Month: January 2015

So I’m doing this custom camera bag for someone, and I ordered a tool to use for burnishing leather edges last week which STILL hasn’t gotten here.  I’m kind of wishing I’d just gone to Tandy Leather even though it’s not super convenient.  Eh, oh well.

Am getting excited about the camera bag nevertheless, and already want to make more.  I think I undercharged for this one and if I make additional bags for Etsy or something, will charge more.  Still getting the feel for how much to charge on things!

Last night, instead of doing anything productive, I played Skyrim and then sort of worked on some oak leaves while watching Seinfeld.  Mostly I watched Seinfeld though.  It was a relaxing evening.  Tonight I’ll actually be piecing stuff together though, which does count as being productive.  I thought about taking pictures of the process of making this camera bag and posting a bit of a tutorial, but that seems like a whole lot of work and I’m liable to forget to stop for pictures which would result in incomplete instructions.  Hm, that might actually not be bad.

Stupid Skyrim.  I wasn’t even thinking about it, until I mentioned it above and remembered where I stopped last night.  I’m doing the Dragonborn quest in Solstheim with ol’ Herma Mora.  This character (Bjean) is at level 40 or 41 or something, and I’ve been in Solstheim before (in fact, Talvas Fathryon – Neloth’s student – was my follower for a long time and is now my Steward back in Skyrim) but just hadn’t ever started the Miraak quest.  I like having a decent bow before I go into the Apocrypha…..  Last save was right after entering Apocrypha; I even have a handful of Black Books but haven’t even used them yet.  Blast.

But anyway.  Can totally save that for some other time when I don’t need to be productive.

First of all — MADE MY FIRST SALE LAST NIGHT!!!!  Wooohooooooooo!!!!  To a complete stranger in Vermont, too!!  So exciting.  They bought the satchel with the shoulder strap, so I need to make another one of those because someone else had expressed interest in it, too.  Currently I’m working on two things though; someone in Knoxville who knows people from Grace asked me to make him a custom camera bag (waiting on a tool to get here before I really tackle that one), and I just started a variation on the satchel last night.

Which leads me to my next topic — two of my listings were taken down yesterday because the copyright holder had contacted Etsy as they were in violation of their intellectual property rights.  Which…I mean, I get it.  I was unsure about listing them with “Skyrim” in the title in the first place, but since so so sooo many other people similarly listed items, I figured it was ok.  Well…no, not so much.  Sooo I relisted them after removing every reference to Skyrim, and my shop views have plummeted.  Like, drastically.  Which is one reason I’m moving on to other designs.  I might go back in a week or so and add Skyrim to the tags, but apparently even that can get you shut down if the copyright holder reports it.  So.  Yeah.

I guess these pictures are kind of redundant, but I just like all of them!

I tried to work up a pattern for another Skyrim replica last night, only to become frustrated because the video game design works lousily in real life.  Seriously — who ever heard of attaching backpack straps to the cover flap of the backpack?!  Terrible design.  I may have come up with a way to work around it while still making the bag look like it does in Skyrim, but it’s very hard to know whether it’ll work or not when all I can do right now (at work) is draw blueprints.  Hmph.

Oh, Monday.  Here we are again.

Instead of complaining about how it’s Monday morning, I’m trying to be thankful for good weekends since without them, I would not mind Mondays as much.

Friday evening, went to the Pharmacy for beer and burgers (although I ended up splitting a bottle of chardonnay with Katie), along with Stephen, Amanda & Tim, Emily, and Brandon.  Had a good time but was too tired to go to Cabana with them after dinner.  I deeply appreciate getting enough sleep and not being hung over in the mornings…..  On Saturday, we went to Wendell Smith’s for breakfast, and then I went to Tandy Leather while Stephen ran an errand and went home.  I got a WHOLE COW for heavens sake.  I mean, leather from a whole cow.  It’s a TON of leather; I’m not really sure what the square footage is, but it’s a lot, and the $100 I paid for it was a good deal.  I bought this so that I can start making pouches (etc) to sell, and I made at least one over the weekend which is sell-able.  The first one I made turned out a bit crooked, which bothers me a lot, but Stephen said that it lends the piece an endearing homemade quality.  Meh.  I might list it as a sale.

So yeah, after leather shopping I spent the rest of the day at Stephen’s making stuff.  Oh, until we went to meet Cathy for dinner at Kien Giang, and I helped Stephen tape up some music parts.  It was a good day.

Sunday was a bit lazier (for me) than Saturday; Stephen got up and went to Fido to do some writing, so I cleaned his kitchen and then made some bread (by hand – no mixer – MAN that’s an upper body workout), and then played a bit of Skyrim.  He came back and wanted to watch football while he worked (imagine me rolling my eyes at this point), so I sat on the floor making another pouch.  Football turned into the Simpsons, which turned into the Golden Globes.  We made curried squash soup for dinner and had it along with the bread I’d made earlier.  Also a good – albeit lazy – day.

Furthermore, I finally got the wine I’d ordered; FedEx had misdelivered it two-fold — the wrong address, and the wrong time (as I had paid the $5 to select a 5-8 delivery window, and they delivered it before noon).  It was a whole ordeal and I had prepared myself to never see the wine at all.  BUT thankfully, my neighbors who had signed for it (I guess?) hadn’t opened it and were very pleasant.

Sooooo like I said, it’s Monday morning again, and I’m at the office like usual.  Stephen’s busy tonight so I’ll be fending for myself, although I left all my leather stuff at his house so I won’t be doing any of that.  Hm.  I might …..actually I have no idea what I’ll do tonight.  Maybe work out and then take a bath, dinner, go to bed?  That sounds boring, but also pleasant.  Guess I could always go grab my leather stuff while he’s out, but that’s a long drive to just turn around and go back home.  I’m getting to the point where I think we live entirely too far apart.

I wish I’d taken pictures of that apothecary’s satchel I made yesterday so I could list it on etsy.  Trying to come up with a creative shop name though…I guess that’s important?