Progress Again

Ron didn't get pouches trimmed Thursday or Friday.

On the other hand, the MuseCon grid build that was scheduled for Saturday didn't happen, so I stayed home and worked on hard pouches, which Ron trimmed Saturday morning.  I had a stack of, IIRC, 13 of them, and now I have 8 that need to have the lacing done, 2 "hanging" ones that I know won't get done for Military History Fest so I didn't even bother with, and 3 that are on hold until I get more hardware - on Saturday I used up the dee rings I put on the backs of pouches that can be worn as sporrans. But I have all the parts made and holes punched, and catching those two pouches up to the other 8 will only take a few minutes/rivets.

Yesterday morning we made hangers for the latest batch of amphora bottles, put together the parts for ball-shaped bottles, and a few for bottles Robin had stashed. After lunch Ron made chainmail bracelets, and I figured out how much the books I've made cost, and decided how much to charge for them. I also finished the last step of putting binding and latches on the flaps three of the machine-sewn soft pouches. 

I also finished one pouch that's been mostly-done for almost a week, and started lacing up some of the hard pouches I was working on Saturday. 

This morning I ordered truly Stupid Amounts of the dee rings I ran out of on Saturday - 400 of them. They're on sale for about half the normal price, and using 2/pouch for all but the smallest couple pouch sizes makes that a not-insane purchase. 200 of the swivels I put on tails is slightly more questionable, but they were also on sale. I also ordered a few jingle bells and, a few buckles my notes said we needed. 

Then I ordered even more hardware - rivets, snaps, studs, and a bunch of latches. I don't think I ordered stupid amounts of any of those, but we were almost or completely out of antique nickel (gunmetal color) rotary and swing latches in each size of each, and small antique brass rotary latches, so it just all added up. 

Still need to get the inventory updated in the point of sale software, and tags made and onto things. Not sure what the best method of putting price tags on books will be, I don't want to stick stickers on them. Also need to figure out what size tags we're putting on chainmail - the biggish tags we're currently using and printing stickers for, which are about the size of half a business card, or smaller ones that I still have a stash of.  

Weekday Stall

So, after Monday's optimistic post, things have stalled. Between various meetings, appointments, etc, getting much done during the week is problematic.  I haven't even finished the purse that I could/should have. This morning I didn't bother with it, I grabbed my knitting instead.

On the other hand, Ron placed an order with Blue Buddha Boutique, and will be fetching it this afternoon/evening, for items he can reasonably expect to have done in time for Military History Fest. And in the next couple days I expect we'll be ordering some more supplies from The Ringlord (rings) and Fire Mountain Gems (glass beads and other findings). Also, sushi for dinner last night is not something to complain about.

Hopefully Ron will be home in time to trim the edges on some of the hard pouches for me.  I don't expect to get them all done in the next week, but I think I know which ones are on the short list.  And I need to get him to make the hangers for the recent batch of amphora bottles, and assemble parts for the red (and clear) spherical bottles.  Which one of us then has to sew on to said bottles. Plus I have a whole order of tails than need swivels.  And inventory needs to be updated. 

Yeah, more things to do than time to do them in. Dratted day-job. This would be easier if we were wealthy enough to just do Otter Necessities full-time. 

My left wrist is definitely better than it was Sunday. I'm hoping that the main problem was sleeping funny, and I've been careful with it the last few nights. 

Started getting the content for the program book for the floodplain managers' conference in March.  I'm waffling about making some changes to the fonts used, to switch to one or two that I've purchased since then, or sticking with not broke/don't fix. It would probably help to double-check to see what I used last year, wouldin't it?

Working on Leather, Finally

Thursday morning I went to Champaign for work, and came home Friday night. I took Amtrak, and because of the combination of Amtrak and Metra (the regional commuter rail lines), I didn't get home until 11:30. Except I didn't get off at our "home" station, I went a stop farther to Barrington, walked a block or so to an McGonigal's, an Irish pub, and caught The Tooles' last set (The Tooles is an Irish pub band), got something to eat, and had more hard cider in less than an hour than was probably wise.

Which is why we slept in fairly late Saturday, and when Ron went to a Capricon meeting I took a nap.  I did, however, update the MuseCon flyers, but forgot one of the Special Guests I was supposed to add. That was my accomplishment for the day.

Yesterday I went through the hard pouch fronts we had molded, a dozen of them, decided what color they'd be and what color the backs would be, made a list, and started laying out backs for Ron to cut out with the Universal Mangler. And made an extra back. I got Robin to do the dyeing with the airbrush, since he's a southern yeti vampire, so he didn't get cold.  I also got all the marking and hole punching done on the backs and flaps for lacing around the flap edges and attaching the belt loops.

Today I put latches on the flaps (including the spare), and glued 13 together (the dozen plus one that I'd previously gotton to that point. Which is rather a lot of work, since 4 of the pouches have 2 latches each. 

This is a stack of 5 large hard squares:

From left to right is a couple flaps for hanging pouches, and the spare back/flap, 4 small 4"x6" hard rectangles, and 2 shields on top of two medium squares:

Then I finished the skirt hikes I started a couple/few months ago:

23 of them - 8 large to take to events, 9 large to list on Etsy (3 singles and 3 pairs), and 6 small to list on Etsy (2 singles and 2 pairs). Plus a bored Pippin. 

Here's a comparison of small and large skirt hikes:

 

Small are about 8" long overall, large about 8-3/4" long. Small use 1-1/4" inner diameter rings, large use 2" inner diameter rings. 

And now, some gratuitous dog pictures, taken after I took pictures of skirt hikes:

Disapproving Pippin disapproves.

