Page Layout and Other Natter

Long Weekend of Page Layout and Other Natter

I took a snow day last Friday, and had Monday off (Lincoln’s Birthday), so I got a fair amount done on the floodplain manager’s conference book. Last Friday evening I sent out a draft that has “Joanna Goanna” and “Tanami Womapython” as plenary/luncheon speakers, with pictures and text. I’ve gotten replies from 3 or 4 people . . . and no comments on Joanna and Tanami. I’m not sure if people didn’t actually look at those bits, or if they figured that those are bits to be edited. 

Last night I packed up the two tiny booklets I’d made, as an Etsy customer bought them. Apparently thew weren’t too silly or expensive, and I should make a couple/few more.

Today I got an order for two pairs of “deluxe” black skirt hikes (fancy dee rings), and discovered that I had zero pairs. Carp carp carp. Fortunately, I have enough dees to make more, and the hard part turned out to be finding the plain 1” dees. At least those I could have gone to Tandy for in the morning. I got the two pairs made, and strips cut for more, plus some in brown and small brown plain skirt hikes. The order is packed and ready to go out to the mail box in the morning. I’ll mark, punch, and assemble the rest tomorrow.

Bedtime now.  

A Little This, A Little That

I’ve talked to the chair for this year’s floodplain manager’s conference, determined that I do have a set of information I thought I needed, and have given him a timeline for the conference program book.

I received the fabric.com sports team fabric order, and placed a second order with JoAnn.com, as some team fabric was on sale yesterday, and the website was showing 2 yards of Northwestern fabric available. So I tried for that, plus Purdue and Western Michigan University (Purdue and WMU being family alma maters). Also received my corrugated plastic signboard sheets for backing fabric with paper, and said paper. 

Yesterday I cut out the covers, linings, and endsheets for some more booklets for sale. I wanted to do more on them, but decided not to push my luck in terms of aggravating my back. 

I also discovered that I’m out of dark brown bookcloth. One of the booklets I was working on needs a dark brown spine to use the two pieces of paper that make up the cover. If I’d realized I was out I’d have ordered more when I ordered the paper for backing fabric, but I didn’t so I didn’t and there we are. IIRC Dick Blick usually has dark brown, and is not too far out of the way to stop on the way home from work . . . when traffic isn’t crawling due to snow.

On Again, Off Again

I got a bunch of booklets done, and listed on Etsy, which also includes taking pictures, figuring out costs, prices, and getting them in my point of sale software inventory. Then I got a bunch more done, that I need to do all those things some more. And still need to list more pouches (which already are in inventory and have pictures), and doll clothes (in inventory, no pictures), and still need to investigate a doll-specific on-line sales site. However, a couple weeks ago I did something to my back, and it was Not Happy. Like prescription-strength NSAIDs and muscle-relaxant Not Happy. In the interest of not slowing down recovery I’ve been avoiding bookbinding or machine-sewing, or time at the computer. I’m better now, and I think I can re-commence work on things, if I’m careful. 

I decided to register for Fremd HS’s spring boutique in April - at very least I’ll have a lot more booklets, and booklets did sell. Ron and Robin did get merchandise bins in from the truck, I think when they were home for Christmas. Gridwall is still in the truck, and probably will be come April. I probably should decide if I’m going to do sports team fabric-cover booklets are not, and get some fabric if I am. 

I got a pick-your-own Christmas present from my Mom, and since I’ve made several little-bitty books out of scrap, I decided to get a “mini” book press and punching cradle from the same guy I got my bigger ones from. They should arrive Tuesday. (This type of press is essentially two boards with screws to keep things squashed flat - an upgrade from a stack of boards with weight on top). I don’t really *need* the mini versions, but Christmas presents can be frivolous, right? 

Before my back got cranky I pulled out my Kipling book interiors and collated them. The book board (a specialized cardboard relative) for covers, fabric for spine reinforcement, and linen tape to sew the signatures on should be here tomorrow. I got a few extra pairs of board, which I can use for books for sale. I could have cut board for covers myself, but the cost to have it done was worth having it done (probably on a big board shear). 

I’ve got a trio of book covers that I made using wheat flour paste re-drying. They wrinkled/warped rather badly, and time in the book press didn’t really help, so Tuesday I sprayed them liberally with water, and put them in the press to dry.  I checked them Friday and they weren’t quite dry, but seemed to be flattened out, so back in they went (after pulling out the paper towel I’d put on each side and inside). Around New Year’s I got a 2’ x 4’ sheet of 1/2” thick PVC, and Ron cut it down for me, so I can layer up multiple things in my press. I also had him cut some smaller pieces for the mini press, although I may go back for a piece of 1/4” thick PVC. 1/4” would probably have been fine for in the bigger press, but it had a little more flex than I wanted. 

Got my sales tax returns filed today. A little late, but I forgot to have Ron poke at the point of sale software data for me the last couple times he was home, oops. Not so late/enough money due that there was a penalty, though. Next step is Otter’s income tax returns. 

While out running errands today I stopped at Papersource and commited shopping. I was going to start some more booklet covers, but got distracted by doing the sales taxes and hunting for a very-dead-mouse-ish funk in the snake enclosures. Did not obviously find the source of funk, which seems to have abated, hoping it was just a case of particularly odiforous metabolic end products. 

I need to poke this year’s floodplain manager’s conference chair tomorrow, it’s about time I got started on the book. He e-mailed me and the board about conference abstract formats, etc. on Tuesday, I responded and asked a question, but haven’t heard back. Probably got busy with work-work. 

Last weekend Ron hooked up a second monitor to the desktop, and I cleaned off the desk. Ron didn’t do anything, but the desktop is recognizing the second monitor now. Not the larger one we were using, but next time he or Robin are home I’ll see if they can haul it down and see if it works. If not I’ll use the smaller one and not complain - a smaller second monitor is better than none, and when doing a book I mostly use it for various InDesign menus. 

Otter Necessities' MuseCon Report

I was in charge of the vendor’s room at MuseCon this year for the at-con, part of watching the room, Xap did pre-con stuff, and I took along leatherworking tools and kits, hardware, book covers, hand-bound blank journals/books, doll clothes, and the remaining stash of knitting patterns, yarn, kits, and needles. Sales were reasonable, considering the small size of MuseCon this year (200-ish, I believe). Mostly knitting patterns and yarn. Xap mentioned that she misses doing events, and so do I (looking at the PoS software, our last one was November 2015 - eep!).

