Learning to take some time off…

Or taking some time off to learn…

These last two days I have not been in the shop. Gasp! Oh, the horror! However will I get caught up?

Not to worry, I made an agenda and I am current with my agenda and anyone promised their goodies before Christmas will get their goodies before Christmas (if the postal service can make good on its timetables).

There… now that that’s out of my system, I can tell you about the past two days.

I took a living history workshop at the Ozark Folk Center. The workshop was presented by several very knowledgeable people and a lot of good information was divulged. I spent a lot of time worrying, though, that I wasn’t getting my thought… what I want to achieve… across. I don’t want to research a character, or create a composite character, so I can be an actor and tell people about the past. I want to live it! I want to know the tools and the methods and live that way (with a computer in the back room with a broadband connection. I’m not a savage ).

I thought that and struggled to convey that for most of the two days and it just seemed like the presenters weren’t getting it. Then one of them handed me a business card. At the bottom of the business card was this phrase: Preparing for the future by preserving the past.

Yes! That’s what I want to do.

Needless to say, (why is it that every time someone uses that phrase, they go ahead and say the thing anyways?) the remainder of the day was much better for me. Turns out I’m not the only one and that these folk go way way beyond learning phrases and mannerisms. They learn the skills, too. Just like I want to do… just like I am doing.

Ah, well…

The course is over and I am heading back to my shop tomorrow. Seems I’ve got some goodies to finish and get shipped. Turns out that Santa’s elves can’t seem to manage large crochet hooks, square knitting needles or modular trilooms. And, we all know what Santa’s schedule is like this time of years…

Oh where, oh where…?

Where have I gone?

No where. I’m right here. Just where I’ve been.

That’s not to say that I’m not going places and doing things. Still busier than a one legged man in a… erm… paper hanging contest. Something like that.

We are about 1/2 moved into Meadowcreek. We are calling this “down under” and Foxbriar and the shop “up top” or “upstairs” (we’re living in a one-story house… guess they call it a ranch style, right?… so there’s no other upstairs to get it confused with) as it is an 800-foot drop from the mountain top to Meadowcreek… all negotiated in about two miles of dirt road. The road is actually 3.5 miles from the Fox, but the drop starts about a mile into the trip. The confusing part comes when I say “it’s in the shop.” We have to stop and discuss whether I mean my studio down here and or the shop up top. Any more, I mean the studio down here. The shop up top is nearly cleaned out of my stuff. ‘Course, I’m leaving the sawdust behind.

What’s left, besides the sawdust? Half the sheep, the horses, one llama and the angora bunnies as well as a lot of pieces parts. We plan on getting to that stuff on Friday of this week… maybe a bit on Saturday and the following Monday.

Why spaced out so? Jen’s going tile hunting on Thursday and has been working most Mondays and Tuesdays and is doing a show on Sunday. She’s been too busy for 23475623 people as of late. She just finished a craft show last Saturday and had virtually no downtime before heading back in to town on Sunday night to do some more work.   

The house and the studio and the shed and the barn and the garden and the vineyard and the pastures are all such blessings!

Because of the house, I have room to relax and recover and rest. I can also spend some quality time with Jen. It’s hard to measure quality time in a camp trailer. The wood stove is really nice for heating. On the one hand, I wish it were an open hearth so we could sit in front of the fire and snuggle… y’know… a bearskin rug kinda thing. On the other hand, I know that fireplaces are heat eaters. This is a nice compact wood stove with a huge firebox and it does a good job of cooking you out of the living room at night and keeping the rest of the house comfy. I’ve also had a blast cooking again. Since Jen’s been so busy working, I try to have dinner ready most nights… last night it was spaghetti and garlic bread. The spaghetti was perfect if I do say so myself… all homemade (‘cept, of course, the noodles… I’m not that ambitious yet). The garlic bread wasn’t ready on time, though… Hey! It was ready about 45 minutes later. I mean, it was fresh baked and all. The cake was a bit on the burned side, but edible… seems the oven here runs abut 50° too hot! If I can find the beans, we’re gonna have homemade chili and cornbread tomorrow! 