Pippin photobombs Elrond, and then tells me about it (he's between barks)

Elrond is sad and tragic, because the workmate made it hard to get up on the couch.

This evening, with Ron's help, I put a bunch of tools and things that had migated out to the living room yesterday and today back away, and listed the skirt hikes on Etsy.

Weekend Recap #2 - All the Natter

Last night's post was pretty sparse on words, so we'll make up for that today.

Ron's rapidly working through the batch of rings we got last weekend at Blue Buddha to make Elfweave bracelets. But we're expecting the rings to make owls to arrive tonight, so he'll have those to work on. 

Got pretty much nothing in the way of leatherworking done this weekend, just trimming some pouch fronts that are drying on the molds.

Last week I got my order of bookbinding supplies and tools: A sturdier awl for making sewing holes (circular cross-section, all our leather sewing awls have a diamond cross-section), linen tape/ribbon for sewing multi-section books onto, reinforcing material for book spines, a couple pieces of black book cloth, a swatch set for one type of book cloth (I figured it was safe to order black without having seen a swatch), and a piece of decorative paper that's red with fancy fish on it in gold and black.  That order came from Ann Arbor, MI; and I also got my sewing frame from California.

Friday night after dinner we stopped at Menard's for sand bags for the back of the newer truck, and I picked up a 3" paint roller and small tray for gluing - a brush works for small areas, but not as well for anything over, say, 2" x 2". The roller was not my idea, I got the recommendation from YouTube video and a book on bookbinding. I also got a small plastic rafter square to keep with the paper cutter. 

Saturday morning I finally got around to cutting the board to size that Ron had reduced to manageable pieces with the Universal Mangler the week before.  I got the square because we've been having trouble making square cuts. I'd assumed the problem was that the (magnetic) fence which goes parallel to the blade was too easy to knock out of square with the backstop which is (supposed to be) perpendicular to the blade, because the fence is relatively narrow. But I started out checking that the backstop is square to the blade.

Fail. Fail fail fail. It also obviously (once you look at/for it) isn't square to the grid on the bed of the cutter, which I'm kicking myself for not noticing. Fortunately, it looks like we should be able to fix the backstop, possibly after enlarging a bolt hole with Comrade Dremel. 

I'm not sure the grid is perfectly square to the blade, but it is pretty close - at least as close as I can come without a fixed and reliably square backstop. So I cut my board using the grid and my eyeballs - I'd laid out all the cutting lines fully across the board, so I could also line them up with the blade mark in the plastic piece the blade comes down into.  And I also discovered that the blade guard/clamp isn't straight, so it isn't a safe/reliable indicator of cut location. This, children, is what comes of buying an inexpensive paper cutter. 

I also cut pages for the red and brown Japanese-style book on Sunday. The results of this weekends cutting were, unsurprisingly, much better than the cutting done using the not-square backstop. Not perfect, but a decided improvement.

Saturday evening I covered the boards for the books I finished yesterday. I thought I was being clever by mitering the corners before I had the boards glued down. Fail. It was OK on the red/brown book, but I'd mis-measured somewhere for the blue book, which ended up effectively having the corners trimmed too close, so there's corners not quite covered. Growf.

OTOH, using the roller made gluing much quicker/easier. It probably results in more waste glue with what's left in the roller and the tray, but that's a trade-off I'm willing to make.  

Sunday morning I did the Illinois sales tax return. As usual, I ended up ranting and swearing in the process. Most of which was over a rounding issue - rounding everything to the nearest dollar and then summing up does not necessarily give the same answer as rounding at the end. The Wisconsin on-line filing system was down all weekend, so I need to do that today or tomorrow, which should be straightforward, particularly as we only did one event in Wisconsin. 

Sunday midday/early afternoon Ron and I did errands, including a stop at Dick Blick, where I got a quart of PVA glue (the 4-ounce-ish bottle I started with is going fast, especially using the roller), Ron decided I should go ahead and get a heavy-duty bookbinding awl, and Ron got a utility/storage box for finished chainmail. After lunch we stopped at Michaels and Ron got a couple black velvet-covered bracelet display bars.  

In the afternoon/evening I sewed the books together, and finished putting a batch of sporrans and belt satchels that I took pictures of last weekend up for sale on Etsy.  And did the previous blog entry.

Last night I ordered paper for book interiors. In the morning I determined that most (if not all) of French Paper Company's products are acid-free, so I stuck with them (I've also bought paper for letterpress printing from French). They're not exactly local to us now, but is to where I grew up. Its a thing. I got Pachtone in "Natural" - cream-colored artificial parchment, slightly mottled; and Dur-O-Tone "Butcher Extra White", which is a slightly glossy white. It was surprisingly hard to pick a white and an off-white. I got a ream of each, a ream doesn't exactly last a long time when making books, and the price/sheet is a lot better for a ream than 50 sheets.  

A Pouch, Chainmail, and Books

Friday I finised up one of the pouches I posted a picture of while underway a week or so ago:

Ron's been making more bracelets:

These are all more of the "elfweave" pattern.

And I finished two more books with Japanese-style sewn bindings:

The red/brown has about 4-1/4" x 11" pages, and the turquoise one has about 5-1/2" x 8-1/2" pages (including the parts inside the binding). The red/brown book has orange pages at the beginning/end, the rest are off-white.

My sewing frame arrived, now I need to figure out what I want type of book I want to make with the type of sewn binding that uses it. And probably order some paper tomorrow, for the interior. 

Chainmail, Books, and Leather

I finished up the hard cover book with the marbled red and brown book cloth cover, after blogging yesterday:

I even managed leave it undisturbed alllll day long yesterday, even though it probably would have been fine to take a look last night.  

