Mother's Day

This post is written for various family members, so there's some repeat information.  You've been warned.

How I spent my Mother's Day

To begin with, about a month ago we decided that we would try to get into the Exhibit/Vendor's hall for Anime Central (ACen), a twenty-four-thousand+ person convention, which is next weekend. To get a sense of scale, the biggest event we've done prior to this is 1000-1200 people.  ACen is a convention for fans of Japanese animation (anime) and culture.

So, we've been working somewhat frantically to bolster inventory, especially since we've convinced ourselves we're not going to lose our shirts, and moved on to worrying that we're going to run out of inventory.

Last night I decided the dogs, Pippin in particular, could benefit from spending a night in their crates, so they don't forget how to behave.

At about 5:00 this morning Pippin insisted that he really really needed out of his crate, so Ron got up and opened the door. On his way outside he detoured to pounce on me. He weighs 40+ pounds. 

For breakfast we had waffles. Robin started the batter last night, finished it this morning (yeast-raised batter, sits on the counter all night, we have a new waffle recipe), and Ron cooked. 

After breakfast I started sewing swivels onto tails (mostly fox, one coyote). Like this one (silver fox):

Yes, real tails. Why? Because customers buy them. They clip them onto their belt loop in back, or whatever, and have a tail. Who am I to argue with people wanting to pay me money for tails?

Ron decided to take me out to lunch, as I've been working on pouches. A lot of pouches. Here's a bin of, um, 36 that we've finished in the last few weeks:

Under that layer of soft ones in top is another layer.

We started out going to Lal Qila, an Indian/Afghan restaurant, but they were too busy, so we went to Siri Thai, which is, as you might guess, a Thai restaurant.

After lunch we hit the grocery store for dinner food. We're having frozen pizza. We need to try out our new convection oven, which we're doing by putting extra toppings on a frozen pizza. I was thinking of making chicken fricassee/chicken & dumplings, but we had a big lunch, so I'll make that tomorrow.

At the grocery store we also got a Rubbermaid container to hold our portable battery-operated receipt printer, spare paper rolls, spare battery and battery charger for the printer, wireless hot spot, and power cords. I was looking at fancier (Pelican) cases, but Ron confirmed that they were overkill. I'm not paying $200 for electricity at ACen, so the printer, hot spot, and uninterruptable power source/battery power supply need to come home every night to be re-charged, so having a square-ish container for the smaller stuff makes it easier to transport, and keep track of between events.

Then we stopped at Eurofresh, another grocery store with more interesting things than Jewel. Came home, and finished the tails. Yay! tails done! That's swivels sewn on 10 today, 2 yesterday, and a repair done to the one I posted the picture of above. 

I'm down to 4 pouches to finish before setup for ACen starts at noon on Thursday.  Here's the parts for one of them:

The part on the right is the hard, molded front. The part on the left is the back/flap piece. The dees are so that it can be worn as a sporran. The edge of the flap has already been laced. Part of the latch is hiding behind the front of the flap. To finish the pouch I'll lace the front onto the back.  

But not today. I'm done for today.

Good, and Annoying

Good: I can pick up everybody's badges when I check in with the ACen Exhibits Hall staff.

Good: The baby cart arrived Wednesday, and required minimal assembly.

Good: The receipt printer arrived Wednesday.

Annoying: It included not the sample roll of paper I expected, but sample receipts. 

Good: Robin remembered a 9-pack of paper rolls bought for the credit card terminal that we had when we had a traditional merchant account.  They're the right width.

Minor annoyance: The rolls are too large in diameter, so we have to strip some off. 

Good: The slightly-too-large rolls were from Staples, and a new 9-pack is much, much cheaper than a single roll of OEM paper. So much so even if we don't re-roll and use the stripped off bits (which the printer seems to accept happily) we come out ahead.

Good: Getting things done. Just over half of the big batch of 27 sewn pouches are done, and I think I have enough strips cut to make binding for the rest.

Annoying: Dishes. And the house is nearing has reached disaster area status.

Good: The weather has allowed us to assign Robin the task of cooking dinner on the grill the last few nights. 

Really annoying: The banners arrived last night, and are a mess. They're supposed to look like this, with the main area cream/light tan background, and I expected a white margin/hem.  

As best we can tell, the idiots at Bing Banners assumed the background was supposed to be white, and achieved this by messing with the contrast, so the words and image are washed out. Nor did they send me the PDF proof I requested.

Good: Refund has been processed, and they don't want them back (not that return shipping would have come out of my pocket!).

Good: I decided the banner we have is just fine, I'm not going to make myself crazy trying again (somewhere else!) before ACen.

Good: Tests with the printer did not turn up any serious issues with the POS software output. A couple easy/minor tweaks/corrections have been made.

Still lots to do - finish pouches, pouches, and still some more pouches,  sew swivels on tails, split belts for braiding and braid, and get everything tagged and into inventory.
 

Did I mention "Busy"?

Friday night we accomplished picking up a PeaPod order, eating dinner, and dropping the truck off for Robin to get himself home from his D&D game. We also wandered around Williams-Sonoma deciding what we wanted to spend a belated Christmas gift certificate on (no decision made yet). Didn't accomplish doing the CodCon books.

I did do the CodCon books Saturday morning, updated inventory to correct the belt count we did a week or two ago, and went through and tried to clean up some stuff to simplify importing inventory into RingItUp.

I wasn't entirely successful. Also, Ron found all sorts of inconsistencies in my record-keeping. But we now have about 360 items in RingItUp, with some more to add. But most are in.

After much waffling, I ordered a battery-operated Bluetooth receipt printer, along with an extra battery and battery charger. Yes, one of the things we'd previously written off as too expensive. We decided it would be worth it in the wrong run (and the cost will be mostly covered by our toy stash).

Yesterday and today Ron and I have been working on sewn pouches, 27 of them. - sporrans, belt satchels, and little tabbed pouches. At this point all of them have their belt loops and sporran loops attached, half of the latches attached (the bits that go on the pouch fronts) and fronts (with front pockets, when applicable) sewn to gussets. After dinner Ron plans to hem the front/gusset combos.