Our friend Wendy suggested making lab coats for dolls, as well as wizard’s robes, both of which are pretty close to kosode. Also a way to use some fabric I got recently from Spoonflower that has a bigger pattern than I realized (because I wasn’t paying attention). Somebody else suggested actually displaying them on doll(s). Although I have finally upgraded to a pincushion shaped like a dress form, mostly because I couldn’t find the base to the PVC stand.

I also looked at and remembered why I’ve never pulled the trigger on an American Girl (AG) doll. Ouchie. Sticker shock. But I did find and procure a much less expensive ($20 vs $129) doll that can wear AG doll clothes and vice-versa. I think most of the doll kosode will fit her, and thus AG dolls, which is not a market to be despised.  I also found Maplelea dolls, which is a Canadian company, who has an awfully cute Inuit girl, Saila, who according to Google for exchange rate, is under $100 with shipping. No, no no. Do not need.

In graphic design news I did the MuseCon book differently this year. Instead of the pages being mirrored with three columns, one of which (A, below) being an icon and item number, I went to each page being identical, and only two columns.

Previous page layout, pipe symbol is page gutter:

A B C | C B A

This year’s layout:

B C | B C

I didn’t like losing the icons, but in past years I have pondered which is most appropriate for some items. More importantly, we were in a situation where we were making late late additions to programming, and the layout change simplified that - The previous layout requires a lot more shuffling of text/image boxes because of the mirroring, and numbering is problematic when adding items. So I lost the mirroring, page numbers, and icons. The up-side was that the changes, as well as others, reduced page count, which meant we were able to go with a saddle-stitch (fold & staple) binding, which is cheaper. 

The MuseCon theme this year was “Our Muses Make a Deal”, with the implication that the deal is with the Fae. The silly animal room signs that I’ve done the last couple years weren’t a good fit, and I couldn’t find enough affordable images of non-flittery, vanilla Fae to use. So I rolled back to my stash of images from Art Nouveau, WWI and WWII, WPA, and vintage travel posters, with the wrinkle that I didn’t have Ron to help me with graphics. The silly animals were on white backgrounds with information below, and this year’s signs used the poster images as the sign background with the information superimposed. That meant more work adjusting opacity and text colors for readability, but I enjoy it.

I didn’t make the MuseCon feedback session, but the signage got a bunch of compliments. As for the book, a couple people missed the icons, but it doesn’t sound like there were any real complaints overall. And that’s a win. I also did a first attempt at a brochure for next year, and the Chair really likes it. So that was a success, too.  

Prep for MuseCon, both from signage and Otter Necessities points of view, was complicated by having unplanned surgery to evict my gall bladder at the end of July, which pretty much killed two weeks (between feeling sick before and recovery after). Got a couple little not-quite-completely healed incision sites from that (laproscopic surgery for the win!), but otherwise recovered

Well, That Explains That

Well, That Explains That

A couple-few weeks ago I was home from work due to lack of sleep (mostly urpy dog tummy reasons), and got a call from a gentleman who wanted to order a belt. In the course of the conversation I brought up our Etsy store, and realized it was still on vacation setting from when we went out of town for my Brother's wedding. In May.  Oooooops. Well, that explains the dearth of Etsy sales.

Fortunately, the belt the gentleman wanted involved fairly minimal spelunking in the trailer, which Robin accomplished with minimal swearing. And I discovered that PayPal lets you generate USPS labels from within your account, which is convenient.

I've spent most of the last couple-few weekend working on the program book for the annual floodplain managers conference, so haven't gotten Etsy back up and running - besides being on vacation setting, all listings have expired, and I need to go through and see what I have in the house to re-list, as well as listing new things, some of which need to be retrieved from the trailer.
Book goes to the printer Real Soon Now (like next couple days).

Ron built the PVC frame to hold LED strip lights around the light tent. Not as bright as we were hoping, we'll see how it works for photography. Have made space in the dining room for a table for it and moved it off the drafting table, as it also turned out less amenable to taking down for storage than we were thinking.

Still working on doll clothes. The two outfits I sent out as gifts, as mentioned in my last post, went to my Mom, and she really likes them.

Assorted Natter

I like my baby sewing machine. Its kind of noisy, and only has one speed (not particularly fast), and probably wouldn't appreciate heavier fabric/more layers, but it works fine for the seams on doll clothes made out of calico/quilter's cotton. It seems machine manufacturers have pretty much settled on one style needle and two of plastic bobbins, so although I bought a package of needles to keep with this machine, it wasn't a necessity (have both style bobbins on hand). Being only about 5 pounds in weight I can indeed pull it out and put it away with minimal effort. I may see if I can find a small battery-operated LED light to put on it, if I get around to it. Otherwise I just use my phone's flashlight function while threading the needle.

Been working on doll clothes, but as mentioned previously, also trying to take it easy on my wrist. Have two outfits finished that I need to iron and send to their new homes (gifts, not purchased).

Still haven't built the frame to hold LED lighting around the light tent, but that's scheduled soonish. Nor have I gotten a chair for the drafting table. I have, however, procured a self-healing cutting mat for it.

I decided that a large mat would be a useful thing for cutting out doll clothing (which I have a couple small mats for already) and paper for bookbinding. I was originally looking at Olfa mats at JoAnn, but fortunately thought to check the Dick Blick website. I got a 36" x 48" non-Olfa but well-rated mat for less than a 24" x 36" Olfa mat from JoAnn (largest size they carry). Came flat, and fits perfectly on the table, given space taken up by the clamps for the drawing arm and the area the arm occupies when parked to one side. It arrived yesterday, and garbage day was today, so the several acres of cardboard packaging went out this morning, thus a win all around.

Sunday I worked on cleaning up the dining room some more, attacking the shelves by the doorway to the kitchen with the help of Robin's muscles and long arms. Several boxes of old paperwork, specialty cookware, and other odds and ends that don't need to be immediately accessible went to storage. Several other items went out to the curb. In the space cleared off we re-arranged a bit, added a bunch of rolls of leather, and most of my bookbinding equipment, plus some doll clothing stuff. The result was both more open floor space and clearing off the drafting table. Which Robin promptly used to put up the light tent to take pictures of some miniatures.