The endpapers are orange, which I think goes with the orange in the cover, and the pages are the generic cream paper:

No, I didn't bother with a picture of the interior, I figure a picture of the orange is dull enough.

After that, I put the bookbinding aside and worked on leather. I flailed around some, with a pile of hard pouch fronts, and another of hard pouch backs, and lists of what I needed.  In the end I didn't worry about getting Robin to dye anything, and decided to just have Ron wax all the fronts as they were. 

Then I laid out hard pouch fronts on a half-cow, for Ron to hack apart with the Universal Mangler. He cut faster than I laid out, power tools for the win.  Four of the pouch fronts were soaked for molding, and the rest set aside.

Then I started working on a couple pouches I'd cut out a couple/few weeks ago. They have gussets that are hand-stitched, and laced flaps. By dinner time I had the belt loops on, latches on, flaps ready to lace, and the gussets glued and held together with plenty of binder clips.  I probably could have achieved more yesterday, but leather wasn't what I really wanted to be working on (books were). 

While I was working on leather, Ron worked on chainmail and then waxed pouches. Here's the bracelet he made, in the "Elfweave" pattern by Rebeca Mojica of Blue Buddha Boutique, in royal blue, purple, turquoise, and bright aluminum:

After dinner we molded pouches and then I laid out covers for two more Japanese-style books on the binder's board. Ron had experimented with the Universal Mangler on scrap, and determined it would work. It leaves a ridge on one cut edge, but Ron has to freehand cuts with it, so I'd already assumed any Universal Mangler cuts would only be rough, and require trimming. I didn't get ustairs to do the final cutting, but maybe tonight. I also got pages folded to go with the paper I got at Jo-Ann on Saturday. 

Tonight Ron finished another Elfweave bracelet, in red and hematite-colored aluminum, and brass:

Both this one and the blue/purple/silver one are for sale, in the $45-ish neighborhood.

While he was finishing up the bracelet, I packed up an Etsy order we got last night, and got the pouches I worked on yesterday ready to lace and sew:

One will be done in black, the other in dark brown. The only difference in the two at the moment is the grain pattern, so I just grabbed one to take a picture of. The flaps are laced, the bodies are hand-stitched.

I also took pictures of a bunch of soft sewn pouches, so I can list them on Etsy, as well as post them to the gallery on the website.  And I need to make a chainmail section on the gallery and get pictures uploaded there. 

Did I Mention Books? Plus Chainmail

Friday night we went to Dick Blick and Hobby Lobby for various things, and some decorative paper followed me home.  I started a couple books with it, but didn't get them done by bedtime.

Yesterday morning we made a trip into the city to Blue Buddha Boutique for chainmail supplies. Ron got a bunch of rings to do "Elfweave" bracelets, like this one he made for me:

We got red, royal blue, teal, hematite, purple, and green andodized aluminum, bright aluminum, and brass rings, plus brass and silver-toned catches. 

Checked on the supplies for chainmail owls, they appear to have shipped yesterday from Ontario.

After shopping, we went to lunch at a Thai place, Summer's Noodles and Rice, two doors down. After we started eating our lunches, which were noodles in a curry sauce, very similar to the Kow Soy that we get at Basai Thai in Oakbrook, we ordered another to take home to Robin. So now we have two reasons to go into the city (Edgewater neighborhood, IIRC). 

Got home, Ron started sorting rings, and I worked on the hard-cover book I started last weekend (some steps require overnight drying). I got the covers covered, and then put it aside to dry again. Here it is this morning:

The marbled red is painfully expensive paper, and the dark brown is book cloth fabric. 

Then we ran out again to Jo-Ann for more little bins for Ron to sort rings. And a couple more pieces of paper followed me home. 

Got home, had dinner, practiced guitar and banjo, and then I finished up the booklets I started Friday:

They've got 8-1/2" x 5-1/2" pages. The black and white one is sewn with black thread, and has black endpapers and white pages. The other is sewn with dark brown thread, and has dark brown endpapers and cream pages. 

Last night I ordered a few things from Hollander's, a store with lots of bookbinding supplies in Ann Arbor. I got a sample set of one of the types of book cloth they carry, a couple pieces of black, because as tired I get of black, it is a useful utilitarian color, a piece of decorative paper, which was both larger and less expensive than the marbled red paper from Dick Blick, and a couple-few other things. 

This morning I did the final assembly on the red and brown book, which was gluing the interior to the cover. Now its drying under weights.  Ron's been experimenting on cover board with the universal mangler. It isn't perfect, but I think it will be better than trying to cut it by hand with a utility knife. 

In the plans for today are working on pouches, and Ron wants to work on elfweave bracelets.  

Yet More Books

I seem to be on a book binge.  Guilty guilty guilty.

When I posted on Monday I said I was hoping to get to Dick Blick for board for hard covers, which I did. I also got marbled paper to use instead of the map of Rome, and dark brown book cloth to go with it. And some turquoise blue book cloth to go with flowered Japanese-ish paper I'd picked up at Papersource, a paper crafty store at Deer Park. And another exacto knife handle, and a box of #11 blades, and a small pair of sharp scissors, and some cheap brushes to use for glue, and a box to keep it all in.  

I did order myself a sewing frame, and now am impatiently awaiting it. 

And then I realized that I didn't have any paper that would go nicely with the red marbled and brown book cloth, to make endpapers out of, that wasn't too heavy. Fortunately, I escaped from the office early enough on Wednesday to get to Papersource before they closed (early, and were closed yesterday). Where I got the paper I wanted, plus another sheet of fancy paper, and coordinating book cloth. My excuse is that the fancy paper and book cloth were both half off.  