After that the remaining steps are sewing the fronts/gussets to the backs/flaps (with pockets, in some cases), putting the binding on the flaps (a two-step process), and putting the flap pieces of the latches on. Except the little tabbed pouches, because all the holding-closed bits are already done on those.

Also today I got two lace mania pouches and two belt pouch versions of a small purse ready for assembly. And I e-mailed the ACen exhibit hall staff to ask how/where we get our badges. I suspect we'll all have to go to Registration and show ID, but I'm hoping the exhibit hall staff will have them. Ideally, I could pick up everybody's, but I'm not holding my breath. Had we registered earlier we could have had badges mailed, for a small surcharge, but IIRC the deadline for that was April 1.

Other Pouch Done & Shopping

We got the second custom pouch that was ordered at CodCon finished last night, I packed them up, and off they went to their purchasers today.

Here's the one I finished last night:

The customer asked for the single hanging tab, not my idea. I'm not enthused with it, but that's OK if the customer likes it. 

Ron waxed the front after dinner while I sewed the flap and tab onto the back, then we worked on the lacing, passing it back and forth as we sorted parts and marked belt loop locations on the big pile of soft stitched pouches. 

My plan for tonight is to do the CodCon books, then maybe even start poking at inventory in preparation for importing into the sales app. However, I also have a history of getting home on Friday nights and turning into a pumpkin, so we'll see what actually happens. 

Having determined that the big parking garage for the Donald E. Stephens convention center is a block or two away, this morning I was musing on the best way to make our lives easier for hauling the UPS and whatever odds and ends we'd be moving back and forth with us during ACen. The trick is that we'll probably be taking the car (fits in parking garages better than the truck), which means the handtruck is Right Out. And there's not going to be a lot of room behind the tables, either.

Various permutations on this rolling/folding crate got a lot of poor reviews for durability. 

I like folding canvas-bodied wagons like this one, but I'm not sure about practicability, and it apparently has steering issues.

If money was no object there's the option of a folding Magliner handtruck.

Then I remembered this line of "MultiCarts" that we had admired in the past at Calumet Photographic. They seem pretty sturdy and well-designed. There is a handtruck member of the family, but we decided on the smallest four-wheeled version, which can also be used as a two-wheel handtruck - there are a lot of times that four wheels are better than two. I considered getting a solid deck piece for it, but decided to skip it for now. I can also see this little cart being useful when we go to conventions, and other times when we need to schlep stuff, but don't want/need our bigger Magliner-clone convertible handtruck. 

After months and months, I finally gathered up some Round Tuits and ordered a couple more banners today, a 2'x2', and a 1'x2'. I think I should have them in plenty of time for ACen, but decided not to pay for the more pricey shipping to make sure. I got fabric that will, hopefully, be light enough to safety-pin to table cloths/table skirts, so we don't have to sacrifice gridwall space. Here's the JPEG versions:

Finished Pouch, More ACen Prep Patter

Last night I finished one of the two custom pouches I got orders for at CodCon. Here's a picture, with my iPhone for size:

This pouch is for a smartphone. A really big smartphone. Or maybe its a very small tablet. IIRC a newer member of the Samsung Galaxy family. 

The customer asked for the paired latches, and I decided not to try to do lacing between them. He's had problems with belt loop failure on other phone cases, so I made the belt loops fairly thick, and they're held on with both rivets and hand-stitching.

The sides are laced up, like the other square-cornered soft-ish pouches I make. It's also only about an inch or so thick, so doing the lacing was entertaining, especially down at the bottom (started there, worked up to the top). My knuckles aren't raw, but I was wondering. 

The other custom pouch is kind of in a holding pattern, I need Ron to wax the front before I can go much farther (I have a couple quick bits of machine-sewing I can do before that, and then I'm definitely on hold). It didn't get done last night because he was at work late, because of being sucked into meetings. Tonight he's going to be late-ish again, but hopefully it will get done. 

Ron's been working on Perl scripts to take the data from RingItUp from both our iPads, do voodoo, and give me data that will, hopefully, make doing the books simpler - more cutting and pasting and less typing. 

If I can get the custom pouch done tonight, I'm hoping to get the CodCon sales recorded tomorrow night, so we can start poking at the inventory spreadsheet to import items into RingItUp. 

The lag of several days between steps that ACen seems to have for exhibitors is frustrating me again. I don't plan on ordering booth furnishings, amenities, or even electricity from the convention center (this year...), but I wanted to be able to log in and make sure the information on-line matched the PDF documents ACen has. Except the convention center services company website said there was no booth number 620 for ACen. Fortunately, the nice lady who answered the phone at the services company took my information and got me access. 

Also, the ACen information for exhibitors seems to assume that you've done this song and dance before, and is kinda scant in several areas. Today's discovery is that when Ron arrives in Rosemont two weeks (!) from today with the truck and trailer, he does not go to the convention center, he goes to a marshalling yard some distance away. The information on the ACen website blithely states that exhibitors can pull their vehicle into the hall and park in front of their booth for setup. Fortunately, I wondered just how that was going to work, especially in terms of traffic control, and did some digging. I understand the need/want not to duplicate data and effort, but if you that means they need better pointers to where information *is*.

Leather and hardware arrived yesterday. When I looked this morning, tails were out for delivery. I let Robin know, so he could keep an eye on the box or put it out of dog-reach. I think a taped-up-for-shipping box is probably sufficient to keep Pippin out, but I'm not certain.

Extended Weekend, with EEK!

The weekend sorta-kinda continued into yesterday.

As some of you know, I have a thing about going to the dentist, for a reason which I am repeatedly told is quite understandable. My current dentist is one of the people who has said so, and has gifted me with a Xanax prescription to help deal with it. Yay Xanax!

So, yesterday morning I had the drilling and grinding part of a crown done, with attendant gluing-on of a temporary crown. Ron (designated driver) dropped me off at home by 10:30 am. I was loopy enough that I didn't do anything until after lunch. In fact, I was about ready to give up and take a nap to see if I could sleep off the last of the Xanax, when I got the call that the I'd called for earlier was on the way.

