This mix of purple beads really pops on the black horse hair. I can add any color beads to a Garden Gala style bracelet.

I'm one of the few horse hair artists who will work with mane hair. I created this bracelet to accommodate the short pieces that often come with the mane (unless you have a Friesen!) You can add a central bead or have 3 "links" of mane hair.

I can even add silver beads to a bracelet.

This Garden Gala Style bracelet is thinner than the usual style, and the pink chain gives it a sweet pop of color.

Who says wearing a medic alter bracelet has to be boring? Black and red-dyed horse hair make a fun medical ID tag. The back can be engraved with medical information. Herringbone-style braid with sterling silver lobster clasp.

This Saturday, July 9, I will be teaching an Adjustable Horse Hair Bracelet class at The Bead Hive in Coopersburg, PA. Horse Hair will be provided at this class or you can bring your own hair. For more details, check out The Bead Hive. You can also register and pay online. See you Saturday!

The first ripe strawberry of the season. The taste tester said, "Success, mom. It's sweet and juicy."

In Pennsylvania, we know we’re on our way to summer and hot days when the strawberries arrive. Sweet and juicy with that satisfying snap when you pluck them from the plant.

Our first post-Memorial Day activity is a trek to Trauger’s Farm to pick strawberries. Under the beating sun (because it’s always 95°F the day we decide to go), we fill our buckets upon buckets with strawberry sweetness as we fill our bellies (don’t tell the folks at Traugers, although I think strawberry smeared all over the kids faces give us away).

My budding chef wrote down our smoothie recipe so I wouldn't forget.

Our favorite strawberry item is smoothies. We freeze the strawberries so we can have smoothies until next April, when we exhaust our stores of frozen fruit. Strawberry cordial gets me through the dark days of winter. Plus there’s strawberry-rhubarb sauce and strawberries with whipped cream, sometimes jam, and any other concoction we can think of until the blueberries come in and become our new favorite.

Over the last few years we’ve worked on a strawberry “patch” in our front flowerbed. It began with a novelty hanging strawberry plant. Last year I added a few more plants in tiered barrels so they send runners for new plants into the barrel below.

For my daughter’s birthday last year we gave strawberry plants as the party favorite. I asked Trauger’s what I needed to do with these tiny plants that looked like no more than scraggly roots. They had very specific directions for caring for these plants. For a Darwinian Gardener like me it seemed very complicated:

“When the strawberries have flowers, pinch the flowers off so they don’t produce fruit this year. In winter cover with straw and then next year they will produce strawberries.”

Yum!

I started off with good intentions, plucking little white flowers. Then, as the plants grew as big as the others, I forgot which were the old plants and which were the new plants. Straw over the plants? I think not. Instead they froze under 3 feet of snow. And unbelievably, we have more strawberries than ever. Further proof that Darwinian gardening works.

Studio Dog, a photo by Red Tail Designs on Flickr.

Indiana when he was a wee pup, taking a nap in the studio.

Let me set the scene

for you: It’s December, the wind is swirling snow around my numb fingers as I braid horse hair out in my cold backyard. Why would I endure the nasty weather outside when I have a perfectly good studio inside? Because I was housebreaking the newest member of our family, Indiana.

Treat bags to hold all of Indiana's training treats.

At the time, Indiana was not yet a studio dog. He ate my craft supplies, stole my horse hair and generally got into a lot of trouble in when we made our way to the third floor. In short, I got nothing done when he was up there because it was like having a 2-year-old roaming around my studio. He also couldn’t keep out of the food or the litter box of the cat who maintains the penthouse suite, not to mention chasing the cat across my craft table was great fun.

Fast forward 5 months and Indiana (as in Indiana Jones, not the state) has become a certified Studio Dog. He’s housebroken (and even rings a bell to go out) and understands the studio time is my time. He’ll comfortably sit at my feet and chew a bone while I craft. The cat food and litter box are still tempting, and chasing cats really is great fun when you’re a dog.

The snap on the drawstrings lets me snap it onto my belt when we're out.

I put my crafty skills to work to make some treat bags for Indiana to hold all his training treats. They’re simple little sacks with drawstring closures and snaps so I can snap them on my belt when we’re out for a walk. I made them of my most favorite fabric ever, the dog fabric by Heather Ross. I wish she’d bring it back, as this fabric is now out of print.

After the rough run with pets we had in 2010–our 13-year-old Labrador retriever and our 10-year-old cat went to pet heaven–Indiana is a nice reprieve. He’s a super dog that is easily trainable and loves the kids. He’s sure my 4-year-old is just another puppy and probably better trained for the studio than my kids.

These robins were flitting in the tree outside my back door today. Like them, I’m wondering where spring is and if we’re really going to have another snow day this week.

Stay warm!

A feather quilled on a leather pouch using the stitches taught in the Porcupine Quillwork Part 2 Class.

Make your New Year’s resolution to try something new!

I’ll be teaching Porcupine Quillwork classes this coming weekend, January 8, 2011, at the Museum of Indian Culture starting at 10 a.m.

The classes give you the chance to sample this ancient Native American art that entails embroidering porcupine quills onto leather or wrapping them around rawhide. The class includes all the supplies you need to get started on your own quillwork projects.

Download the flier to sign up.