Wednesday night I took the binder's board up to the big paper cutter, and discovered that it was too wide.  Grumble grumble grumble. Cutting it with an exacto knife was not fun.  And then I discovered the remaining large piece was still too big for the shear. Grumble grumble grumble. A proper Stanley knife worked better. So I did get the boards cut for two books, after putting away letterpress blocks. I also cut paper for book pages.

Went downstairs, started covering the boards with the turquoise book cloth, and discovered I'd cut the boards an inch too small in one direction for the pages I'd cut. I decided to make new pages to fit the cover, and carried on.  So now I have to cut another set of boards to fit a set of pages. I've had an idea to make that easier - get Ron to rough-cut the board down with the Universal Mangler, then trim it on the shear. We were going to try that yesterday, but didn't get that far.

I did get the inch-too-small book done:

It is a Japanese-style binding, where you sew through the cover and pages. Besides the size issue there were several others that jump right out at me, but I've decided not to list them.  

The finished page size, including the part sewn into the binding, is 5-1/2" tall, and 7-1/2" wide. IIRC there's 40 sheets in it. I was originally thinking of making the patterned paper the outeside, but I wanted the book cloth for flexibility. Now that it's done, I like the plain outside with patterned endsheets. It's kind of, oh Ghu, this sounds so pretentiously artsy-fartsy, a surprise for the user to open it up and find the fancy paper.  

So now I need to go back to Dick Blick and (hopefully) get another roll of turquoise book cloth to make the book this one was supposed to be, which will have pale turquoise pages. May do that tonight, or on the way home tomorrow.

Worked on the interior of another hard-backed book a little bit yesterday, no pictures yet, since there's not much to see at this point. 

And then I did two more little booklets, out of the map of Rome paper:

This time I paid more attention, and have the map grid square to the books, and words right-side-up on one side.

Both have more of the generic off-white paper for the pages. I had an issue cutting it, so the pages are 5" (instead of 5-1/2") tall by 4-1/4" wide. End sheets are light olive cardstock.

And the backs. The blue behind them are the sheets that were supposed to be for the blue hardback book I finished yesterday.  I turned these two out fairly quickly, I've gotten to the point where I know what I'm doing with these little booklets, and the only issue is some see-through in the light-colored areas on the one on the left above.

Yeah, I'll have books for sale at Military History Fest. Ron has reassured me that they're good enough to ofer for sale. 

More Booklets

I made two more booklets last night:

#3 is the little one, with pages 1/8 of a letter-sized sheet in size. #4 is another one with quarter-sheet size pages. Same off-white mystery paper pages and reproduction map of San Francisco for the covers. Both are sewn with off-white linen.

#3 just has the cover paper folded over to the inside and glued down, on #4 it wraps over and is glued down to a piece of cardstock. 

It looks like I could have paid more attention to getting the book square to the streets on #4, but the blocks on the two sides are actually not perfectly aligned, so at least halft the cover was going to look slightly off-kilter no matter what I did. The truth is, I picked the straight edge of the remaining large enough chunk of paper, and worked from that. I think it was square to the edge of the map, but it might not have been. 

FWIW, the circular arcs are every half-mile from a "Ferry Depot" that looks to be in the same location as a modern Ferry Building Marketplace, which is on the northeast side of the city/peninsula. And now you know as much as I do. 

Above are the inside covers of books #1 and #3. Book 1 doesn't have the folded-in bits of the cover paper glued down, #3 does. I prefer #3, gluing the flaps down looks more finished.

And here's #2 and #4. #2 has the cardstock endpapers glued down over the cover flaps, #4 has the flaps folded over the cardstock (yes, it is a lighter shade of green). I like #2 better, it looks more finished. But I like #4 better than #1, because the cardstock beefs up the cover a little. Booklet #4 is small enough that it feels fine to me without the cardstock. 

I decided my Mom is getting me a sewing frame for Christmas. Now I just have to decide which I want of the three Affordable Binding Equipment makes. 

While I was looking at sewing frames yesterday, I was reminded of the plywood and laminate lead-weighted press board that Affordable Binding sells, which is a nice wooden box, with laminate exterior, filled with lead, weighing in at 8-9 pounds. For $39, plus shipping. A useful thing, for, say, flattening finished booklets, or any squashy-smooshy job. But more than I was willing to pay.

I asked Ron if the shot bags we got for weighting down photography/lighting tripods were easily accessible. They were. We went to Menard's in search of countertop remnants. After a minor in-store detour, we found them, up front, by the shelving. I got a 4' long, 12"-ish wide piece, that's over an inch thick. The sign on the shelf said it was $5, but the cashier rang it up for $2. Its chipboard, and we didn't get the stuff to finish the edges, but for that price I'm fine with not-pretty edges.  Ron cut it into four pieces, and here they are pressing booklets #3 and #4.

Yeah, you kind of have to take my word for it that the booklets are in there. Ron brought down all four shot bags, so there's probably over 20 pounds of weight on the stack. Yes, it is sitting over the table leg. 

Yesterday I picked up some fancy patterned paper and coordinating solid-color paper for pages for another style of book, and to the side of the picture above is a reproduction map of Rome that's going to be a book similar to 1-4, but with the sewing hidden, and cloth on the spine - the next step in complexity. I cut the pages for that one last night, but I need to go to Dick Blick and get some heavier board for the covers of both the next books. I have some 130# cardstock that I thought would be heavy enough, but Ron disagreed. So I'll probably get that tonight. And book cloth, because I can't find the roll I got earlier this year. Grumble. 

