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!

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

Hi ho Silver. Large silver beads set off this adjustable, two strand bracelet.

My first ever Barn Beadin’ Party early this week yielded a lot of laughs and even a few Christmas gifts for equestrians in the Lehigh Valley. I met up with the horse folk from Durham Creek Farm at My Father’s Beads, where I taught them how to turn their horses’ tails into jewelry. We had a blast.

These horse hair tassels are pretty enough to put on a Christmas Tree.

Some took to the bracelet-making and aced the four-strand braid. Others found their groove making tassles with their horses’ tails. I love these classes at My Father’s Beads. Imaginations run wild in the bead store, and everyone comes up with a completely different project utilizing the same basic ingredients.

Trish, a beader and equestrian, whipped up this bracelet in no time.

If your barn in interested in having a barn party at your barn or at a local bead store, contact me and we’ll set something up.

In other financial news, I’ll be raising my prices in January. Sad but true. I haven’t raised my prices in quite a long time, but the price of gold and silver have skyrocketed in the last year. To keep up with the times, I need to raise my prices. So get those orders in before the end of the year to take advantage of this year’s prices.

We cut down our Christmas tree today in the wet, blinding snow. It was definitely the snowiest tree-gettin’ we’ve ever had. Makes it all the more festive. As per tradition, we headed over to Pearly Baker’s for some Boulder Style French Onion Soup afterward. Warms you up fast! The Kahlua in my hot chocolate warmed me up even faster!

I hope you all have a joyous holiday season, no matter what you celebrate.

A pair of horse hair earrings made by a participant in last week's Horse Hair Jewelry Class at My Father's Beads. See what she's been up to since the class at www.whosgotyourgoat.blogspot.com

If you missed the Horse Hair Jewelry Class last Sunday, you have another chance!

Swine flu claimed some of class, so I rescheduled another class for Thursday, November 19 from 2:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. The class  will be at My Father’s Beads in Coopersburg, PA. You can register online or call the store at 610-282-6939. Time to make start making  gifts for Christmas!

Braided horse hair tied into a rope halter with fiador knot and lead rope.

Setting the knots was the tough part.

So it really wasn’t a mummy.

The white horse was a model for my latest venture into custom pieces I never dreamed of: a replica rope halter made from horse hair.

Really, folks, I’m as impressed with rope halter as I am with the horse head.

But this tale has a sad beginning. The rope halter is made from the tail of a horse named Matador. He died recently of colic. He was a beauty. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I shed a few tears when I got his tail in the mail. A small reminder of my loss of Saint in April (horse…dog, it’s a loss no matter how small or tall the friend).

A fiador is a round knot under the chin, which makes a loop where the trainer can clip on the lead rope.

Learning how to tie a rope halter with fiador was the first task. Not as hard as I suspected. Next, I had to shrink all the measurements to make it a smaller size. Again, not as hard as I suspected.

Then it was making the rope from Matador’s tail: all 7 feet of rope. Matador had an impressively long tail, but I still had to make 16 pulls to weave them all into a 4 strand braid.

Seven feet of braided horse hair.

Now came the hard part: tying the rope halter with the horse hair. Horse hair is flexible, but stiff. It will take the shape of anything, but sometimes it has to be forced into that position and held there for quite a while.

All of the knots wanted to come undone when I tied them, so I had to set them by weighting the halter. With the fiador tied, I hung it from a lamp with a horse bit (how appropriate) and a candle in a cup that looks like a cappuccino (thank you Secret Santa ‘07) . No rhyme or reason here, just heavy stuff that was available.

A few days of hanging set the fiador knot and I tied the rest of the halter. While that was hanging to set the knots, I moved onto the horse head.

If you look closely, you can see the horse's eye.

The rope halter looked like a jumble of knots without something to give it shape, so I conceived making the horse head out of what was, again, handy…newsprint, freezer tape and glue. The muse of the horse head guided my hand through a box of glue to Elmer’s wood glue. It gave the paper a hard exterior almost like paper mache. Elmer’s regular glue made it a bit soggy.

So now the horse head and halter are headed across the country to California. In a few days a man will be opening a box and remembering his faithful companion.

My new product line? Stay tuned and see.

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