It was a long week of work, both at the day job & in the studio. One boss, who does not live inside my head, left for West Palm Beach for the week and the other one who, of course, does live inside my head was working overtime. So I had to both work lots of actual hours for actual boss and then pile on more ephemeral hours for headboss. I’ll say this, but please don’t repeat it… headboss can be a lazy fucker. Most weeks he sits in his ‘72 la-z-boy with a bullwhip drinking buds and falling asleep before thinking about getting me in gear. I’ll show up to the studio, ready to go &… nothing. No structure, no nothing. But as soon as headboss gets a call from the district manager (district manager meaning, of course, any customer… a boutique owner, someone interested in a bag &c.) he whips right into shape and things plug along. So, like some old adage, the more work I had to do, the more work I got done. Headboss & myself finished the project with aplomb, regained some of our confidence & sent away a great package full of ish happiness. The dread I have in the days & weeks before a large workload comes down to me turns into a sort of busy pride once I’m in the work. It’s great to turn down friends’ requests for activities with “oh man, I’m just swamped with work at the studio once I get done with my regular work.” It makes me realize how great it is to actually have a studio as well as having enough work to keep busy in it. Now that everything’s finished we’re still a bit buzzed, I still catch headboss eyeing his la-z-boy every once in a while. I know that soon enough he’ll be back to drooling on my timesheet.

A couple photos from this week…

stock photo for lazy bloggers

My life is not just spent in front of my sewing machine and this screen. Most of the hours of any given week are taken up selling wine at a boutique wine-only store. Not only does it afford me the pleasures of having a “day job” and therefore funding — barely — my design habit, I get to be a part of and representative of the wine world. Most of my sales are made through suggestions because we don’t sell Yellow Tail or Ecco Domani or just about anything else you’ve heard of. I have to explain a lot to the customers, but I think, in the end, they learn more about the wines they buy than they would if they went straight for a familiar label. I really like the part of my job that lets me engage with people about wine. It’s fun to talk about wines, to make fun of wine culture, to share drinking experiences. The best part, though, is the mental feasts I dine on throughout the evening. One of the easiest ways to make a suggestion for someone is to find out with the wine will be paired with. That simple question produces answers ranging from spaghetti & Paul Newman sauce to pan seared Copper River salmon with a sesame seed crust & a salad of microgreens with an orange and balsamic vinaigrette. The flashes of imagery my mind makes after these descriptions are better than eating any meal. For that moment, the dish is perfectly cooked with tendrils of steam rising from the plate and it’s all perfectly lit at a beautiful table, just like those shitty soft-focus pictures that food magazines are filled with. I summon the taste center of my brain for an wine accompaniment and then, mentally, the flavors highlight each others’ strengths and downplay their weaknesses perfectly. It is a moment of (food) perfection that I rarely experience in real life, but that mirrors the pleasures of designing. Design is trying to achieve the same moments of being. I see the bags as I’m designing them perfectly lit, functioning perfectly and practically. I guess those moments of, albeit fantastic, perfection create the momentum to power through the very imperfect reality of creating the meal, the bag, the days. I have to see the reality of all of my bags, but all of those meals wait in stasis, never to be loudly chewed, never to be thrown out or cleaned up after. If only that was a world more available to us everyday.

You may remember my post bitching about the problems with mintd. That was three months ago and the cause for my bitchiness has none subsided. I guess I’m posting about this again because I’m flat out surprised that something like this could survive. Every time I go to the site I’m either lucky enough to get access to a few pages or unlucky enough to get to the home page and have a little hope. It’s just another thing on my list of things I can’t believe still exist. The funny part is that I don’t here much bitching from anyone else. Whenever mintd posts a blog post, especially one about downtime or errors, everyone is so positive & forgiving I feel like I’m part of a selling support group. I love positive vibes, to be sure, and I don’t enjoy being a bitchy asshole but come on… this site is unusable. Maybe I’m just being fuckd with.

I haven’t had much to say lately because I haven’t had much to do. I made some new wrist cuffs & set them up in Subdivision & I’ve got some good designs for two smaller projects & one larger project. The two smaller projects are simple things that, even in their simplicity I have managed to draw out way too long. I’m also starting designs on the first ish backpack which really is a big project. The designs are good but I haven’t had any studio time lately and my supplies & money are running on low right now. I expect to get back into it pretty hardcore in a couple weeks.

Overall everything’s going pretty smoothly, but I do wish that whenever my business enterprises took a bad turn that someone would take a picture of me looking distressed, concerned and/or displeased & with my hand on my head. They do it for wall street traders, why not the rest of us?

Oh wait… I guess it’s because my entire life isn’t dependent on a whole bunch of numbers.

So yes, I’m back in NY, still trying to get back into the proverbial groove (what proverb was that again?). I had some great meetings with some Denver boutique folks & got a chance to visit my old haunts. Once I got back, I got to get in some studio time & made a few new wrist cuffs. Even more exciting, though, is the new designs I’ve been working on. Jayson at Subdivision requested an ish backpack, so I’ve been putting some sketches down on paper. I’m really excited to see how it could turn out. I think it will be stylistically similar to the standard v.5, with more room & more pockets. This is all to happen when I get back into the rhythm of ish work which is as elusive as the last ice cube at the bottom of a tall glass. Please don’t ask why I haven’t quit my job to work solely on ish stuff, ’cause it’s not like I haven’t thought of it already & I might just start to cry. If I were more committed to being even broker than I am now, maybe, but apparently I’d like to be able to keep paying rent for a while.