Getting Back in Sight of the Track

As mentioned, we were all sick the week before the week before Christmas. During that week Ron made chainmail owls, Robin worked on miniatures, and I kinda flailed around. I got a couple books on Zen Cart, open-source shopping cart/e-commerce software. I got them for both MuseCon reasons and possibly putting a store on the Otter Necessities website. Unfortunately, the one endorsed as a manual by the group that "owns" Zen Cart is . . . poor. Haven't gotten very far with it. 

Last week we were still more or less off. Ron did some more chainmail, and I worked on knitting mittens.

Christmas day I finally started building the Lego Maersk Sealine container ship that I got for my birthday (yeah, back in May). I got the hull built, which is 1/2 to 1/3 of the project. I also started a chainmail pendant. Ron made chainmail pendants and a "glass caterpillar" bracelet with glass beads that were part of of his Christmas presents. 

Robin worked on miniatures. The dogs were underfoot, except when they were busy with their beef shank bones. 

This morning we ordered parts for chainmail owls. We got more "turkey" colored ones, in orange/bronze, and gold, black and silver, blue and silver, and ones that should look like snowy owls with silver and gunmetal, and mostly white wings with black lines. We got supplies for both big owls and little owlets in all the colors. 

This afternoon  I updated the MuseCon bookmarks and business cards, but didn't get them put on our personal webpage because Dreamweaver was not cooperating, and I decided it could wait for tomorrow, when Ron could help me (probably by hitting one or two buttons that I just didn't know where to find).

I considered working on my container ship some more, but decided to leave it for New Year's Day. 

I did, however, finally start messing about with bookbinding. I've been more or less resisting it for a couple/few years, especially after one of the leather suppliers I used to use semi-retired, and is now specializing in bookbinding leather. I got a book and some basic supplies about a year ago, and a finishing press and "pricking cradle" after ACen. 

The book I got is "Bookbinding, A Step-by-Step Guide", by Kathy Abbott, ISBN: 978-1-84797-153-1

The author is from Great Britian, so all the measurements are metric and paper is all in A sizes. But I can cope.  

I started out today with the most basic sewn binding, and mostly followed the instructions (other than working with non-A4 paper). The first deviation was on how to cut paper in half. The instructions are to crease the paper, then cut it a particular way. Several messe-up sheets of paper later, I cut it a different way, because there's more than one way to cut a piece of paper in half, dammit. The other deviation was an error on my part, and meant there's not quite as much margin along the front edges of the covers as the top and bottom edges.

 

The interior pages are some off-white generic printer paper. The cover is relatively inexpensive sturdy wrapping/decorative paper from Dick Blick, that's a 1900-ish map of San Francisco. The edges of the cover are just folded in, and its sewn with natural linen thread. It's a little bigger than a quarter-sheet of letter paper, which is the interior page size. 

Then I did another one, and kinda wandered off and did my own thing:

Same cover and interior paper and page size. This time I added an inner cover of cardstock, glued to the outer cover, and did two sets of stitching with brown waxed nylon thread, and put the knots on the inside. 

Both the linen and nylon thread were bought for leatherworking. The linen is a smidge heavier than called for in th ebook, but close enough. When I was at the local papercrafting store they tried to sell me a roll of "bookbinding" linen thread, and I narrowly avoided being rude. I did tell them that I had plenty at home, since I buy it by the pound for leatherworking (as opposed the little-bitty spools they had). The reaction was amusing. The nylon thread is probably a bookbinding abomination, but I don't really care,  

In the pictures above, I have the book(lets) sitting in the pricking cradle. Here's a shot of the second book in the pricking cradle, the way its actually used:

There's a slight gap down at the point of the vee formed two sides of the cradle. ou lay the parts to be stitched in with the vee shape of the cradle holding all the creases lined up nicely, and make your stitching holes with an awl. The pricking cradle is about the most basic piece of bookbinding equipment, after hand tools. The book I got has instructions to make one from heavy cardstock and fabric (for the vee), but the wooden one is nice. 

At the moment both books are in my bookbinding finishing press, the first one padded out with some cutting failures, since it has fewer pages and a thinner cover:

I've also got baking parchment between the pages and inner cover on the second book, in case of any glue oozing. 

Skill-wise I'm a ways from actually needing the finishing press. Today's booklets could just be pressed between boards with any convenient weight or woodworking clamps. But I decided to get the press, which is for doing real leather or fabric bindings of full-length books, with proper curved spines and everything, when Ron got the printing press, because I knew I'd want one eventually, and I had the funds. 

The equipment came from Affordable Binding Equipment, made by Mr. Jim Poelstra, affordablebindingequipment.com  Mr. Poelstra's day job is doing custom cabinetry, and he makes his binding equipment from leftovers. It is very nice, and very nicely made. Hmm. Maybe my Mom's Christmas present to me will be a piece of equipment that falls between the pricking cradle and the finishing press. 

Not Con-Alt-Delete Aftermath

Canceling our presence at Con-Alt-Delete wasn't easy, but it was the right call.  Time and meds mean that Ron and I are recovering, but were not anything like actually healthy.  I was feverish Thursday, we were both dead tired all weekend, and Xap woke up Saturday with no voice.

In 20/20 hindsight, I should have pulled out back in September.  Yes, September.  I considered it then, when I withdrew our application for Anime Midwest 2015, and had I at that time, *should* have been able to get most of our fees refunded.  Here's most of an e-mail I sent to Ron and Xap to explain why:

For the last day or so I've been mildly pondering doing ACen again next year vs. other anime cons about the same time period - our end profit was better at Anime Midwest that ACen, because it was significantly cheaper to get into Anime Midwest.