My hope is to get the two bins of potion bottles and other glassware out to the trailer, but haven't gotten sufficient Round Tuits yet. We'd been keeping them in the house because I prefer they travel not in the trailer for fragility reasons, but there's no reason they can't sit in the trailer while parked.

Have a convention program book I need to start work on, for the annual floodplain manager's convention in March. Last year the old iFruit desktop conked out (well, no longer had the intestinal fortitude to run current Adobe software) and I had to finish the book on a laptop, with the new desktop machine arriving a day or two after the book went to the printer. Headdesk, headdesk.

State of the Otter

Hello? Hello? Anybody out there?

So, last time I posted was October 2015. The last event Otter Necessities was at was WindyCon - in 2015 (November). Yeah, I've been quiet for a loooong time.

And Otter Necessities-wise I've done . . . pretty much nothing. 

Over the last few years I'd developed quite a loud and unceasing internal monologue. What I didn't realize, until I got it under control, is that the internal monologue was related to depression. The drive to Make All The Things was a way to shut the internal monologue up - or at least keep it occupied with the task I was working on (as in, narrating it). 

For over a year now the internal monologue has been ratcheted way down, to what I assume is about what any/everybody has as an internal though process. And the quiet in my head has been really, really nice. Even if the drive to Make All The Things went with it.

And on a less introspective side, we'd been doing a lot of conventions, and were getting more or less burned out and needed a break. We'd taken a year or so off at least once in the past. Giving up on one-day events and going to only weekend-long things helped, but the trade-off is/was losing whole weekends. 

Also, age: We're not as young and strong and invincible as we used to be. Backs and knees and ankles and whatnot get cranky. I don't like sleeping in strange beds. Staying up too late makes me cranky. Yadda yadda yadda.

Anyway, it's been lurking in the back of my thought processes that we need to decide what direction the business is going to go, and words along those general lines finally got said earlier this week. Ron pointed out that Otter Necessities really is my baby, and is leaving it largely up to me. 

I *think* that I'm going to work on shifting business over more to Etsy; which means taking and editing pictures and creating and editing listings, but which is much less stressful on the body. I can put up 2 or three things today, some more tomorrow, etc. Etsy sales are fairly easy to process/pack up (at least with USPS flat-rate shipping), and toss in the mailbox. I do need to come up with better book-keeping for Etsy sales, but that's not a huge issue.

Ron suggested that if we make room in the dining/work room he can put the light table and a tripod with camera up, and make it easy to get good pictures. I've also been meaning to put doll clothes and books (I've been playing with bookbinding again) up, which means getting a bunch of pictures so I can list a reasonable assortment of whatever at once. 

And whatever I decide to do with Otter, the dining room is a complete disaster - a year of being used as a storage space has made it relatively impassible (although Tommy did go through it to the front entry, while on his cable, one evening). 

So, my plan is to start attacking the dining room. It may start as soon as this weekend - at very least, there's a six-foot table in there that can go over to the storage unit (and while we're there retrieve the Christmas tree and accessories, and look for the light table). I'd already planned to take the week between Christmas and New Year's off, with only one day's worth of possible plans for that time, which I may have just filled. 

After shifting easy/obvious things to storage I think I'll clear off and fold up the two Workmate-and-clone workbenches. Which sounds easy enough, but that "clear off" bit isn't as easy/breezy as it sounds. After that, see if I can find shelf space for a couple piles of books (leather, horse-tack, and military/history-related) that were evicted from the dining room. Plus some other things that have been sitting out/on the floor. 

I have possibilities floating in the back of my head on how to accomplish things, we'll see how plans work out when confronted with realities. I was thinking of replacing the last piece of Metro-style shelving in the room with nicer wooden bookshelves that we have in storage, but on further thought the Metro-style stuff is deeper, with may be very useful. Or maybe the heavy-duty brick-and-board shelving will be modified or replaced. Or not, which is also ok. That room is never going to be pretty. 

I think I've mattered on long enough at this point, we'll see how it goes once I actually get started . . . 

Catching Up, February Edition

Let's see, when I last posted it was the week following Military History Fest.

The Saturday between MHF and Capricon we baked scones. A lot of scones. Scones for the Capricon Cafe. Scones scones scones scones.

Ahem.  

Capricon weekend I stayed home with the dog-boys and worked on the floodplain managers' conference program book. As luck would have it, on the Thursday of Capricon (Cap runs Thursday-Sunday), which was also a holiday for me (Lincoln's Birthday), Linotype (.com) made me an offer I didn't refuse on a serif typeface, ITC New Veljovic. So Thursday afternoon/evening, after helping set up the Cafe, I came home and re-did my styles for the book to use the new font.

Slog slog slog slog slog. Slogging through the floodplain managers' conference book. 

Last week we got *three* orders from Etsy - two for pairs of skirt hikes, and one pouch. And on Sunday I finished and packaged up the pouch I got an order for at MHF, so it was a relatively busy week shipping-wise. 

Today was not a good day (details on my personal blog). 

After we got home from the vet's I kept busy by working on the program book and ranting at people that can't write in English. All the words are in English, but the sentences . . . not so much. I was hoping to get it ready to proofread today, but decided that it's not happening. Hopefully tomorrow. If not tomorrow then Friday, since the book goes to the printer a week from tomorrow.

A week from tomorrow we also set up for Geneva Steam. Robin forgot to request time off, so he and Pippin will be staying home.

Not Much Going On

Working on the MuseCon program book, at least when I don't have "Titanic" rehearsals. That's about all that's going on.  

I do really really need to start getting swivels sewn onto the three dozen tails I ordered for Anime Midwest. I think I'll put some other tools/lacing projects away, and bring the tail bin out to the living room instead.  

Last weekend I got all the content into the MuseCon book, and formatted, by lunchtime/early afternoon on Sunday. Which is ahead of what I've done other years. OTOH, rehearsals mean I'm not really that far ahead. Tonight is the deadline for final updates, and tomorrow I start attacking line/column/page breaks, and other more persnickety formatting-ish tasks. 

Initial formatting short version: more than one way to skin a cat is a good thing. 

