Geri also came armed with a few books devoted to rawhide braiding horse gear. It took several years but when our lifestyle switched a bit from Primitive Skills 24/7, she broke out the books. It wasn't long before she discovered that having the proper tools made for an easier, more professional go of it. When I built the Log Cabin which I wrote a book about I really didn't have a use in mind for it. Geri did! It soon housed her tools for splitting, cutting and beveling rawhide and other various tools of the braiding trade. Her earliest rawhide came from cows that neighbors lost - most skinned on the spot where they died - one that I shot (at the rancher's request). The amount of time she spent in skinning, fleshing, dehairing, cutting into strips, splitting, more cutting, more splitting, final cutting and then beveling made the process pretty time intensive - before the braiding even began. Whew!

Well, over the years she's had some good advice, positive feedback and has had no trouble in selling everything that she has made. She began by selling thru the Custer Battlefield Trading Post run by friends of ours of many years. She since has had fewer and fewer items left to send to Montana due to word of mouth of the quality of her work getting around and she has more orders than she does time to make up the gear.