This morning the questions got a whole lot . . . messier.

I followed a link to a link and ended up at nerdandtie.com which is a blog related to a podcast of similar name, by three guys, about Midwestern fandom - more of the comics, anime, etc. variety thereof. Two of the three were involved in founding DaishoCon and NoBrandCon. 

I ended up at the site because of an article about the spectaularly-failed Tumblr Con changing its name and moving to Indianapolis next year, but I noticed an article about Ryan Kopf and his AnimeCon.org, which puts on Anime Midwest, Con-Alt-Delete, and others. Which led me to a couple more, mostly by Trae Dorn, aka Traegorn. 

AnimeCon.org is Kopf's for-profit venture, which I think I'd mostly grokked. Trae Dorn has issues with a number of things related to how Kopf runs his anime cons:

*  Underage/Minors as volunteers. Whatever, there's lots of places I don't see that's a problem. As badgers, yeah, that's probably not a great place to put a 14-year old.

*  "Molly Blue", who I exchanged e-mail with about the Anime Midwest dealer's room is apparently a Kopf sockpuppet, and not the only one. WTF? Why? Just use an obvious alias like "dealers@" and get on with it. Stupid, but not a deal-killer. This would explain why communication sucks, if it's a largely one-man show.

*  Chrono LLC, Kopf's Iowa-based corporation that runs animecons.org does not appear to be actually registered as an out-of-state corporation to run cons in Wisconsin or Illinois. Similar issues with a new corporation for a couple new cons, where Kopf's name is only on the domain registration.

*  Using an address in Chicago that doesn't actually exist.  

* Likes to perma-ban critics, and banned somebody for ghosting, when it isn't clear that said ghosting actually happened - bannee supplied a screenshot that essentially said "meeting friend at WhateverCon hotel, not buying a badge to con".  Which could be ghosting, or just meeting friend completely outside function space.

*  Ridiculous rhetoric: has said that getting banned from a con means that he can have you arrested for being at a con hotel at all. Teh Stoopid, it burns us, Precious.

My filthy merchant scum brain was ok with still dealing at his cons at this point, then things get worse:

* Kopf is anything from sleezy creep to rapist. 

One commenter to Dorn's personal blog pretty much said Kopf was caught taking upskirt photos one year at Geek.Kon. Can't find anything else about that.

In 2013 a police report was filed in, IIRC, Davenport Iowa, naming Kopf as the perpetrator of sexual assault, with what sounds like a side-order of beating up the victim. She didn't want to submit a rape kit and decided not to press charges (surprise surprise). Several posters/commenters have gotten copies or called the police department in question and confirm that the report, which can be found on-line, is real. Other women and girls have also said he's assaulted and/or been pretty creepy with them.

Trae Dorn and Nerd and Tie presumably have critics, but I don't see anything particularly damming or that they've got a particular axe to grind against Kopf, other than "beware of creep". 

We're registered for Con-Alt-Delete, money paid, yadda yadda. Put in the registration form for Anime Midwest, but haven't heard anything back, or paid any money.  Cancellation policy is $75 fee if cancelling within 65 days. I did ticky a box on the Anime Midwest application agreeing to pay for space if I was accepted.

My thoughts:  
* Filthy merchant scum with conscience and/or ethics, thankyouverymuch. I can't get behind the "but a con is put on by lots of people" argument when it is a for-profit con with the problem being the CEO. 

*  Swallow hard and go to Con-Alt-Delete. Because we've paid and not sure I want to try to get money back and made the reservation not knowing, yadda yadda, yeah, filthy merchant scum is in the ascendancy there.

* Contact Anime Midwest and withdraw application.

The options listed at the end were what we did - swallowed hard and carried on with planning for Con-Alt-Delete, withdrew from Anime Midwest, and won't be doing any more of this guy's conventions.

Should I have said something before now?  Fair question. See above re: rhetoric and being quick on dropping the ban-hammer. Yes, I did plan on making this post this week.  Yes, timing was valuing CYA over the possible safety of readers.  In large part because think most of the regular audience is/was likely to be safe from this guy anyway.  Or maybe I wanted to prop up deciding on the path of less potential resistance.

It has been surprisingly hard to do the right thing here. I like making money. Despite being an introvert, selling at cons is weirdly fun. But sexual assault and rape are bad. Indescribably bad. Money can't fix it. I can't call myself a decent human being and put money in a skeevy creep's pocket.  In a way, getting sick last week dealt with the issue - Kopf did get our money, but I didn't spend the weekend wondering if being there at all was doing the wrong thing.  

Owls! Ron Made Them! You Want Them!

If you have Ron as a Facebook Friend you've (probably) seen the chainmail owls he's been making this week:  

There's been a lot of squee. People want their own.  Who are we to argue?  Ron will make owls for sale, and this is the place to pre-order them (since I don't have a Zen Cart store set up on the website, yet, and why give Etsy a cut?) 

The Interesting Details:

Large Owls are about 1-1/2" tall, Small Owlets are about 1" tall.  

The large owls in the picture are in "Turkey" colors - bronze, orange, and gold rings, with bronze wing scales. The small owlet is black and bronze, with black wing scales.

Colors: 

"Turkey" - bronze, orange, and gold, with bronze wings

Black and bronze, wings may be either black or bronze 

Some permutation of black and silver (or gunmetal), white or black wings to be determined.

Other colors - rings and scales are available in a lot of different colors, *but* there are minimum packaging sizes, so if you want a custom color combination, you need to commit to at least one large owl or a pair of small owlets. 

(yes, they are all leaning to the right. Or maybe dancing.)