Initial formatting long version:

Last year we extracted the data from the Programming spreadsheet, Ron did unnamable things to it with one or more perl scripts, which turned it into XML files, which I then did other arcane things with in InDesign to auto-magically get the right paragraph formatting applied to the appropriate chunks of text. This year the same attempted process failed. The problem stuck on getting the data out of Excel and into a usable comma-separated value file. 

Fortunately, I'd just bought an updated e-book of an InDesign typography book I had, which jogged my memory on using different clever tricks to auto-magically format paragraphs (a "paragraph" being any chunk of text with hard returns on either end). It didn't end up working quite like I thought it did, which is probably why I gave up on it last time I tried, a couple years ago, but it worked reasonably well.  Essentially, you set up a series of cascading/looping paragraph styles, and tell InDesign to apply them to your text. 

Comparing cascading paragraph styles to converting everything to XML for auto-formatting, the cascading styles attack had fewer steps where something could break, which is where the overall  XML process failed this year (ie: never got an XML file created).  However, the cascading style attack does not deal with a step in the cascade that may have a variable number of paragraphs, which was, IIRC, trivial to a non-issue in the XML method. So I had to cascade-format smaller chunks of text, instead of everything at once. In the end, I think this cascading styles and XML methods worked out to take roughly the same amount of time, effort, and poking at things, it just worked out differently in terms of who (Ron or I) poked at things, and with what tool. 

Catching Up

This post is going to have a certain amount of personal natter rolled up into it, because that's how the cookie crumbles. 

TeslaCon

I did hear back from TeslaCon in a reasonable amount of time, and they do have our vendor application.

Floodplain Managers' Conference Program Book

The floodplain managers' conference was Wednesday and Thursday. I got compliments on the book, and the co-worker who is on the board didn't hear any complaints. 

Rearranging the Bedrooms

Not surprisingly, Ron and I have been eyeballing larger printing presses. A couple weeks ago Ron found the proof press on this page, which is probably going to be our next press (and I'm eyeballing some of the bookbinding tools). Its large and heavy, but is something we can get up to the spare bedroom, and not have to worry about the floor, unlike some of the big-brother floor versions of our tabletop presses. But that means finding room in the spare bedroom, which Ron had some ideas about.

A week ago Ron and I abandoned Robin and went out to dinner by ourselves.  After dinner we stopped at Ikea to look at things-to-put-a-proof-press-on options. We found a couple, which one we'll end up will depend on the actual footprint of the press (we have a PDF of the users' manual, which is very helpful in some regards, but not when it comes to that particular piece of information). 

After Ikea, we went to The Container Store, for more small flat-files for storing blocks. The 10-drawer units were on sale, for about 3/4 the price of two 5-drawer units, so a white one followed us home, since The Container Store doesn't carry the 10-drawer units in orange (the other color choices were black and dark gray). Here it is in place. Yes, drawers have been swapped around, as its easier to shift drawers to keep types of things together than to shift a bunch of blocks from one drawer to the other:

Ron's cunning plan to make room for the proof press was to move a set of shelving out of  the spare bedroom. I volunteered that the desk that I got in grade school could be evicted from our bedroom, and the shelves put in its place, and also that the closet on my side of the room could also be used to store optics equipment, rather than taking it to the storage locker. So bright and early Saturday morning Ron started poking at my side of the bedroom. And I mean early. 

The end result was throwing out most of the contents of a 4.5 cubic foot moving box, re-packing the closet with things we'd actually want to keep, and packing the closet more sensibly, re-packing and consolidating my yarn stash, emptying out my old desk, re-packing the attic stair closet, and bringing the shelves into our room from the spare bedroom:

The new-to-this-room shelves are the ones in front of the windows. They're bigger than the desk, but re-organizing the stash and the attic-stair closet (the door in the corner to on the right) included moving a stack of bins of yarn stash into the closet. The other closet is behind the tall shelves on the left edge of the picture. And the room looks better in reality than the picture, which loses all the space between the bed and the shelves.

Robin was planning to go to Games Plus and actually, y'know, play wargames with gaming miniatures, but when he was detailed with taking the desk out to the curb, he decided to appropriate it instead. In the process he cleaned his room, getting rid of an old dresser that was originally mine, and a small cabinet that started out as the base to a changing table. The dresser was passed on to a friend, the cabinet went out to the curb.

Here's the desk, in its new habitat under his loft. Yes, that's another piece of Metro-clone shelving. We've got a bunch of it in the house. Sorry about the weird flare, I think its from the Otter case on my phone, which includes a clear cover over the flash:

And look!  OPEN FLOOR SPACE! In Robin's room!  Will Cecils never wonder? Wonders never cease? Whatever! He has a FLOOR!

 

Mom or Chere, if you're reading this, yes, that is one of the very old orange couch cushions from the house in Stevensville...

That thing on the left side of the photo is the ladder to the loft. The picture of the desk was taken through the ladder.

Death and Taxes

Saturday afternoon while Ron was at the Capricon wrap-up meeting, I threw myself at taxes. I got the sales taxes done, but trying to get sanity in my summary page of sales records defeated me, and I didn't even try to attack purchases. 

Ron managed to bring order out of that chaos Sunday morning, and has volunteered to work on doing the taxes this weekend while I work on the dining room and making pouches. 

Graphic Design-Ish Stuff

I should have worked on the dining room and leatherworking on Sunday, but was entirely not-motivated. So after Ron resolved my spreadsheet disasters, we went upstairs, and I set type from the big red cabinet, while Ron updated the spreadsheet listing all the blocks we have, and printed proofs. We got four fonts proofed, one of which we already had a name for, and I've identified one of the unknowns. 

Yesterday Linotype (.com) sent me an offer I failed to resist. I got a new font, or the basics of it. $99 instead of $806 for 14 styles (7 weights, regular and italic of each). There's also extended and condensed members of the family, that weren't part of the deal. I can pick those up as onesies or in packages, too. At least this was a 24-hour sale. There have been a couple sales of the first X people get the font for really-good-price, one of which I would have bought, but I was too late. 

Max

I knew there was something else!

Circling back to last Friday night, after stops at Office Whatsit (for tax software) and Ace hardware, we went to Menard's. We were looking for one thing, but I decided to look at something else, which Xap had pointed out to me the previous weekend.