The fabric area of my studio complete with brand new bulletin boards. This Ikea shelving and orange boxes are perfect for this area.

My custom bulletin boards are finally hung!

I feel like my studio might almost be done. My husband and I started redecorating our third floor over a year ago with new paint, carpet, shelving…the works. It’s been a very slow process because we did most of it ourselves.

The bulletin boards are at the top of the stairs, so it's like an art gallery as you enter the room.

The chunk of it was done last spring but organization eluded me for a long time and it took a while to find the right shelving. Bulletin boards were my last big push and, of course, I couldn’t just buy cork from Staples. They had to be fancy-pants bulletin boards I made myself from stuff I found here and matching fabrics. I chose three Ikea fabrics and then made a mosaic using those fabrics and some Laura Gunn scraps that Kristen was so gracious to give to me.

And finally they are on the wall.

It’s sad that both my husband and I have grandfathers who were carpenters, yet neither of us can hang a coat rack without worrying it’ll fly off the way and whack us in the forehead.

Luck for us there are people like Chris Fairchild from In Order to Organize.

All my jewerly supplies in one area neatly labeled. I need one more piece of furniture to marry the beading area to the sewing area. Coming soon!

Chris owns a personal organization and personal training business right here in Easton. Not only can he put holes in my 100-year-old walls without worry, he can organize, build, plan and create. Chris organizes any aspect of your home, business or work flow.

In spring, Chris talked me through how I use each section of my studio and what would make the most sense in terms of storage and organization. He helped me decide on shelving, and I plan to have him make shelves for a closet and a wall shelf above my sewing machine.

That’s his other great talent. Chris can design and build custom pieces for your house.

He hung my bulletin boards for me and I am eternally grateful. I assisted him as he figured out the spacing (does holding a level count as assisting?). If I’d hung them they’d be crooked, and I’d have to lie that uneven spacing is art at its best.  Instead he measured and drilled and they look beautiful.

So is my studio finally done? I suppose as done as it’ll ever be. I have a few boxes to unpack and I still can’t find my rotary cutter, but that may just be a casualty of reorganizing.

The kids supplies and crafting area is on the left side of the table. It's not as tidy-looking as I'd like, but it's functional. Once everyone can read, I might transition to more orange storage boxes.

Some very relaxed mommies.

A formula for a relaxing weekend:

Five moms – kids + a cabin near an artsy small town + spas + plenty of shopping + lots of good food we didn’t have to cook – husbands = Girls Weekend.

My friends and I gathered recently for our semi-annual girls weekend. It was the usual mix of good, uninterrupted conversation, many rounds of yoga, undisturbed shopping, relaxing, uninterrupted meals,  and lots of laughs.

Did I mention that we did uninterrupted activities? No one demanding, “I’m hungry” or announcing “I just spilled all the juice.” More like, “Of course I’ll have another glass of wine” and “You should definitely buy that coat. You deserve it.”

The weekend went way too fast…as usual.

Last year I made journal covers for all the moms at Girls Weekend.

Girls Weekend began soon after I had kids when my friend and I decided we needed to get away like we used to when we went on long backpacking trips together. These days, we’re looking more for pampering than high intensity physical accomplishment, so we opt for the spa-like Girls Weekend. Recently we’ve upped the ante and now have Girls Weekend 2 or 3 times a year, often at one of our houses.

Some of my friends claim, “You’re so lucky your husband lets you go away for the weekend.”

There are just so many things wrong with that sentence.

Having girls weekend is not about luck, it involves training, low expectations, compromise, planning, and hard work.

Training

Ideally training your spouse for weekends away should start as soon as you’re married. If you missed that window, you need to do it as soon as you have kids. Leave the kids early and often with your spouse (just an hour or two at a time) so taking care of the children for a weekend isn’t quite so traumatic to the spouse or dangerous to the children.

Expectations

Low expectations is key: I consider it a successful weekend if everyone is still alive and there is minimal bloodshed when I return. In all honesty, my husband does just fine without me and is great when I’m away.

In order for you to enjoy your weekend, you have to let go of all your expectations of how you household should be run, and this honestly may be the toughest part. You have to let go of the worry that something will go wrong while you’re away and the idea that the house and the kids will look the same when you return.

So what if they have peanut butter in their hair, nothing matches and they ate Popsicles for 4 out of 5 meals. They’re alive, right? And likely fairly happy because everything was completely different from when you were there. Different doesn’t mean better, just exciting because it’s new.

Planning

Once you break it to the spouse that you’re leaving him with all the kids for several days, it’s best to do as much planning as possible to make it easier for him. I stock the fridge with his easiest, most favorite meals: chicken tenders, waffle fries and cheese. Yes, this could be renamed heart attack weekend, but one weekend of this isn’t going to hurt anyone.

Making it easier for the spouse ensures he’ll want you to go away next time. That’s right, when you walk into the house relaxed and calm, he may plan the next Girls Weekend for you. (Note: the calm usually last about 20 minutes until the kids break sometime or the dog yacks on your new beautiful shoes you spent way too much on.)

When I’m felling particularly nice, I arrange a weekend away at a relative’s house for one of the kids. Never for both…I can’t make it too easy for him.

Fun finds from an antique store we shopped during Girls Weekend, a place we never could have gone with our kids!