The shed has allowed us to get all of our tack and tools unpacked from the horse trailer and ‘Lena’s done a wonderful job cleaning and conditioning the tack and organizing the shed. The compressor is out there and the genny and nuclear weed blaster and other garden tools will follow in a few days.

The barn has allowed us to get about half the animals sheltered. It needs some serious work, but it’s there. We have a plan for the other half the animals. We also have storage for our grain and hay… something other than a tarp!

We’re using the garden as a pasture for the sheep. They can eat what weeds and grasses came in while the garden was unattended ad will be kind enough to fertilize in return. we walk them down every morning and walk them home each night.

We haven’t really touched the vineyards or the pastures yet. The vineyards need a lot of pruning and work and the pastures need fencing. It’s still a blessing though as it’s encouraged me to go to scrounging fencing materials and reading up on winemaking.. oh, yeah, and jellys and juices, too…

Because of the studio, I have room to spread out and have really gotten my productivity back up. Not having to step over and around people and pets and tools is such a relief and really speeds things up. As a for instance, I was once able to complete a 6-foot TriLoom in a long day. Since we got crowded, I’ve been counting myself lucky if I could get one done in three days. Since I started working in my new studio (sounds pretentious, don’t it?), I’ve finished two six-foot TriLooms in a matter of three days.

Meanwhile, I’ve got my TO DO list pared down from 80 orders behind to just 15. Seems I wrote that once before, but people keep ordering things. Go figure. I thank everyone for their patience. However, if I have had a phone conversation with you and  arranged for an order or somesuch… call again as I appear to have lost the pad of paper with all my phone notes on it. As a result, I know I’m supposed to be carving a size K crochet hook, but I can’t remember for whom and so forth and so on.

So… we’re still here, still kickin’ and we’ve got our DSL in the valley all hooked up and I’ll be able to update tis here site a bit more often.

However, if I don’t get off this thing, I’ll have no productivity increase to show after all.

Bead-azzling opportunity

By now everyone who has a knitting needle or afghan crochet hook from me knows that I like to put beads on them. I like to use glass when I can (although I’ve got a WONDERFUL set of custom pottery beads that just came in from Sanborn Designs). Finally, I like the glass beads to be pretty and unique. I found the end-all, bee-all of beads this last Spring. You may remember me writing about Tom and Sage Holland the bead-makers.

We had a visit from Sage today and she mentioned in passing that she’s giving another class locally. I wanted to let everyone out there know about this class because I don’t have time to make the beads for my stuff and need more quality beadmakers out there to sell to me. Go take this class!

Sage and Beau
Announce
Glass Beadmaking Workshop and Retreat

The River View Hotel in Calico Rock, Arkansas
November 10-12, 2007
or
November 10-16, 2007
3-Day – $600
5-Day – $1000
Includes all supplies and tools, a private room and bath in the classic 1930s era hotel right on the White River, and light breakfasts, coffees and teas.

For more info or to register visit
beauxbeads.wetpaint.com
or contact
sageandtom@hotmail.com
870-363-4890

Beadmakers
P.O. Box 96
Fox, AR 72051

As far as I can tell this is cheap at twice the price! Tell ‘em I sent ya!

Realising net gains

We were sitting around a table, in the shade, sipping tea with our new found friends. They are building a cordwood house and we had volunteered to stop by and distract them. When not building a house, he is a classically trained chef and self-taught geek from the UK and she is a masseuse and organic gardener.

In the conspicuous silence of a distinct lack of work, I am asked what I do.

I gave the usual spiel… looms, crochet hooks, knitting needles…

His face lights up. “I could really use a knitting needle!”

“They usually come in pairs,” says I. “What size do you need?”

“Oh, something that would make a mesh about 3 inches or so.”