Then I called Robin, to bring the truck, because it was following us home:

This is The Grinch's assistant (and Elrond, looking very odd due to foreshortening). As The Grinch's assistant, its name is, of course, Max. 

The Grinch is full, and there's overflow in the Things, hence Max. Max is only 30" wide (without handle), The Grinch is something like 42" wide. I think Max is also shorter than The Grinch. Ron assures me that Max will fit into the trailer, although he's not certain how Max will be strapped in, and the handtruck will probably ride on top of the Things.

Robin asked how long Max was going to be hanging around the living room, I said at least until the yard isn't squishy, possibly until ACen . . . which is only 2 months away. Eeep! I figure I'll pack as much new merchandise as I can into Max, and Xap can re-pack Max with belts at ACen.

And now, I think, that really is everything.

TeslaCon, Program Book, and other Tangential Natter

TeslaCon - Ish

Nothing from TeslaCon, so this morning I went looking for a contact e-mail address to try to get confirmation that the vendor application was received. The options are . . . not encouraging: Facebook, and the Eventbrite "contact the organizer" form from the tickets section of the TeslaCon website. I used the on-line form, which once again did not echo to the e-mail address it required, sigh. 

Here's a hint to event organizers: Don't rely on web forms. Supply an e-mail address.  Yes, that means you're going to get some spam. The most I've ever gotten from the e-mail contact on otternecessities.com is one or two in a single day. Most of the time I get one or two per week, if that.  Enable spam filters, deal with it, and quit frustrating your attendees/vendors/panelists/whatevers.

The City of Lockport I forget if that's far south Cook Co. or actually into Will Co.) has a Summer Arts Series, this year the theme is "The Visionaries", aka Steampunk, and they're looking for vendors for the "Celebration Weekend".  Unfortunately, the Celebration Weekend is July 25-27th. One week before MuseCon. Insert rantlet here. Woe. Found that by looking at the Steampunk Chicago website, which I found looking for contact information for TeslaCon. 

Other Natter, Mostly Letterpress

 I think it was Sunday that Ron got the hardware installed for the new Elfa shelving in the dining room. Now I need to get him or Robin to cut down the shelves, so I can attack the disaster area. 

On the letterpress front, we sorted some type last night - we'd gotten Ron some more Cloister Black, a couple/few weeks ago I got a set of figures to add to my 18-point Parsons and another set of 24-point Parsons figures, and finally a set of @ symbols in various sizes. I sorted out the 18-pt Parson and the @s, made labels, and updated my type spreadsheet, and Ron did the Cloister Black and put away new blocks, demonstrating that we need another set of the small flat-file drawers, we've filled the first two.

Ron's working on some MuseCon business cards for Xap, which he can finish now that we have the @s. We also need to work on printing Otter Necessities business card coasters, and printing proofs of the new type we got in the big red cabinet, which will help in identifying what they are. 

Program Book

The Long Grim Slog of Doom wasn't too bad. I worked on it Friday night, and pretty much all Saturday. I got the last major piece (attendee list) by midday Saturday. Using the powers of intelligent importing from a spreadsheet, find-and-replace, and clever "paragraph" (clump of text) formatting rules that InDesign has, formatting the attendee list (12 pages or so) was fairly quick and painless. So by Saturday dinnertime I declared the book almost-but-not-quite-totally-done, and sent a PDF out for review. 

Not surprisingly, there were corrections to make. Most were easy/relatively minor: mis-spelled names, etc., but somehow a handful of speaker bios (about a paragraph each) had fallen out of the document. I remember formatting at least one (my boss!), so I have no clue what happened. Fitting those back in wasn't trivial, but it wasn't too hard. I finished making corrections by about 10 am, then ran away from home (ie: went with Ron and Robin to Cabela's, to get Robin a new pair of boots), and generally ignored the book for most of the day.

Sunday evening Ron and I went through the book one more time and poked at some word/line breaks, then I exported a press-quality PDF to send to the printer. I uploaded it Monday morning (somewhere in the last paragraph or two I'd sent off another PDF for review, IIRC), supplied web PDFs for on-line use, and then went off to work. The finished page count was 82 pages, plus front cover, which is my longest book yet, and done in the shortest time frame.  

I didn't do as much re-writing and proofreading as I usually do, but the text that I got was more consistent than I usually get. I'm sure there's at least a couple typos that will LEAP off the page at me once I see a hard copy, but that's normal. Very little ranting at the computer. Yes, I'm willing to do this one again. The conference chair has asked for suggestions for next year, which I've been pondering. 

Long Grim Slog of Doom, Plus TeslaCon

The program book for the floodplain managers' conference has hit the long grim slog of doom stage. Monday I accomplished nothing, as is usual for Mondays, and Tuesday I accomplished nothing because I drove to Springfield and back for a meeting, so by the time I got home my brain was mush and it was almost bedtime anyway. Wednesday night I plowed through a pile of e-mail with book updates, and yesterday I got home a little early and got all those updates into the book draft. 

Still happy with the people I'm working with on the book. I was wondering if maybe my issues with doing the Windycon book were with me, but even though this book isn't easy, I'm not getting as frustrated, so I think my issues with Windycon are that I am not a good fit for Windycon.

Anyway, this book is not only at the long grim slog of doom stage, but a long grim slog of doom in pursuit of a moving target. I could say a lot more, but that would mean thinking about it more than is probably good for my sanity.

Moving on to a slightly more sane topic, I checked farcebook this morning and discovered that vendor applications for TeslaCon are open. So, before leaving for work I filled it out. Predictably, the on-line form did not echo back to the e-mail address which it required me to provide. Insert snarl here. I'll give it a day or few and then poke to make sure it was received. TeslaCon does get points for clearly stating both the application deadline and when the decisions will be announced. 

For extra bonus fun, it reads as if vendors get one 10'x10' spot. We managed with that kind of space at ACen, I suppose we can do it at TeslaCon. And the vendor fee includes 3 tickets. I'll face the hurdle of already tickets if/when we're accepted as vendors.

Picking up PeaPod on the way home, then back to the long grim slog of doom in pursuit of a moving target. Which will be done by Monday morning, one way or the other . . .

