The Legs Fall Off If You Move It

Pending business:

• Classes start this week!  First are ATC’s, then a day of the dead nicho, then a two week altered book class.  Click for more info.

• Sooo excited, but still so much to do in the multi-purpose classroom/stock room/receiving area.  I’m going to go hack away at that as soon as I get this posted.  And, there’s still so much to do because we received a TON of donations in the past couple weeks.  Literally.  It was a ton – 2,000 pounds.  I can barely fathom that.  Lots of Peanuts holiday crafts, tons of unfinished wood shapes, FAB.U.LOUS yarn, great old photographs, post cards, slides and photo albums, giant bags of artificial flowers, books, MDF in all sizes and more.  The City of Houston better recognize how I am personally forwarding its waste reduction and environmental goals.  I’ll wait right here by the phone <…tapping fingers…>. 

• Heading off to the first big meeting of the Reuse Alliance in Raleigh on Sunday.  There are people with decades of experience in the field coming from all over the country, so I’m hoping to learn a lot and meet some kindred spirits.  One of the speakers is the guy who wrote 1,000 Ideas for Creative Reuse, which I ended up carrying around with me to show lenders when I was chasing a small business loan.  They had just a touch of trouble understanding without visual aids, and even with visual aids …  Cleansing breath.  Never mind.  I’ve moved on.  It’s a great book – very inspiring. 

• Quilt Market!  I am unreasonably excited about being able to attend as a vendor for the first time and sent off credentials and registration at the last possible second, because that’s how I roll.  The magic words are “Trade show only.  Not open to the general public.”  Sorry, general public.  You’re out!  I registered for a few of the educational sessions as well as the giant free-for-all sample grab, so watch this space for all kinds of upcoming wisdom.  And, hopefully we’ll get to see some of the Quilt Market attendees who are looking for cool places to shop in Houston.

• Invited to speak at a meeting of the Women in Visual and Literary  Arts in November.  Several customers are members, so I’m looking forward to this as well, even though I’m a nervous public speaker, particularly in front of a pack of women.   

• Invited to have a booth at the Bellaire Recycles event in November.  I’m hoping to have my sh*t together well enough to do a simple make-and-take project with repurposed materials for folks as they stop by.  Or maybe just a demonstration?  I don’t know.  Need to figure it out soon, though. 

• Working on a quick survey to send out re: interest in future class topics and interest in using our almost clean classroom space and fancy tools for studio time during the day, or whenever we don’t have classes running in there.  I would have loved to be able to use somebody else’s more expensive than I could justify for occasional use tools and spread out on their tables, without a bunch of cats walking around on everything, and I’m betting I’m not the only one. 

Past business:

• Officially opened our bulk area, except everything won’t fit.  We’ve got serious space issues after only four months.  So much so that I have dreams about being crushed by encroaching piles of stuff.  In the meantime, we mostly have the bulk stuff poorly displayed in the shower (yes, the shower), with overflow everywhere else.  Free to teachers and nonprofits, and by-the-bag pricing for everybody else.

• Went to Winter Street’s Annual Artists Exhibition.  Totally amazing to see some of our cool stuff classed up and on display in several artists’ studios! 

• Installed a cool paper mache DJ skeleton at the Health Museum for their Siege of the Skeletons exhibit.  If you go by there, vote for us!   His name is “I’ve Got the Music in Me!”

Awk:

• There’s a longer story to tell here, but in brief, let’s just say that my family has a long history of saying exactly the wrong thing often enough that it’s a common trait referred to as The Turkey Chili.  Here’s a recent example –  An unbelievably fresh faced and dewy eyed young couple comes in one Saturday morning.  While the husband is looking around, fresh and dewy wife asks if we have embroidery floss.  Of course we have embroidery floss.  I ask what she’s working on, tell her stories of embroideries past, and rather excitedly tell her about something I’ve just seen on Mr. XStitch that had birds and offered the message that , “All the birds are singing that you’re gonna die.”  Well.  Dewy eyes become teary eyes, and she whispers, “I work in cancer treatment …”  Oh.  Well.  Awk.  Guess who left in a hurry and hasn’t been back?

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