I decided that although I wasn't as bad as I'd been earlier in the day, I probably shouldn't be working on custom pouches. So I dug out soft leather and started cutting out soft pouches (tracing patterns and cutting on the lines requires fewer active brain cells than doing custom work). Rather a lot of pouches:

2 sporrans, a belt satchel, and a little tabbed pouch from a tan moose hide.
Ditto, from a dark green deer hide.
1 belt satchel in dark teal.
2 belt satchels in a slightly pebbly darker tan.
5 sporrans and a belt satchel out of black. 

That left only some palm-sized scraps of the moose, deer, dark tan, and one piece of black. I got 4 of the sporrans and the belt satchel out of that piece, which was surprising - I had remembered it being bigger, but also got more out of it than expected once I did see the size. On the up-side, in fishing blindly in a bin of mud-colored car-interior remnants for interior pocket materials, I found a good-sized piece of black.  

In the "Eek!" department, I just realized that I mis-counted, and there are only two weekends before ACen. Fortunately, the 17 pouches I cut out yesterday, and the 10 belt satchels and little tabbed pouches I cut out last week are all ones that I machine-sew, so they go together much faster than laced pouches. Getting them finished in the next two weekends is not an unreasonable goal.

Plus, I have the final crown installation late-morning next Thursday. If I decide that it's insufficiently scary to require Xanax, I'll also have time that day.

A Rare Weekend Post!

We've gotten a lot of things done this weekend, despite the fact that my only accomplishments Friday night were folding some laundry and picking Robin up from his D&D game. 

In happy news, the sold-via-Etsy pouch we needed to find was in Thing 2. So was the bin of odds and ends that I wanted to sort. Xap and I did inventory the belts in The Grinch, also. My inventory sheet was definitely incorrect, most likely cause is a batch of belts made and packed into The Grinch, but not recorded. There are worse ways to screw up inventory.

After playing with it, Xap concurred that the POS app, RingItUp, by PingySoft (.com) looked good, so I bought it. Ron has customized the receipt and done some experimentation with reports, etc. Although RingItUp does not synchronize things if you use it for one business on two iWhatsits, Ron has the power of Perl, and is plotting on how to crunch data to create unified reporting, etc.

Yesterday's accomplishments also include:

• Cutting out parts for the two custom pouches ordered at CodCon.
• Realizing I screwed a part for one up, and we also needed to mold the front for it, as I'd forgotten we'd dyed it black playing with the airbrush a couple/few weeks ago.
• Ron airbrush-dyed hard pouch fronts and some other pouch parts.
• I cut out backs for 6 hard pouches, main parts two lace mania pouches and two more belt pouches which I've made previously as purses. 
• Taught Xap to do the lacing for pouch flaps
• Saw a production of "Oliver" at Cutting Hall

Today was even busier:

• Molding the front for the custom pouch (had hoped to do it last night, but it needed more moisture)
• I cut strips for belt loops, which Ron thinned down and cut to size. Lots of belt loops.
• Robin cut strips for holding the dees on the back of pouches (for use as sporrans)
• Ron cut those strips and some others to length and punched holes. Almost 40 of them.
• The six hard pouches are ready to lace, which involved marking, gluing, trimming, more marking, making holes, taking corners off of edges, still more marking, setting rivets to hold latches on, more marking, more holes, attaching belt loops to dee-holder parts and riveting to the pouches, and, finally, dyeing edges. 
• Making pastichio for dinner
• Packing up the pouch retrieved from Thing 2 yesterday to mail out tomorrow

I am . . . not entirely impressed with ACen's exhibitor registration system. It seems to require human button-pushing to advance steps, which seem that they should be able to automate. I've been trying unsuccessfully to pay since Thursday morning, so this morning I sent e-mail asking what was up with that and several other items. This afternoon I got e-mail with the instructions how to do so and a contract to sign and return. Not sure if my e-mail jogged things loose, or if they passed in the ethernet.

I think its about time for bed now.

Chugging Along

More things accomplished, more-or-less looking ahead to ACen:

Invited Ron and Xap to be users on the Otter Necessities Square and Intuit accounts, so we aren't limited to using only one phone to run charges (also useful for smaller events, because customers like to descend in waves). 

Just heard from Xaplet Major on the last badge, so we have our setup/teardown staff.

Continued poking at the POS app, playing with exporting to DropBox. May play with putting inventory into its table layout and importing tonight. Still not sure if this is what we'll go with, going to get Xap's opinion tomorrow.

Ordered more tails last night. I have been keeping a dozen in inventory, and post-CodCon I'm down to 7, mostly smaller tails - raccoon, and grey and kit fox. The bigger tails have been selling better, so for ACen I ordered a dozen big tails - a coyote and various colors of fox, including some "super jumbo" sized ones. 

Although we only sold a few belts at CodCon, I'm down to nothing in the way of leather left to cut belts out of, so today, being payday, I ordered a side of black and a side of london tan (golden brown). I was waffling which shade of brown to order, so I looked at what we've sold since January of last year.  The results were even numbers of london tan and havana (chocolate brown), with chestnut (red brown) at about a third of each of the other browns. 

I'm glad I looked at the numbers, as I didn't realize chestnut had been lagging so badly. Now I'm waffling about even continuing to keep chestnut belts in stock going forward. Choosing between london tan and havana was based in which I like better. Nothing wrong with havana, but its . . . boring. If finances allow, I'll see if I can order a side of havana before ACen, but I'm not counting on it. 

I was thinking that we need to do an inventory of belts (I suspect I've had some errors creep in), may do that tomorrow since trailer-spelunking may be on the agenda anyway. Also, there's a couple bins that are a higgeldy-piggeldy mess of small stuff, some of which I plan to put out at ACen, and some I don't. So those may get sorted out, too.

In the not-ACen-related accomplishments, last night we found a pair of belts that we got an Etsy order for, holes punch, cut to length, and packed up to be shipped out this morning.