Program Book Progress and other natter

Stayed home sick Wednesday. Urgh. At least the antibiotics or something seem to have kept me from getting as sick as Ron did, and I'm cautiously optimistic that I'm improving.

Worked on the program book for the IAFSM conference (Ill. Assn. Floodplain & Stormwater Managers) Wednesday afternoon and pretty much all day yesterday, and a good chunk of this morning. At this point I think I've got one more thing (an small ad for Otter Necessities Design Services, as it happens) I can do, and then I'm holding on other people. 

This book is on a tight schedule. The deadline for sponsorships (and pre-registration) is the 28th (Friday), and it goes to the printer on March 3rd (Monday). I was asked what the last day they can send me information to the book, and I said 7 am Sunday. 

Fortunately, the pair of people getting information to me are not pushing my buttons. Not like the Windycon book, which had me ranting and raving on a regular basis. I did say that I felt like I was flailing, but Robin said I usually say that at some point. So I guess I'm doing ok. 

Still waiting for Teslacon to put up vendor information, but I've registered the 4 of us (Ron, me, Robin, Xap) to attend, and got a hotel room. So we'll be there regardless. Which means we need clothes. More natter about that on my personal blog.

Leather for three hard pouch fronts is soaking for Ron to mold tonight. One of them is an order form Military History Fest. Fortunately I said it was going to be a while to get it done, and I think I'll make the time-frame I said. 

Planning, Not as Planned, Design Stuff

Planning:

I think it was Saturday evening I got e-mail that we didn't get into the Anime Midwest vendor hall. The e-mail said they had space for only about 40 of the 125 or so vendors who applied, and implied that they jury said applicants. I'm not complaining about not making the cut for limited space, but they could have been a lot better about communicating selection criteria and timelines. We'll probably try again for next year.

Not as Planned:

The dining room is still a mess, and I still haven't done any leatherworking. Ron's adamant not-sick-dammit-ness failed sometime Thursday night/Friday morning. We went to our doctor Friday morning, who sent us to the ER, and Ron stayed in the hospital until Saturday morning, because breathing is a good thing to do, and blood oxygen levels below 90% while on oxygen are Not Good. Drugs, drugs, and other drugs, plus oxygen later, Ron is improving.

Meanwhile, the Upper Respiratory Thing has gone to my sinuses, although antibiotics and/or less stress and being less tired than Ron was when he came down with said Thing mean that it hasn't gotten as bad. But I stayed home today anyway (and we both had Monday off) and took a nap this morning.

The short version is that both Ron and I are sick and tired, and putting up shelves and cleaning the dining room have been way too much like work to contemplate. Get the house picked up for the cleaning service visit yesterday was enough of an accomplishment.

Design:

Working on the program book for the floodplain managers' conference. I'm getting a steady trickle of content.  Today I got a question from one of my content sources about the conference sponsor information, which was my cue to ask about acknowledging myself. Which was awkward e-mail to compose. 

SF cons usually comp staff with membership, which is, say, $50-75-ish. This conference is $375 ($425 at the door), which my employer pays. Association board members are comped with membership to the national conference, which IIRC is even more expensive. But 40-ish hours of work is a good whack, so I've asked to put a business-card sized listing for Otter Necessities Design Services on one of the sponsor pages - or a size less than the bronze level ($300) sponsors. We'll see how it goes. In any case, I'm listing myself on the speakers/association officer page. I've also asked if there's anybody in addition to the board/committee chairs who should be listed, because I suspect there are.

Yesterday, Not as Planned

As you may recall, I'm doing a program book for the annual floodplain managers' conference.  I had yesterday off (Lincoln's Birthday), the conference chair had said she'd get me a bunch of content by yesterady, and my plan was that I would spend a good chunk of the day working on the book.

As you may surmise from the post title, it didn't quite work out that way. She got me some sample content, to see if the formatting was ok. I explained that I really don't need (or want) any formatting done, my first step is to strip out any formatting that comes with text, and apply the basic/main paragraph formatting I'm using for the book, ie: formatting is my job, just get me the words and I'll make them look nice.

I think that made her very happy, and hopefully later today or tomorrow I'll get more content to work with this weekend and Monday (Presidents Day). I forgot that these aren't people who are used to the SF convention structure where the roles of who does what, at least in my experience, are reasonably well defined. In this case, the chair is also in charge of what I think of as programming, and has in the past done a large chunk of what I think of as publications. 

Instead of working on the program book, I considered working on leather stuff. But the dining room is still a mess, and we haven't had a chance to trim the old shelves to be new shelves for the dining room and hang up the necessary hardware for said shelves. So I didn't work on leather, either. 

I sewed, instead. Part of a steampunk outfit I cut out a couple-few years ago, more natter about that on my personal blog.

Since Robin and I both had yesterday off, Ron, who is not-sick-dammit, said Robin and I could schlep bins to the storage locker. That part of the day went as planned. Rather well, in fact. Robin got more stuff into the truck than Ron or I expected. Still some things to go, but that was a significant amount taken.

Got e-mail the other day inviting us to be vendors at the "Festival of the Horse and Drum", to be held at the Kane County Fairgrounds August 16th and 17th. Two 10x10 spaces would be pricey considering that I'm not sure how well we'd do, outdoors on pavement so provide and weight/anchor your own shelter/shade or rent, close to MuseCon (although after), etc. So I'm thinking not, although I'll probably e-mail tonight with some questions.  I may, however, put it on the calendar as an interesting thing to go to and see (and assess for possible vending at next year). I think the organizers got our name via a (named) person who went to Military History Fest, who said we are "must-have" vendors. My ego, it is booed (as in ego-boo, not boo-hiss), but my pocketbook is more cautious.

Banners & Anime Midwest & Things

Banners!

The new fabric banners arrived last night!

2 ft. x 2 ft. banner

2 ft. x 4 ft. banner

Hmm. I don't seem to have done the same color-correction on both pictures, the banners are the same colors. I also discovered that PhotoShop Touch for the iWhatsit can only rotate 90 or 180 degrees, not an arbitrary value like I needed to for the picture of the square banner.

The cream colored background they're supposed to have turned out only vaguely off-white (the picture of the big banner is closer to how they really look), but the rest of the graphics aren't the horrible washed-out mess that resulted when the previous printer tried to color-correct the background to white. Their turnaround time was fast, as mentioned previously, and their prices were good - $60-ish and $30-ish for each banner, plus shipping. So, I endorse this printer, MegaPrint(.com), and will be willing to use them again.