“That’s awful open for lace, but I guess I could make you a set of, what, 16s?”

“I don’t need a set. I’m going to be making knitting.”

“Right… OK, what length?” I query. I’m beginning to get confused.

“I don’t know,” he replies, starting to look confused himself. “Whatever size might be used for a 3″ mesh,” he repeats.

“What type of bead would you like? I use mostly glass or semi-precious stone.”

“They have beads?”

In my memory, this went on for several minutes. It was beginning to sound like an Abbot and Costello routine and I so wanted to yell “First base!” when Jeanette leaned over and said, quite clearly, without accent “netting.”

I’d never made a netting needle, and I told him so. I also said I’d see what I could do.

Back at home, I did a little bit of research and a little bit of woodcarving, and voila!

As with everything that I make, as soon as I’m happy enough to show it to Jen, she snaps a pictures and runs off to put it in the store. They’re there now.

I’ve made and sold about 5 of them now (I gave the first one away to our friend)… lessee… something from a bizarre conversation… Yep! That’s a net gain!

No little feat… er feet…

I wanted to do something nice for a couple of my customers that have been so very patient as I got bogged down and backed up. One of these customers has purchased, I think, just about one of everything I make… so sending something I make was out of the question.

Unless I start making something else!

But what don’t I already make? Well, jack looms and spinning wheels – eventually, but… let me rephrase that… what don’t I already make that would be quick and easy and not delay their products any longer and would be useful?

For inspiration I turned, as I so often do, to a favorite view of mine… watching Jeanette work on her loom. You thought maybe a pastoral scene of sheep in the Alps with Heidi bounding down to hill to Grandfather’s place? Ha! As I watched her weave I saw that some times she would just reverse her hook and smack the strands of yarn into place… that’s how I do it when I weave. On occasion, though, she would stop, grab a packing fork (and thinking about it now I’ve actually seen her use a fork fork) and make everything nice and even.

Hmmm….

Introducing Little Feat… er, Little Feet… um, am I going to get sued by a rock-n-roll band for this?

Little Feet, then:

In a move that I think makes these particular Little Feet even more wonderfuller, I used natural aromatic cedar from the Foxbriar Farm (where we make an excellent cappuccino, thank you very much!) which I felled, cut, aged, cut again and finished. Of course, now that I’ve made one, you’ll be seeing these and hands, too, made out of all kinds of woods in our store.

Oh, the name? I designed them to be easy to hold in one hand and make left and right passes… all kinds of ergonomic, I think. So I bring ‘em over and set them down in front of Jen, looking for praise or at least suggestions.

“Oh, cute!” she says. “little feet!”

But wait, there’s more!

Seems as I finished more wood than I needed for just the feet, so I made a special edition Ozark TriLoom which went out today to a patient customer.

And then I dropped the ball…

My old pappy always said ” excuses are like…” um, well, chances are your old pappy said the same thing, or an acquaintance somewhere at any rate. The gist is that everyone has one and none of ‘em smell sweet.

No excuses then. I screwed up. I got backlogged and a lot of folk are waiting to get their TriLooms or knitting needles or crochet hooks. No excuses.

But it didn’t stop there. in the process of trying to get caught up I missed the renewal deadline for www.trilooms.com. This right when Jen was sending out ads all over the place. Makes me look like a bumbling fool and a bumbling fool I am… but it’s a passing thing I hope hope hope.

No excuses, then. How about an apology? I’m sorry I dropped the ball.

Some assurances? I’m working me poor wee hiney off trying to get caught up (more than 17 sets of knitting needles, crochet hooks, and hair sticks carved yesterday) and Lena was kind and diligent enough to pre-sand all of the TriLooms in production (about 6 of ‘em)  and the only reason I am able to pause long enough to write this short post is I am on terminal hold with the hosting company (yep… the same one) trying to get my domain name back.

Since I’ve written all of this while on hold, I think I want to rant a little here… you can click a link or close the browser window now unless you really want to read on. I promise it won’t get foul.