Then I woke up this morning to another Etsy order for a pouch. The only problem is that I'm not sure I remembered to pack it with the hanging pouches to go in Thing 2 and be more easily accessible. Fortunately, the weather is supposed to be decent tomorrow, so we can do said trailer spelunking.

Another of tomorrow's tasks is working on the two custom pouches we got orders for at CodCon. 

Working working working...

ACen Update

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
We are approved to be dealers at ACen.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
We have chosen a location in the dealer's room/hall.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
I am not quite rational. I was worse before breakfast, when I got the confirmation e-mail and we chose our spot.

Still have to pay, and send in a signed contract, but at this point those are semi-formalities, the reality is that we'll be in the ACen dealer's room.

I don't think I'm having second thoughts this point (second-dozen? second-hundred?), but there was the chance that we would not be approved, or the room would fill up before we were approved. But we've been continuing on the assumption that we would get in.

I've updated the Intuit account, which upped the limit for how much would be immediately deposited to my bank account (funds over the limit can be held for up to 30 days). I've also signed up for a Square account.  

Investigating POS (Point of Sale) software for the iThingies. The first three were eliminated for combinations of not meeting my (possibly odd) requirements, or having a monthly subscription fee of Way Too Much. I think I've found one, with a one-time Reasonable Cost to buy, which will work. 

Determined that buying a battery-operated receipt printer is probably going to be Way Too Much. However, a friend of ours who is good at finding tech cheap is aware of what we're looking for, so I'm not discounting it yet.

The ACen rules require that the sides of displays along the booth limits have to be curtained. Had one idea how to do that, but came up with a better one, which Ron refined, and Xap is now following up on.  

Last year's ACen attendance was 24,000. Twenty-four thousand. That's 20 times the size of WindyCon or DucKon, at its peak a few years ago when Jim Butcher was GoH.  My mind boggles. Really really boggles.

We will not be doing Northshield Crown, given this news. Ragnarok Rampage may be questionable, if we sell lots and lots of stuff.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

CodCon Report & ACen

Ron took Friday off, I worked. The plan was to be at CoD (College of DuPage) by 4:00, when the vendor's room opened for setup. I didn't get out of the office quite when I meant, so I was a few minutes late. Ron, Robin, and Marmaduke had arrived early, and had everything inside waiting for me. I think Xap arrived around 6-ish, but that's a SWAG.

We had two 6' tables/spaces, but the room was far from full, so we, um, kinda oozed over into another 4' or so of space. The CoD tables were 36" wide, which is 6" wider than our 6' tables. I'm not complaining. Robin did a good job packing hanging pouches onto the gridwall. Marmaduke's logic in arranging belts completely escaped any of us. :) Ron forgot the new sock yarn, but grovelled a lot about it.

Friday the room was officially open 6 pm - 10 pm. We got one or two smallish sales Friday.

Saturday we were officially open 10 am - 10 pm, but I knew the door would be open when the convention opened at 9 am, and due to waking up earlier than I wanted to and not paying attention to the clock, I got there shortly after 8. So it was a really really long day. 

Ron's been suffering from insomnia and bursitis in his shoulder, so instead of sending Robin and Marmaduke home late afternoon to let the dogs out, he bailed about 3:00. The dogs appreciated it. We didn't miss him - that was about the time sales died and we were bored bored bored. 

There were far fewer cosplayers around than last year, and no anime room. However, there was a LARP group across the room from us. The LARPers were our friends, sales-wise, but even so we only had slightly over half of last year's sales by the end of Saturday. (I just looked at last year's report here on the blog, where I said we got about half our sales Saturday, and the other half split mostly evenly between Friday and Sunday). I was not a happy camper, although we had cleared entry, etc. 

Sunday the LARPers came through again, and we ended up doing about a hundred dollars more than last year. Still going to have to think about CodCon next year - we'll be good if there's enough Cosplay or LARPers, but tabletop-ish gamers aren't our customer base. 

Packing up was a little slow, as Ron directed Robin and Marmaduke in how to pack the Things, to save his shoulder. 

But, to get to the even more interesting news:

Marmaduke made the comment Sunday morning that we should do ACen (Anime Central, a ginormicon held in Rosemont). I explained that while ACen is ginormous, it is also not-quite ginormously expensive (Chicon/Worldcon was ginormously expensive), plus all the hassles of having to get union workers to unload and set up, blah blah blah.

Except, one of our neighbors said, ACen has negotiated so dealers can do all their own unloading, setup, and bring in their own food (another Thing with some cons at the big convention centers). And you have a potential customer base of 20,000. Twenty thousand. My mind boggles.

My brain started working. ACen booths are 10x10, if you get one early enough its $650, currently $850, but the first one comes with five, yes 5 memberships. And the map shows empty spaces, still.

I e-mailed to ask if there really are still spaces left.

I waffled.

Ron and Xap agreed that I was barking mad in general, but not in regard to the possibility of doing ACen. 

I talked to the neighbor some more.

We played with the CAD program on my iPad and came up with a layout that we think will work, in one space. No stringy bits or instruments, leather only. 

We determined that we probably need to go into overdrive for the next month on making pouches.  And promptly got orders for two custom pouches. Of course we did.  

Xap read the policies. I re-read information and realized there's a registration-pre-approval process, that I think I initiated. (I forgot to screen capture the screen I'm pretty sure I saw saying I did it right, it didn't generate e-mail saying that (unlike account creation), and I it doesn't show up as a pending order). It doesn't help that by that point both Xap and I were more or less loopy. 

Re: loopy: Sunday afternoon a customer picked up a pouch to buy, and half the latch fell off, broken in a way I've never had happen before. I kinda stared stupidly at it, and said I couldn't fix it. After a couple minutes more staring I managed to tell the customer I could fix it at home and send it to him. He chose a different pouch.  

Robin is not interested in ACen, but Marmaduke doesn't have his membership yet, and will gladly trade Thursday and Sunday labor for a badge. Xaplet Minor is green with envy, as she has a conflict. Not sure where badge #5 would go, maybe Xaplet Major, if he's willing/able to work for it.