My only complaint is that they rolled the larger banner up the silly way, so it was a 4' long roll, which meant it shipped in something like a 5' long box, which was more pricey than the box for a 2' long tube would have been. I'm assuming that they usually do big stuff, so that's what they have shipping supplies for, and be content. They also didn't set grommets on the centers of the long sides of the big banner, but we can fix that ourselves. 

I tried the square banner with the plain brown text for "tter Necessities" that I used on the big banner, but it needed something more. Then I tried the two-color "tter Necessities" on the big banner, but that was too busy with the other text. If you click for the full-size pictures, the smaller print on the big banner has a lighter highlight. 

Other Things

Yesterday we also received the second order of photopolymer printing plates. Unfortunately, I made an error on how I submitted the plates for the printer to gang up, so they're closer together than I wanted them to be - I can't trim them to the size of the finished piece, which would have made setup and registration easier. Ron came up with a workaround, though. Wednesday we got the custom-mix dark brown ink I'd ordered, which I think I've forgotten to mention up until now. The green ink and replacement adhesive for the polymer plates is scheduled for delivery today (the adhesive on the plates is good for more than one use, but I'm not sure how many times it will be good for, and ordering some to have some on hand was cheap peace of mind).

I considered trimming plates and printing last night, but decided I had insufficient functioning brain cells.

Still haven't made the order form for calling/business cards. Must do that this weekend.

A while back I volunteered to help with publications for the annual floodplain managers' conference I attend. Got e-mail about it last night, responded this morning, we'll see how it goes. Normally my content deadlines for convention books are 6 and 8 weeks from the convention. Wednesday was 7 weeks from this one, and I'm busy next weekend with Military History Fest, the next weekend with Cap, and some of my proposals are a pretty big change from how things have been done in the past for this conference. Even if I can't convince them to try everything, I'm hoping for some incremental progress.

Anime Midwest - Yet More Kvetching

Yesterday I wrote down the timeline of registering for ACen and Anime Midwest. 

I started the ACen Exhibitor registration process on September 1st. On September 9th I got e-mail that I was approved and the process to continue with choosing space, etc. was X, Y, Z. I got updates on September 11th, October 15th, 22nd, and 28th, chose my space on October 28th, more updates on November 5th and 14th, and paid for my space, finishing the process, on November 16th. One or two of the updates were extras because of a change in their process from previous years, and one or two were responses, prompt ones, to e-mail I sent. But even though I did get frustrated with the process, I mostly knew what was going on, and it was wrapped up in 2-1/2 months.

Now let's look at Anime Midwest:
I started the process on October 31st. Unlike ACen's on-line system, no mail echoing what I sent, or acknowledgement it was received. I e-mailed on 11 November, heard only the chirping of crickets, so I e-mailed their parent organization on November 21st. On November 25th I finally got a response that they're still reviewing exhibitor applications, with nothing about when they'd actually have an answer. Since then . . . crickets.  A week from today will be 3 months since I submitted the application, and they can't manage to get me an answer ACen got me in 8 days. 

I'm debating when (not, you note, "if") I want to poke at Anime Midwest again. Also if I want to even be an exhibitor with them, given how things are going so far.  We did well at ACen, and had a bunch of people ask if we'd be at Anime Midwest, so I think we'd do well there, too. OTOH, I'm not getting a feeling of competence.  ACen's process as described wasn't how it really worked out, but at least they communicated.

Colored Paper

I ordered paper today, several colors.

I was going to get off-white, pale green, and pale blue. But then an orange that is anything but pale jumped off of a blog page and said "YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS WITH ME". I failed to resist. And then I decided what the hey, I'll add pink and gray and put it on Otter's credit card.  

So I did.

I got, all from French Paper Co.

From their "Construction" line (as in heavy-duty construction equipment, not the awful construction paper we used in grade school), Whitewash (off-white) and Insulation Pink.

The light blue is Dur-O-Tone Butcher Blue.

For light green I got Speckletone Starch Mint. Speckletone is recycled, and has flecks and bits in it. 

The grey is Parchtone Gunmetal. Parchtone is animal-free pseudo-parchment.  

And the rather shocking orange is Pop-Tone Tangy Orange.

Sorry, I can't find a way to link directly to the French Paper blog post that grabbed me. This should get you close, then scroll down to the August 13th entry that's business cards that look like movie tickets.

Coasters!

Monday I got to work, was at the office for about a half-hour, and then went home, when the governor closed down State offices due to the weather. Tuesday morning I got to work, the office was cold because the boilers were broken and off (1 in each state), so we were sent home at noon. Yesterday the assistant director of awesome went into the office at about 6 am, determined that it was still freezing cold and e-mailed us to stay home. And didn't leave the office for the night until sometime after 9 pm (at which one of the boilers had been replaced and the office was back up to reasonable temperatures). Hopefully she got home for a while in there somewhere. 

Monday afternoon, the photopolymer plates arrived. Well, plate - it was one big sheet, as shown in my previous post in the low-resolution facsimile of the PDF we sent to have it made. The plastic is relatively soft, easily cut apart with scissors.

I started printing the first pass of coasters for the Capricon Cafe, which MuseCon is sponsoring. 250 coasters later, I called it a day. Tuesday I did the other 250. The first pass looks like this:

This is one from Monday: Monday I started out with this pale green, and kept adding (evil messy) blue until I finished up with a dark pine green:

 

Tuesday I started with orange, and either orange is stubborn, or I was being restrained when I was adding red, because there isn't much change (these are from the end of the day's run):

Monday and/or Tuesday evening (I forget exactly what we did when) Ron did the backs of some business cards he'd made over the weekend for advertising the cafe:

Tuesday night we set up the text and on Wednesday I did the words on all 500 coasters. I started out with light blue, darkened it up, added red to make burgundy, then added yellow to make light brown, then black to make bronze, although these are the light blue and burgundy:

The coasters are soft and porous enough paper that that we could stack coasters as they were done. Ron came home in the early afternoon, and then we did 250 more coasters, for the MuseCon party at Wiscon. He did the words, then I grabbed stacks and did the logo. Except when we switched places, because my shoulder and back got tired, because my press is a lot bigger and heavier to run. I'd left the bronze on his press, and I loaded up mine with (evil) blue:

Then Ron did some sample business cards. Those are in the slinky-board on the left in this picture. The other 3 slinky-boards are holding about 250 coasters (if you count the ones laid on top):

Why do I keep referring to the blue ink as evil blue?  Because it is. The can got packed upside-down for shipping, but even now that the ink has settled back to the bottom of the can (its really thick), it still gets everywhere. We've wiped the outside of the can off countless times, and you still can't touch it without getting blue on your hands. And it leaps off the press onto you like no other color does. The blue is evil. Pretty, but evil. 