Prices:

Large Owls: $20

Small Owlets: $10

Pendant bail (silver) can be added to the back of the head for no charge.  If the bails are too big for the small owlets, we'll put a ring on instead.

Large Owl necklace: $25

Small Owlet necklace: $15

Necklaces will be strung on a coordinating anodized aluminum chain.

Pair of small owlet earrings: $25

Owlet earrings on titanium french wires. We can also get niobium or nickel-free stainless steel wires.

So how do I get one?

Leave a comment or e-mail me at otter at otter necessities dot com, telling us what you want - size, color, and add-ons like pendant bails/rings, necklace, earrings, etc. Please include your e-mail address if there's any question that one of us (Lon, Ron, Xap) doesn't already have it.

On December 26th I'll order the parts. Giving shipping and assembly time, I'm not going to try to estimate the time delay until completion.   If you (collectively or individually) want a lot of owls, I might be able to order before the 26th. I may also have to ask for deposits.  I may also ask for a deposit if we don't know you personally, or if you want an odd color combination. 

Can't order right now? That's ok, I expect we'll have finished owls up on the website and/or Etsy sooner or later. This is your chance to jump in at the front end, not a now-or-never. 

Changes in Plans

The plan for last (as in a few days ago) weekend was to work on things for Con-Alt-Delete, which is this coming weekend.

Did not go quite according to plans.  Saturday morning we went to get our nails done, which ended up taking up stoooopid amounts of time, for reasons. We got done just in time for Ron to drop me off at home, grab a couple things, and head off to the Capricon meeting.  I went out and got lunch, and went to Hobby Lobby for . . . something. Oh, I remember now, sharp small scissors to leave by the big sewing machine. I didn't find what I wanted in the sewing section, but I did in the scrapbooking section.

I did get some work done on satchels, belt satchels, and little tabbed pouches, and finished several. Unfortunately the splitter was demanding attention, so splitting down more binding was a problem. Also splitting down leather for gussets for the pouches I'd cut out the weekend before, or strips for the new amphora bottles that came in (clear and more dark amber). So I ran out of steam by about the time Ron got home.

The plan was that Ron would pay attention to the splitter (hone the blade, adjust thickness settings, lubricate) on Sunday morning, while I worked on other things, and then I could work on things requiring the splitter. Unfortunately, remote access to his office network broke (again - seems that Windows causes problems, and the fix is to re-install, feh). So he had to go in.

While Ron was at work I got strips cut and marked for skirt hikes, got dinner started in the crock pot, cut strips  for amphora hangers, made scotch eggs for lunch, and was working on putting the binding on some more pouches when I broke a sewing machine needle. Breaking a needle on the big machine is . . . exciting. Usually it results in whoever else is in the house asking if everything/everyone is ok (nobody's ever been hurt, only surprised).  At that point I quit.

And then I had an meltdown, for reasons. One side effect of which was an evil horrible sinus headache.

Ron got home, and stuck me back together, and we had the scotch eggs that I'd left in the toaster oven (which I knew would shut itself off). We goofed off for a little while, and went to Durty Nellie's for dinner and a jazz concert - Jazz Consortium Big Band, with a HS jazz ensemble as an opening act. 

Monday Robin punched holes in the skirt hike strips for me. That was about the end of useful work getting done. 

Ron had felt a little iffy on Saturday, and was definitely sick on Sunday. I started feeling sick on Monday, and in the afternoon melted down again, for other reasons. See above for evil horrible sinus headache side effect. And Robin was also getting sick.

Monday night we discussed Con-Alt-Delete, and figured we should probably just cancel, as it was unlikely that we'd be healthy by Thursday night setup.  Unfortunately, there are no refunds after 65 days before the convention, no appeal (not-huge cons often refund if they can fill from a wait-list; and I don't think of C-A-D as being in the "huge" category).  But I dithered around a little more, and debated waiting until Thursday morning.

Tuesday morning I e-mailed and cancelled. Which was the most productive thing I did for a number of hours.  We all stayed home. The family symptom list is cough, congestion, runny noses, sinus pressure, all the way up to an evil horrible sinus headache pretty much any time yesterday that I wasn't sleeping, which may be part of the reason the meltdown Sunday and Monday also resulted in similar headaches.  I was also very very queasy on and off yesterday. 

Last night I came back to the living room from starting dinner (avgolemono soup) to find a Robin-shaped corpse-like thing passed out on the couch.  I couldn't complain since napping had featured prominently in my afternoon. I got the garbage and recyclables together, Robin took them out to the wheelie bins, and Ron took the wheelie bins out to the curb. Other than that, the disaster area that was the kitchen had to fend for itself. 

Woke up today feeling less bad. The evil horrible headache has pretty much abated to a sinus headache on and off.  Robin was not sounding good, so I kinda invoked the Mom Voice to suggest that working tonight making pizzas at Little Caesar's was not a good idea.  He didn't really argue, I think he just needed a nudge from one of us. 

Robin was probably going to be ok not going to work today, but any longer he was going to need a doctor's note, which would probably be a good thing for me too, so this morning we made a trip to the Acute Care Center a family outing (our doctor's office was full up, Acute Care is part of the same facility, so it was really just seeing a different doctor who had all our records).

I was thinking we had colds and not flu, because we didn't have the muscle aches and not much in the way of sore throats, but I know there's a flu strain going around that the flu shots (which we all got) this year didn't cover. So the surprise from the flu culture/tests was that Robin and I do have flu, and Ron does not. WTF?  We figured he gave it to Robin and I.

We all were sent home with notes from the doctor, and prescriptions for oral cough meds and Tamiflu. Robin and I take the Tamiflu twice a day for IIRC 5 days, Ron takes 1 dose for twice as long, to try to head off the flu. 