Late last night I got e-mail back saying that there are a few spaces left. I responded with a thank you, and asking if my attempt to do the pre-approval was eaten by the trolls under the ethernet bridge, or did it get through (in more formal phrasing). Waiting impatiently for answers. 

Yesterday I stayed home (mostly planned), and Ron came home after lunch. We went out to the Leather Factory store, and I found nice black soft leather in the scrap bin. I'd been planning to make belt satchels, sporrans, and smallish tabbed pouches, so it was an opportune find. I ended up cutting 5 belt satchels and most of 5 tabbed pouches out of it ("mostly" because I still have to cut inner pockets out for them, which I'll do out of my stash of bleah-colored steering wheel cover remnants). 

So, with luck we'll be doing ACen.

Black Thread Experiment Conclusions, and Other Pictures

Sorry, didn't mean to leave the results of the black thread vs white thread with black wax experiment on hold so long. Warning, this is a picture-heavy post.  Click to embiggen.

Here are the prepared sample strips, and my right hand, showing a dye smudge or two:

The "W" and "D" on the test strips indicate which run of stitching is the thread that was (factory) dyed black with beeswax, and which is (off-) white linen with the black encaustic media/wax.

Here's the sample strips with the white and dyed black stitching done, then both sides once the stitching with the black-waxed thread was done:

I was somewhat surprised there were no black smears on the leather, given the state of my hands:

Ron took the strips to our usual Wednesday night gathering, and the consensus was that the only way to tell the difference between the two rows of stitching was thread weight - my white and black linen threads are different weights.

Decision: I'm going to just use the black thread. The end result is virtually indistinguishable, and while beeswax may sometimes leave my hands a little sticky, it doesn't leave them smeary. If you look at the beeswax as a by-product of honey production, it comes out cheaper than the encaustic media.

CodCon prep continues, I'm optimistic that I can finish tonight, so that I can finish Ron's hakama tomorrow night. Contrary to my expectation, Cabela's called this morning and my ammo cans are in.

Disapproving Dog disapproves of getting ready for events:

Inching Along

Last night I checked the belt inventory list, and cut belts. Apparently havana (dark brown) was a strong seller at Military History Fest, that's what I made the most of.  I decided putting the hardware on could wait until we got to CodCon, as I think there's only one that we were completely out of. 

I did realize this morning that there's one or two belt blanks that we do need to put hardware on tonight - mundane (1-1/2" wide) belts get snaps to hold the buckle on, which Ron will definitely want to do with the new setter.

A month or two back, after Military History Fest, I made a couple semi-circular Civil War-era semi-circular belt pouches. I finished assembly, but they needed more attention - the leather I made them out of is a bit thick, so the ears on the sides (like side ears on a box with a tuck-in flap, like, um, band-aids) didn't want to fold in nicely, and the flaps are a bit recalcitrant. 

Nothing like an approaching event to encourage me to finish things, so this morning I soaked the pouches for a few minutes, stuffed them with newspaper to encourage them into a better shape, folded the ears, then wrapped them each in a small towel to keep the flaps where I want them while they dry. In a day or so they'll be dry, hopefully holding their shape better, and I can punch the last couple holes necessary to call them completely finished.  

I've got a box of new merchandise and other odds and ends being packed. Hopefully I'll be able to get all the new merchandise in it, but I won't cry too hard if I can't. 

I'm pretty sure I've got a bag of new conchos floating around the house, need to find those. And I need to bring the letter stamps, as we've already got some more conchos to add to the new display strap that we made a few weeks ago.

Current to-do-for-CodCon list, in no particular order:

• Find conchos
• Make embossed belt with concho and matching buckle set, in bag of conchos to be found
• Re-charge UPS
• Check to see if gaffer's tape is packed
• Pack velcro (found, just not in bin)
• Pack tools
• Buttonhole punch CW pouches once dry
• Put snaps on mundane belt blank(s)
• Update inventory and e-mail to external iBrain
• Pack letter stamps
• Pack things to work on
• Get all the packed things in one place so Ron and Robin can find it to pack the trailer 
• To-do list the external iBrain says I need to update the price list
• Print sales tax cheat sheets and price lists, e-mail to iBrain as necessary
• Strips of leather for historically accurate hardware display?
• Pack hardware from big hardware order
• Pack new pouches

I can get this all done by bedtime Thursday night. I can get this all done by bedtime Thursday night. Suuuure I can . . .

CodCon Prep & Schedule Natter

Saturday morning I finished the batch of hanging pouches I've been mucking about with, six in all. 2 large singles, and 4 small singles. I was down to setting the studs (which also hold the belt loop tabs in place for stitching), and sewing. I finished those up by noon, as well as putting the binding on the flap of a leather belt satchel that's been lurking about for months. 







After lunch, which we ate out to celebrate a relatively painless plumbing project, we went to Cabela's for more ammo cans for the sock yarn. Unfortunately, we came home can-less. They'd had some earlier in the day, but were apparently cleaned out. Insert regret for not stopping on the way home one day last week here. I did order some more, I expect they'll come in a week from today, ie: right after CodCon. 

Saturday afternoon I made the chain necessary to finish a soft pouch, which uses a dummy rifle round as a peg to hold it shut. I also got swivels sewn onto the last three tails. 

While I was doing that, Ron antiqued some brown embossed strips and made them into more wristbands. We have quite a number of wristbands for sale now. I really must figure out what I'm going to charge for them, and how much they cost us.

Sunday I alternated between making a hakama for Ron, so he can have a new Japanese-style outfit to wear at CodCon, too, and putting tags on the big batch of knitting needles I got recently-ish. I figured how much I paid for this batch (with shipping), which was more than the first batch. I priced the first batch based on what I paid for them, which I realized is not sensible, as I think I got the first batch on sale, and this batch I got some volume discounts on, but still weren't as cheap as the first.

Subsequent needle re-stock purchases may not be as large, or on sale, so I went back, found the base prices, and re-figured what to charge. Then I made labels (which I'd started), including ones with the new prices for the stuff I got in the first batch. Since all the labelling on the packages is in Chinese, I put the needle sizes on the stickers, so people don't have to read the markings stamped into the needles (which gets challenging on a 2.0 mm diameter needle). Ron helped me put the stickers on. 