This post is probably long enough. I have another whole string of pictures documenting the printing process, I think those will be a separate post.

Sorta-Kinda Progress

Almost no progress on leatherworking.
No progress on doing the books. 

Did do a little putzing around with letterpress.

I fooled around with laying out Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" and Clement C. Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas" on the computer with different page sizes and close approximations of our metal type faces. I got "Jabberwocky" into a shape we both liked, printed it out as printer's spreads, and taped the pages together (because I was too lazy to mess with duplexing the right bits together) to create a page-layout guide to make an 8-page book. 

I meant to mess about with some short Lewis Carroll poetry and business cards, but got distracted by visiting with Ron's sister and nephew, and making a tunic for Wash. While I was working on that Ron, Xap, and Wash were looking at examples of leather armor for LARP/SCA-ish combat, and playing with the leather scales we haven't done anything with since for quite a long time. Maybe with Wash's help we'll actually get some quantity estimates and a start on instructions. 

We also picked up a couple Slinkies (it's fun it's a wonderful toy . . .), which have been tacked down to boards for drying stands for printed material - the line in the dining room works, but it isn't perfect. So we'll try the Slinkie-stands. 

I got my Uhlen Rundgotisch yesterday. Still waiting for the spaces, as the font didn't come with them. I've laid out the promotional Capricon Cafe by MuseCon thing we're going to do using my Uhlen Rundgotisch electronic stand-in, so once the spaces come in I can start them. The USPS said the thin spaces were supposed to be delivered yesterday, but they didn't leave the sort facility in Colorado until some time late last night, so I'm thinking the USPS is still cleaning up the last of the pre-Christmas shipping deluge.

Saturday night we uploaded a file of images we'd like to get made into plates to Boxcar Press, and ordered a base. The plates are in production, but because of UPS' holiday schedule won't go out until Thursday (normally they'd go out today). But Boxcar is only in New York state, so there is an off-chance we'll get them Friday (I don't think standard ground service includes Saturday delivery). 

 
This is a JPEG created in Paint via cut and paste from a PDF, useful only for illustrating this post. The format is long and narrow because the platemaker spits out a piece of film 17" by up to 22", so I packed what I could into 17" by enough the other way to be at least 50 square inches, with at least 3/8" between images (hence the upside-down Otter logo - it allowed better packing). I did pretty well, our end area was billed as 51 square inches. Yes, I am having some text printed as plates, so we can have a consistent font and not always be setting the same bits of text from type.

Robin's finished a bunch of trays. The base size is the 12-1/2" by 12-1/2" type cases we got with the presses, and then he's also making quarter size, and for himself, half-size for transporting miniatures. Over the weekend he finished up the first few quarter-size trays, which are deep enough for our border sets to stand up in without being taller than the trays. Here's a couple pictures:

 
The large trays have shorter and narrower sidewalls, which caused some assembly problems. Robin's got plans to offer trays for sale, he thinks other miniature gamers might be willing to buy them. For gamers he's going to stick with the taller and thicker sides. And I need to proof-read his first draft of website verbiage. He also needs to price lumber to come up with tray prices, since we only bought the fiberboard for the bottoms, and he's been using lumber from the stash for the sides. 

Last night I sorted the wooden furniture for setting up the presses into the large trays. Most of it fits into two large trays, and there's a few pieces of really wide stuff to go in a third (when Robin finishes one - he's limited by glue drying time and number of clamps). We also have some furniture that's too long to be used (unless/until we get a bigger press...), that I moved to the back of a shelf.  

New Font/New Look

One of the things we want for letterpress printing is a "Boxcar Base", which is a slab of machine aluminum, on which you mount photopolymer (fairly thin plastic) printing plates to bring them to the right height for presses designed for metal type. Its called a "Boxcar" base because its made/sold by Boxcar Press. The minimum order of photopolymer plate is 50 square inches, so Ron has been working on packing images that we want plates of to get our first plate run made.

One of the things we definitely wanted was an Otter Necessities logo, with the O-Otter for the O. In the past I've used Papyrus font for the words, which is a font that gets a lot of scorn. Last year I used this font, which is I like (which is good, since its one I bought), but the knockout inside the letters could be iffy to print letterpress, especially at small sizes:

 
As mentioned elsewhere about letterpress, we bought a font of Parsons in metal type. Its Art Deco, but not too over the top. A digital revival of Parsons is Parsnip NF, which includes the cool swashy capitals and italic text. Which looks like this for the basic font:

(the gray background is an artifact of generating sample text from the Linotype website) 

So, when Ron discovered that Papyrus wasn't installed on his laptop, I decided to switch to Parsons/Parsnip, and bought Parsnip. And now we're blaming MS for not installing the font in any rational way so that you can get to the cool swashy alternate capital Ns. AAARGH!

Anyway, we're also planning on having photopolymer plates made of "Letterpress printing by Otter Necessities" and our URL. Because I am feeeelthy merchant scum, yes I am. 

Ron's currently got a bunch of Christmas gift tags half-done. They fold up to about a 2"x2" square, with a picture on the outside and "To:" and "From:" on the inside. IIRC he's done 3 or 4 Santas in red ink, and a Christmas tree in green, and the insides will all be green. Now we just need a hole punch to put holes in the corners. 

Definitely working on taking orders for Victorian/Steampunk calling cards for Military History Fest. It would be cool to bring Ron's little press, but the problem is the solvents used for cleanup. Even Goo Gone/citrus oil has a certain fragrance to it. Hmm . . . Goo Gone does make "paint clean-up wipes" that could be useful. We shall see what happens.