It’s probably cliché to say that my wife’s whole life has led up to the Polkadot moment, but the truth is, every season we’ve shared—not to mention that long, wintery season before we met—has brought something new to the craft table. Whether it was the births of our boys Aedan and Silas, two souls as unique from each other as any could be, or whether it was the tempestuous, colorful marriage that produced them, I can safely say that our family has always been a kind of “mad muse” lurking in the background as Tara has labored over her sewing machine.
The exact recipe is a secret, of course, but it seems to me that she takes a cultural sensibility, an eye for emerging fashion, and an organic connection to the needs of mothers, and dabs it all together on her palette to produce something that works on more than one level. Someone who makes baby slings for fashion-conscious mothers really needs to be two parts artist, one part craftologist—and all mom. My wife fits that description snugly. And that’s why it doesn’t surprise me in the least that she would find a way to bless moms everywhere with a stylish, practical and natural alternative to the multi-buckled baby-carrying contraptions currently being sold in stores. What Tara is offering the maternal world just makes so much sense!
I have one indelible impression of my wife through the years: she is curled up in the cracked pleather chair we inherited from my mother, a novel in one hand (hence her habit of naming slings after unique female literary characters), a steaming coffee mug in the other…and she is crafting in her mind. Not just dreaming, mind you, but planning—down to the stitch, down to the finest elements of the composition, down to that intuitive level that all artists and crafters understand. I have watched her with more than a little admiration through the years as each project has flowed into the next, refining the creative process and gradually narrowing her focus to this: one fabulous, practical, and undeniably chic handcrafted product, the Polkadot Papoose.
As a man I don’t claim to really understand what baby slings are all about, but I do know that our kids never responded to anything the way they did to Tara’s slings. In fact, I’m encouraging her to work on some patterns a man might feel comfortable wearing. She tells me a camo-design is in the works. I tell her I’ll wear it when I see it.