We went north for Robin to drop his note off at his Little Caesar's store, and got lunch from the little Indian place in the same shopping center.  

Did a second pass of dishes, finishing them off. Took a bath, and have been trying to stay awake until its time to start dinner, which I could probably do soonish (ate lunch late - we were at Acute Care from 10 until almost 1). 

Ron's been somewhat productive, making chainmail owls. Robin's gotten some painting done. Yesterday my head wasn't really conductive to doing anything but listening to "The Lord of the Rings" audiobook, and making dinner and dealing with garbage through sheer stubborness. Today I . . . did dishes. And looked at chainmail books, and am blogging. If I'd been home I probably would have managed some knitting or something equally low-energy. 

Boar's Head Report

Boar's Head, an SCA event we've been merchants at many many times, was on Saturday.

Sales were good. I think it's likely to have been our last Boar's Head.

Yes, those do seem contradictory.

First, the overview of the day:  

The weather wasn't particularly cold, it was dry, and there was only a little snow in the parking lots and no ice, which is much better than some years. There was road construction, but it didn't introduce any delays that I noticed. We got there early enough that they opened a garage door and had Ron pull the truck and trailer into the hall to unload, which made it really easy.

Our space included a pillar, but it was roughly in the center of our space, so it wasn't nearly as annoying as last year, when the pillar would have taken out about a quarter of our usable space. This year we just wrapped gridwall around it and carried on. We didn't use all the gridwall. 

Sold a little bit of everything, except belts. Only sold one belt. I think we were being undercut price-wise by another merchant. We sold a half-dozen tails, which was a surprise. We also sold several bottles. The amphora bottles were the most popular. Despite having yarn, patterns, knitting kits, needles, and notions on sale (20% off), we only had one fiber-related sale. Which kind of reinforced the decision to discontinue the knitting stuff, which I now have to figure out what to do with (knit, duh, but that still leaves me with multiple copies of some of the patterns, needles, and notions). 

Although we'd brought food, we ended up (buying and) eating the lunch that was offered. And don't ask how much cookies and fudge, because the SCA group that hosts the event does a cookie-sale fundraiser that's just plain evil. Canadian butter tarts were this year's particular evil, IMO. In the usual afternoon dead period I worked no sewing swivels onto tails.  We forgot to check the mail Friday evening, so although Ron did bring some scales to play with, he didn't have the order that was delivered Friday, d'oh!

Tearing down and leaving was relatively uneventful, other than that we were all varying levels of tired and sore, and one of the UPSes took a bold leap for freedom (appears to be OK). Dinner at Cracker Barrel, where a couple fox Christmas ornaments and a chicken stacking teapot/teacup combination followed us home.  I drove from the north side of Milwaukee to Antioch, since Ron's back was very Not Happy. It was the first time I'd driven with this trailer, which behaves much better than the big old white one we had before. 

This torque also followed me home (shown with the arm ring I got last year), from World Tree Hoard.

I was lusting after a sterling silver arm ring, with pretty black patina, but I didn't see it until after it had been set aside for someone else to come back and pay for (I did get first dibs if they didn't come back, but they did, drat). I have favorited his Etsy shop. 

We were tired and sore zombies yesterday, although I did get a few new things cut out. I also ordered more tails, and more bottles. I got more dark amber amphora, plus clear and a violet, and violet ball bottles. I was going to order some really big amphora bottles at Ron's request, but they're out of stock until January.  The ornament bins I got seem to be working for bottles, some of which were also packed into the ammo cans that we were using for yarn. The 4' tall gridwall and front fence we had Robin make worked reasonably well for containment. 

So, why was this likely to be Otter's last year at Boar's Head?

The problem is that Otter Necessities has grown over the years, and a lot in the last couple years. Once upon a time we could do either setup or tear-down (including packing the truck/trailer) in an hour. Not any more. Not even with 4 people. Getting up stupid early in the morning, driving a couple hours, setting up, selling most of the day, tearing down, and then driving home (with a stop for dinner) is a lot of work. A LOT of work. 

If we're going to keep doing the occasional SCA event, we're going to have to do one of two things:

Switch to a 2- or 3-day event, most of which are in the summer, and involve camping.

Simplify setup, by reducing the amount of gridwall we're erecting to just the belt display and anything not on that to tables, and/or limiting what we bring and sell.

The problem with #1 is finding a weekend event that fits the schedule, especially in the summer, which is dominated by ACen (May) and MuseCon (July-August). And camping is not especially attractive when one considers bad knees, bad backs, CPaP machines, and general dislike of heat, humidity, and mosquitos. And the lesser issues of dealing with tents and weather. And security, if we elect to sleep off-site. Which we do for conventions, but having a storm in the middle of the night is less of an issue, since convention venues are less susceptible to weather-related issues than tents. 

#2 is possibly the more viable solution. As Ron currently has the trailer configured, he can get the Things, Max, and the Grinch out without unloading all the gridwall. So we could bring in them, and just a few pieces of gridwall to display belts, and maybe contain glassware, and set up on tables only. We might also consider limiting what we put out for sale, although as the unexpected tail sales and lack of belt sales showed, we might not be as smart as that. Or maybe we could/should skip the belts, and stick to pouches and all the other stuff. 

We have time to think about it, the lead time for SCA events is typically in the range of a couple-few weeks, not many months like conventions. 

Next thing on the schedule is Con-Alt-Delete, the weekend before Christmas, in Rosemont.  We're in the Hyatt Regency, instead of the Stephens Convention Center, need to contact the organizers and see where we need to go for setup and teardown, etc.