Seems to me that the days of customer service are long gone. Why, oh, why would you program a computer to say “we appreciate your call” and “we know your time is important” when it so obviously isn’t. How can they thank me for patience I no longer have… patience that I lost after holding for the first 20 minutes.

It’s annoying, aggravating, and dishonest. Why offer 24/7 sales and support if you’re only hiring one  narcoleptic person to man the phones most of the time?

I think we could improve customer service if we, the consumers, were allowed to charge for our time after a small space of time… say 20 minutes? After 20 minutes we should be able to charge minimum wage. If our time is as valuable as the pre-recorded message has told me for the past hour, then shouldn’t they put their money where their mouth is?

But let’s not stop there! If a clerk is rude, the company should pay a percentage of your order. If an order is not met, they should ship the remainder to you free of charge… I hate rainchecks – especially in the days of online, instantaneous computer inventory (our inventory is terrible and we know this, but as most items are custom made to order, it’s hard to keep those items in stock… but that’s another story), and long trips into town with $3/gallon fuel to pick up the orders. One recent order cost us four days of 120-mile round trips to fill… that’s 480 miles… at 20 mpg that’s 24 gallons or $72 worth of fuel. I could have almost bought the tools necessary to make the item I was ordering for that. Oh, and the manager of the store never even apologized… he had an excuse.

Back in the digital saddle again

“The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated“
Mark Twain

New post on a new blog?

Or is this a new post on an old blog?

It’s not possible, is it, to have an old post on a new blog… I’m so confused…

What you’re seeing here is a desperate attempt to keep afloat digitally. I’m putting redundancies everywhere. I’m only paranoid because they’re out to get me.

Well, maybe that’s taking it a bit too far, and maybe I should back up a bit. And, maybe i should have backed up a bit more… you’ll see… read on.

Several days ago, we began to get complaints from friends, family and customers that their emails to us were bouncing. Usually, that means we have an account over limit… too many emails, too little storage space. I jog over, clear the virtual log jam and things start flowing.

There wasn’t anything there.

Next step is to contact tech support. I am a geek and I know quite a bit, but I’m not gonna even try to hack my own service provider’s server to get email back. Duh. After waiting in Live Chat limbo for abut an hour, the Tech support dude tells me there was a DNS cache problem. Cache cleared, problem solved. He said I would be getting emails again in a few hours.

I decide to write about this dilemma on my blog so folks know that I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth.

That’s when I discovered I had fallen off the face of the Earth.

My website was gone. I don’t mean down. I don’t mean deleted. I mean no account, no files, no email, no domain name (just a nasty 404 error), no folders, no FTP, no blog, no pictures, no… well, you get the idea.

Naturally, I’m a bit concerned.

Off I go to contact tech support again. This time, after another hour long wait in limbo, I’m told the previous tech cleared the cache, but forgot to enable it again. Who knew? I’d be back online in a couple of hours.

A couple of hours go by and by now I’ve heard from several people with outstanding paid orders wanting to know what’s going on. Wanting refund. Thinking I’m fly-by-night. But that’s OK ’cause the website’s gonna be up any minute now… any minute… just a few more seconds…

*sigh*

This time I attack from the front and the back. I call and log into live chat at the same time. Then I wait on hold and in chat limbo for 2 freakin’ hours. I coulda watched a movie. I coulda carved a crochet hook or set of knitting needle or made a loom. I coulda taken on online course in underwater basket weaving. I coulda set up another blog service and started letting people know I was alive and well.

After that interminable, agonizing wait they said that it was a… can you guess… a DNS problem and it was solve and would be back up in a couple hours. Oh, yeah, and my case was escalated to tech support 2.0 or some such nonsense.

By this time, it’s late… as in midnight. I’ve managed to spend more than 7 hours on hold. I’ve wasted an entire day.  I still don’t have a website I am angry, but it’s futile to sit at the computer and click refresh every 10 minutes to see if the tech support 2.0 people could do what tech support 1.0 could not.