I'd also ordered some cable needles, and realized I ordered Stupid Amounts of one type - instead of ordering by single sets, one type was packages of two sets (three sizes per set), and the other was packages of *five* sets. Which meant I got 6 sets of one style (not so bad), and fifteen of the other (definitely Stupid Amounts). Fortunately, it wasn't a terribly expensive mistake, and plastic cable needles don't go bad. 

E-mailed the faculty sponsor/contact for the college SF club that puts on CodCon to find out what time setup starts Friday. Which will be just Ron and I, as Robin has begged off, having joined a Friday night D&D game. Fink. :)

Still need to figure prices on the new pouches, get them into inventory, tag them, and pack them up. Tonight I need to check inventory to see if we need to make more belts. Hopefully we don't need to get more leather to do so. It wouldn't be impossible at this point, but it'll be a little nerve-wracking time-wise. Will need to pack tools, once a decision is made on belts and make any necessary. 

I meant to send some things out to the trailer yesterday, but never got a Round Tuit. But Robin will be home tomorrow, I can always leave him a stack. 

Future Events:

Once I post this I'll be pulling the May 4th Midrealm Coronation off the schedule. Its in the City of Chicago, at a church/school, and while I think there may be a parking lot adjacent, its across a not-minor roadway (Montrose Ave.), it just doesn't look like a trailer-amenable situation.

Northshield Crown Tournament, on May 11th, however, looks better. Its at a park/fairgrounds that I think we've been to in the past. Fairground-ish sites generally  trailer-amenable. Anyhow, need to make our reservations for that. 

 

Embossing and Dyeing and Antiquing

Friday night we went to Dick Blick (art supply mega-mart) and procured an inexpensive (but decent) airbrush to use with dye. We do have other airbrushes in the house, and this one is almost identical to an old one of Ron's, but that one is pretty well used.

We tested the airbrush with the new golden brown dye Saturday morning, and it worked quite well - Ron got nice coverage while using much less dye than applying with a rag. It also turns out that, although IIRC the dye is petroleum-based, rubbing alcohol works as a thinner. (Forced discovery, as the cans I thought contained various thinners contained wood stains). This is something nice to know, because alcohol is less nasty than mineral spirits or other high-test thinners, is fairly cheap, easy to find, and might work for removing dye spots from my hands if necessary (not that I usually care, although I do wear gloves to try to minimize dyeing myself).

Saturday morning we went to the LF store, for antiquing. I have a couple jars of paste antiquing, but LF doesn't carry that brand/type any more (Fiebing's). I was waffling if I wanted to switch to the LF house brand, "Eco-Flo", which is a more liquid gel. Our local store has a table where you can try the different finishes, so we took along some embossed samples (because the whole point is bringing out the embossing) to play.

The first employee said you absolutely must use a resist applied to the design areas you want to leave highlighted, to which I replied "yeah, no, forget it". Fortunately, the manager rescued the situation and explained that no, you can use a spray resist/finish applied to everything, and demonstrated. We were mostly convinced, and left with a big bottle, and a couple ideas.

On the way we made another stop at Dick Blick, and got a couple squeegees. We also got another paint bottle or two for the airbrush, to try it with black dye.

Squeegee tests were very encouraging. You can use a lot less of the antiquing gel with a squeegee than you can with paper towel or a sponge, and using a squeegee, you don't need resist at all. Here's some samples:

The top two are un-dyed, just embossed. The bottom three have all been antiqued. The bottom two were dyed, the bottom one heavily, and had a coat of spray resist before antiquing. The middle, floral, pattern strip was not pre-dyed or resisted, the antiquing darkened up the lighter/higher surfaces.

In general the floral embossing design looks nice. The celtic one doesn't produce a very deep impression, it really needs the antiquing to make it stand out. Both those rolls are from Leather Factory. The basketweave roll is pretty good. The "Yahoo" design (bottom one in the picture above) produces a really nice deep impression if you have thick enough leather, which shows off very well when antiqued. Both the basketweave and yahoo are from Tippmann, which makes the embossing machine.

Ron also embossed some black harness leather strips (IIRC the celtic design) , and made a stack of wrist bands. They look nice, but to get a good impression you have to set the machine so tight its hard to crank a strip through. From now on we'll use vegetable-tanned leather, which takes an impression better, and dye it black.

Worked a little bit on hanging pouches on Saturday. Sunday and the previous weekend we were working on sewing, see natter natter natter on my personal blog about that.

This coming weekend I want to finish the hanging pouches, the three tails that need swivels, and hopefully make some drawstring bags. And we've got some brown embossed strips that are dyed, but need to be antiqued and turned into wristbands. Because we really need more things to find room for. 

I also still need to get more ammo cans for packing the new yarn into. And I need to get price stickers made and onto all the knitting needles . . . 

. . . because next weekend is CodCon!

Small Project Progress

The custom order has left the building. Last night we finished the belt (punch holes, cut to length), and it went out in today's mail.

The new press/setter arrived yesterday. Ron is very happy with it. For bonus happy points, it will use the same dies as our old one. 

Ron's made two trips to Leather Factory today. This morning he went and got another embossing die, which turned out to not fit our machine. This afternoon he went back and exchanged it for one that does fit (makes me wonder if the first one would fit their machine, or if it was a quality control failure). 

I suggested putting the embossing dies in the tool drawer with the cutting dies, but Ron  asked to stop and get a tackle-ish box like the ones we got for conchos, as there's not as much room as I was thinking in the drawer. 

Some of you may recall the knotwork design Ron has tattooed on his arm, which we refer to as "'Shrooms". Ron would like to get it done on embossing roll. The original paper copy is hiding, so I've re-drawn it, so Ron can scan it then trace it in Illustrator. 

Been lacing around the flaps for hanging pouches this week during my lunch breaks. The current roll of lace is shedding gobs of little-bitty black bits, and I had a meeting yesterday afternoon. But I'd thought ahead and worn a black shirt. 

