The Legs Fall Off If You Move It

We’ve had a long series of coincidences occurring since we opened.  A customer will ask for something, and we will have just received that very thing the day before.  Or, a customer will ask for something fairly obscure and specific, and we won’t have it at the time, but it will come in some time later. 

For example, some vintage Aunt Martha’s embroidery patterns were requested by our friend Paula on her first visit a couple months ago.  We didn’t have any then, or for a long time after. 

One Saturday not so long ago, I was unpacking/sorting/pricing a box of cool stuff that had just come in, and lo and behold, there is a stack of Aunt Martha’s embroidery patterns — the good, vintage ones, not the reprints.  I am in the process of holding them up to show Jennifer and saying, “Hey, Paula wanted these,” when Paula walks in the door for her second visit ever and right smack into the handful of Aunt Martha’s patterns I’m holding up. 

Stuff like that.  Happens all the time.  Crazy.  Not to get all other worldly and spooky on you folks, but it’s weird.  And it happens often enough that … it’s a thing.  Something’s going on.  We’ve got the hookup, or the hot line or the Bat phone.  It’s cool.

A couple weeks ago, I was getting a little worried because our until-then steady stream of stuff had seemed to slow down.  We were … caught up!  Everything was … clean!  And straight!  And organized!  So, I think to myself, “Self, it’s finally time to put the word out to the business community and start collecting from business and industry.”  And, I sh*t you not — the door bammed open, and in walked a guy with a mountain of stuff, and it hasn’t slowed down for one second since then. 

We have been living in a series of “Before” pictures ever since.  Hopefully we’ll get to an “after” state again one day soon, but in the meantime, customers have been gamely stepping over and around and through whatever we’ve had strewn around the aisles.   The picture below is from the classroom, where we will be having a CLASS in THREE DAYS!  (I don’t know what it is about this blog stuff, but I feel like I’m writing like Nathan Lane talks, particularly Nathan Lane in The Birdcage.  “He’s chewing GUM … while I’m SINGING.”  Like that.  Maybe that’s how I talk, too?  Probably.) 

In other news, I was at the Bellaire Recycles event last Saturday and had fun (despite weather) showing folks how to make a Coke can Christmas tree garland.  Response to that was so good, in fact, we’ll be doing a demonstration of that this weekend at the store.   And, I would remind you that I am from The South, and all cans containing carbonated beverages are Coke cans to me, so don’t go all semantics on me, Internet.

I’m speaking at a meeting of Women in the Visual & Literary Arts tomorrow, so that should be fun for all of us.  This is my first speaking engagement since leaving my old company, and I am certainly more practiced at providing information on access control & security systems for offices and tenants, but I’m sure I’ll get into the swing of it.  Hopefully I won’t freeze up.  Hopefully.

We are proud sponsors of ArtCrawl2010 which is this weekend, and I am volunteering at WHAM (the arts market and shopping fest at Winter Street Galleries) Friday PM and Sunday AM, so that should be fun, too. 

And, we posted our second class/workshop calendar that will take us through the end of the year.  There’s a wide range of offerings — bottle cap bracelets, a book purse, paper beads, altered tins — on and on.  And, we’ve decided to offer a two-fer for each registration through the end of the year, so people can bring a friend with them to each class, which I think is a more fun way to take a class anyway.  I’ll be teaching at least one (if you can believe that), and maybe a couple as folks have requested some instruction in areas where I’m skilled enough to offer it.  Should be fun, and should not be missed!

AND, we’ve been contacted by a MAJOR architectural firm that is committed to recycling their discontinued finish samples, so we should have a good steady stream of high end samples coming our way very soon.  More deets on that when we’re up and running.

There’s so much going on!  It has seemed like a lot, and now that I read back over this post — it IS a lot!

This entry was posted on Monday, November 15th, 2010 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.