I go to bed.

The next morning I awake and race through chores and breakfast on the farm and race to the shop to find that I still don’t have a website. I log into chat again and I give the poor soul that answers a piece of my mind! I have to stop doing that as I’m running low on pieces… ouch.  I harangue the poor guy and harass and bully and type really loudly. But I’m proud of myself. I never curse and I never lose my cool. Not even when he says that the problem is solved and I should see results in a couple hours.

I then pointed out in calm terms that this was the same answer I had been given more than 36 hours ago and that the answer was no longer accepted and that he better get tech support 3.0 over to the terminal and get the problem fixed or he had better cut me a check for a refund and send me on my merry ’cause I was taking no more.

I admit it was a hollow threat. What does a large hosting firm care if one measly account quits. They have the contract and I have diddly. I mean, what could I do? What… write on as many bogs and forums that I could find that this hosting company is the pits? Word-of-mouth them to death? Yeah, right… as if… I’m just this one guy, y’know…

Sure felt good though and the website IS back up.

I just thought having a few copies of said website might not be a bad idea.

Oh, and I’m not going to badmouth the company here in public… these guys are trying, I’m sure. however, I’m not going to wish their slowly degrading into slime service on anyone. If you’re considering getting hosting, let me know and I can steer you away from these bozos. If you have hosting you’re happy with, let me know, too… It’s time for a move.

Making connections

I spend a lot of time connecting things… people with looms, knitting needles, crochet hooks and hair sticks… I hope.

 

But a lot of time is also put into my blogs and to chatting with other folk in the community… here and elsewhere (Colorado and Louisiana and where ever else we travel).

 

For instance, last week I spent an hour talking with the wood turner at the Folk Center (where Jen’s working part-time now) and he has a lot of hints, tips and tricks I would not have garnered any other way. It was great and time well spent.

 

Today, I found a blog service that does much the same thing. It makes connections. You can see the widget over in the sidebar … blogrush… yeah, that’s it. Now, when I write a post here you can glance over there and find other posts with similar content.

 

If you would like to try this yourself on your blog, feel free!

A Sticky Situation

So, this nice young lady down Texas way has ordered very nearly every crochet hook I make. She’s ordered a couple TriLooms, too. I really appreciate her
business.

Then she emails and asks if I can carve hair sticks with the same designs I use on my crochet hooks. Hair sticks!

My natural nice guy inclination is to say “Sure, no problem, I’ll get right on that.”

There’s a part of me that’s upset, though.

I turn to Jen and say “I make fiber arts tools, not jewelry. Should I do this?”

Without missing a beat, she responds “Hair is a fiber, too.”

*sigh*

“Oh,” she continues. “I want a set with a twist and some nice beads.”

Introducing Laffing Horse Hair Sticks (Jen wouldn’t let me be lyrical and call ‘em Mane Manglers)

Doesn’t Jeanette have pretty hair?

P.S. I’m kidding about being upset. I really enjoy new ideas and challenges. Thanks Liz!

Flame on

Remember the Fantastic 4? There was that guy that could ignite himself by saying “flame on.”

This has nothing to do with that.

You know those chips and snacks from FritoLays (I know there’s more than one, but all I can remember is Cheetos)… the Flamin’ Hot ones?

This has nothing to do with that either.

You know when people start calling each other names in emails – especially on groups (Hi SheepThrills )? Flame wars, right.

This has nothing to do with that.

I started making some of my crochet hooks and then adding some freehand carving at the top of them, just for the fun of it. One of the designs – one of my favorites – is the flame.

I sold the original and another and thought nothing more about it.

That was about a dozen Flame Crochet Hooks ago.

Seems that Flames are hot!

OK. Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I can apologize and get back to work… oh, and Callahan, if you’re reading this, tell Doc to top that one!

I also want to apologize for the low quality of the video… it’s what I gots!