When I was at the Leather Factory Wednesday I got a buckle, loop, and tip set with a celtic design, which has a matching concho. Instead of putting the hardware out for sale, I've decided to emboss a belt blank with the celtic design I picked up on the same trip, and put the belt buckle, etc. on it. 

Last night Ron was fooling around with the embosser making wristbands (not-girly bracelets), which is how he noticed we're low on snaps. So we may have some of those for sale. No pictures yet, though.

The stitched samples (white thread made black with black wax and black thread with beeswax) went to VS on Wednesday. The only way they could be told apart was that the white and black threads are slightly different weights. I've pretty much decided to just use black thread, but I promise a more complete discussion of the subject Real Soon Now.

Picture Time!

There should have been a picture of an embossing machine in Monday's post, but the trolls under the ethernet bridge seem to have eaten it.  How odd.

The embossing machine arrived yesterday. By the time I got home Ron had it temporarily screwed to a section of 2x8, for clamping into the jaws of a Workmate. A quick trip to the hardware store, a little drilling and cursing at recalcitrant nuts, and it was permanently mounted (I don't recommend clicking to embiggen this one, unless you want to see how bad the focus is):

Here's some scraps we were playing with:

On the way home from work I detoured to the Leather Factory store and picked up a couple more embossing rolls - one celtic knotwork, and one that looks like a strand of rope. I also have another one on order, with some single creasing rolls to stack on either side of one of the patterned rolls, like we did with multiple passes with a single roll in the top sample. The embosser came with two single rolls, but they're different widths; I ordered one more of each width, so we have a pair of each.

Tonight I finished the custom hanging pouch for the Etsy order I mentioned. Here it is with skirt hikes and the belt:

Here's Pippin telling me to quit messing around taking pictures and hand over his morning meds/treat:

Here's two pairs of skirt hikes, large and small rings:

And here's Pippin stubbornly insisting there's room on the couch for him, too (Sunday afternoon), while I sit on the floor cutting leather for hanging pouch backs:

 

Hear That?

Listen, can you hear it? That's the sound of money being spent.

We, in the form of Otter Necessities, are doing our part in encouraging the economy. 

Once upon a time we looked at an embossing machine that Tandy carried. They currently carry a different one, but the machine they used to carry is still available made by the company I've bought a couple-three cutting dies from, as it happens. I've also been drooling over a machine that another supplier carries that creases (puts grooves along the edges of) belts and straps.  Waffle waffle waffle.

This weekend the waffle event horizon collapsed and today I ordered the embossing machine, which will also do creasing. 

I also ordered a hand setting machine for snaps, rivets, etc. 

We have a setter, but it really should be mounted on a stand and be operated by a foot press - the handle points toward the back, downward, and is fairly short. The new one is a better design. 

I think the triggering event for the purchase of the embosser, besides having available fundage from our tax return, was a request by an Etsy customer. We'd been discussing a hanging belt pouch and belt, and she asked if we made "skirt hikes". I followed the link she provided, and then responded that ya, you betcha, we can!  

Here's a version from an Amazon seller. 

The version the customer was looking at was a plain narrow strap with two round rings, so that's what I made. And being feeelthy merchant scum (tm), I made some more to sell. How does this lead to purchasing an embossing machine?  Because if we had one, we could make fancy-schmancy ones with a pattern embossed on them. Or creased borders. And charge extra for them, being feeelthy merchant scum and all.

Meanwhile, the side of my brain that has been looking at trying to make fairly accurate Civil War-era accoutrements clutched its pearls and hyperventilated about modern farby wench gear.  It got a pat on the head and sympathetic noises.

Yesterday I cut out and worked on a custom hanging pouch for the customer. While I was out it, I cut out some more hanging pouches, which we could use. I, um, got a little carried away. I've got parts for 4 small and 2 large ones, besides the customer's.  But assembly-line production works so well!

Needless to say, I spent a good chunk of yesterday in the dining room. Pippin, being my dog, kept me company.

While I was working on pouches, Ron made got the ratcheting tie-down straps I'd bought parts and strapping for made/modified (about half the hardware came from straps we'd bought at various times, that were less-than ideal lengths, thin floppy annoying webbing, or both). 

I need to go to Cabela's and get more ammunition cans for the sock yarn. Right now the yarn is in jumbo zippy bags (to keep the dogs, and their hair, out of it). I was thinking I needed another collapsible fabric bin to display it in, but I'm waffling about display options, and holding off.  I also need to see if I can find a basic sock pattern, either to sell or give away. The supplier I bought the laceweight yarn from has patterns, and my original plan was to get sock patterns with sock yarn from there, but then I went and bought my MIL's sock yarn. Oops. Have to check my minimum order requirement and what I've sold/need to replace in laceweight yarn.

To go with the yarn, last week I ordered a bunch more knitting needles - I'll have bamboo needles in US sizes 0 through 10, in 8" double points, and 16" and 32" circulars, and aluminum double points in an oddball size that works out to, IIRC, US size 2.5.  I may need one more of the little mesh cubes, so I have one for double-points and one for each length circular, but that's minor.

Tote Bag and Other Accomplishments

Rewinding almost a week, between the weather and bad attitude, I took a sanity day on Tuesday.

I meant to work on something-or-other, but spent a whack of time cleaning up data. I didn't delete a lot, but I think its somewhat more rationally organized. 

Other accomplishments Tuesday were getting the sales from Military History Fest actually recorded in the books, and making test pieces for the whole black thread vs. white-thread-with-black-wax question.

Which reminds me, while I was out of the house taking Robin to school, Pippin decided to chew on the tube containing the oil paint stick, which I'd decided was too soft and messy to be useful in waxing thread. He decided it was icky and no fun to chew on. How do I know Pippin was the guilty party? The black oil paint smear on his leg. 

I got the stitching done on the test pieces, finally finishing yesterday, now to carry them around for a few days. More about the whole process when that's done.

Saturday I grumbled about the weather's continuing non-cooperation with taking parts outside to dye black.  

Then I cut out a bunch of little percussion cap pouches. I'd been waffling on how many to make, which I decided by starting out with the strip I'd cut for gussets. I got 5 gussets out of it, so I cut out 5 pouches.

Then I moved on to cutting out a fabric bag to carry the new concho boxes, had to leave for a MuseCon meeting, then didn't work on much more after that. 

Yesterday, after Ron left for a trip to Michigan, I gave up on waiting for the weather, got Robin to set up tables and the small spray booth (which has an exhaust fan, which we installed a Y in the dryer duct for), and got his help dyeing lots and lots of parts black. 

Next, I finished the bag, shown here:

The fabric is denim, bought ages ago, I think to make hakama for Robin. There wasn't enough to make a pair of adult-sized hakama (as no one in our family is short and twiggy), so I apppropriated some of it for this project. 

I cut a piece the right width for the main body from the larger piece of fabric, then realized that the piece was large enough to make the body of the bag two layers. The demin is a little lighter/softer than duck, so I went ahead and made the bag two layers thick. The handles are strips, folded in quarters (edges in). They're a little long, because I used strips the full width of the fabric, so the ends of the strips are the selvedge edges of the fabric, and thus won't ravel. 

I keep thinking the bag is "gaily striped", because I've been reading 19th century young-adult-ish literature lately, and that's the kind of description I think they'd use for it. But I digress.  The bag took longer to assemble than I expected, mostly because of fussing about folding and pressing the handle strips. And I kept having to stop and refill the bobbin (sewed it on the big machine).  

Tonight I need to bring all the dyed parts upstairs and re-sort the pieces back into their zippy bags. The two different rifle cartridge pouches and a pistol cartridge pouch have a lot of similar-looking pieces. We kept them sorted while dyeing and laying them out on foil-covered cookie sheets to dry, so I just have to put each set of pieces in the right bag. 

Ron made a stop at his parents house yesterday, and shortly before he got there suggested I look at what we have and what we want of his mom's knitting patterns. I sent a list, and a little later he called back, and asked about sock yarn. Ron had mentioned that I wanted to start carrying sock yarn, and she offered us a deal on some she had. I think we might be cleaning out her stock. I had been mentally allocating the proceeds from CodCon to more yarn, now it looks like I'll have sock yarn, and new patterns, for CodCon...

...which means I need to get more knitting needles, in appropriate sizes (I started out with just the sizes needed for the lace patterns we had), and see about finding a basic sock pattern. 

I have also declared that before CodCon we will be modifying/making straps for the trailer, dammit. Ron has agreed, I think we'll do those this coming weekend.

. . . The Rest of the Weekend

Thread- and wax-related messing about actually took up relatively little of the weekend, so what else did I do?

Saturday morning I packed up a pouch that was purchased via Etsy while I was off at the annual floodplain manager's conference. In the process of doing the postage, I signed up for Etsy's "Direct Checkout" program, which is a PayPal-like setup for people to pay by credit card, for a fee, of course. If you sign up for it, you can generate shipping labels from within Etsy's system, even if the purchase was not made with Direct Checkout.

Saturday afternoon I made a price list for conchos, with pictures. I had to go through the three suppliers I get conchos from and find the ones I have, and I also chose ones I might decide to carry. Get images, create spreadsheet, drop images in spreadsheet, go back and edit a bunch of images, finish spreadsheet, export to PDF, export to PDF again a different way, edit spreadsheet, export, possibly repeat edit/export cycle, until done.

Next step is to stamp letter codes by all the conchos on the display strip, and make a new hang tag that has the price for each code. One of the edit/export cycles was to put the letter codes on the spreadsheet. 

I meant to finish up the concho-pricing project on Sunday, but it didn't happen. We went do Dick Blick for black waxy stuff, did personal errands, then went to Dick's Sporting Goods, to look for a tackle box to store conchos in. 

I was looking at a Plano box that holds smaller, flat boxes, like this one, but there's a lot of not-very-useful or flat out dead space in it. I like the flat Plano boxes (I keep tools in several, and they've held up quite well, other than the time they were crushed by Thing 1 shifting in a rental trailer), so I decided to go with those and a tote bag.

But, Dick's didn't have Plano boxes in a bag, only some other brand. Nor did they have individual boxes the size I wanted. Ron wisely counseled not buying a bag with planning to replace the boxes, so we went to Cabela's. There we found boxes we like (good hinges), in the size I wanted (this style, not necessarily this size). They didn't have any in bags, but I don't want a bag with lots of extra pockets, so I'll make one myself, out of either leather or canvas. Or maybe we can fit them into Thing 2. (Ron is probably laughing right about now) Four boxes followed us home, which should be plenty.

It was wet and rainy all afternoon/evening, so I didn't ask Robin to go spelunking in the trailer in Thing 2 for conchos. If we don't get conchos into the tackle boxes before the next event, we can do it at the next event (CodCon, IIRC). I do need to measure the stack of boxes so I can make a bag. Not sure if its going to be leather or canvas. 

Because it was wet and icky not just yesterday afternoon, but all weekend, I haven't gotten cartridge box parts dyed black. I considered doing it in the basement yesterday afternoon, but lacked sufficient motivation.

After lunch yesterday I sat down at the computer, found websites for custom stamp manufacturers, and was going to come up with a design. However, finding the outline-only Illustrator file of our Otter logo turned out to be non-trivial.

That searched turned into another project, in which Ron did a search for all the Illustrator files on the computer and bank of hard drives, determined which were the latest copies, and copied all of those to one central location. Note to self, make sure that that location is being backed up regularly. After that, Ron went through and updated the set of images I use for MuseCon, so all of those are in one place (which was the original intent, but edits and additions have happened over time). 

Ron did, in the process, find the image I'd been looking for. So maybe this week I can get a maker's stamp designed. I also need to go through and clean up my MuseCon and other design directories, there is a lot of unnecessary duplication of files in them. I can also probably get rid of a lot of stuff that I did for the Graphic Design courses I took at Harper. Not that we're short of drive space, it can just be challenging to find the stuff you want in all the cruft.