Recent projects that have occupied my hands and brain

Recently I picked up a Martin Turbinator T-100 stand hair dryer via our local Freecycle, and of course it had to be turned into a lamp. I started this particular project over the holiday break, welded the stand yesterday, and finished the wiring earlier today:

I wired the bulb to an existing exterior switch, and flipped the heating element upside down and that made an excellent screen for the bulb. It is mounted where the motor used to live:

It was easy enough to run the cord through the square tubing for a neater appearance:

And of course, things wouldn't be right if I wasn't making wallets. Here are some trucker wallets and bifolds that were recently completed. The trucker wallets are vegetable-tanned and were lightly oiled, and the bifolds are something of an experiment. I used a green leather that may or may not age well, so these will probably be sold for cheap:

Side note - I think I might stop making so many of these simple, unfinished, small leather goods. There are so many people doing the exact same thing and there isn't much to distinguish these from what other people are making. I should probably concentrate on the weird things - unique tooled imagery and more items like the isopod clutch. Speaking of clutches, here's one I made for the Arts and Drafts holiday party while elephant gift exchange:

There's been some more carving lately too. First up is a unique exchange - a veterinarian's wife bought one of my brass teeth key fobs for him a while back. She mentioned that he often ended up with extracted animal teeth and asked if I would be interested in any of them. Recently he ended up with a couple of dog teeth, a canine and an incisor, and they asked if I would make him a brass key fob based on the canine, in exchange for the two real teeth. I was definitely interested:

 Here is the canine I was given, and the basis for the carving:

Here's a simple fang/tusk lanyard I carved for one of my pocket knives. It's carved out of elk antler, stained with coffee, and finished with some plaiting and knotwork:

Last but not least, here is the doom turnip I carved for my special lady friend. She's been hooked on a video game called Animal Crossing, and one of the tasks she keeps repeating is the buying and selling of turnips. So, I made her a special one:

Forgot to include this trade - a friend of my dad wanted to know if I could make him some beer koozies. He'd shot an alligator and had the hide tanned, and wanted me to use this hide. The trade would be that I could keep whatever alligator hide was left over. I ended up using somewhere between one half and two thirds of the hide to make him seven koozies. It's the underside of the gator, so it's not as ridged and knobby as the back would be, but there's still plenty of variation and texture. They are lined with veg-tanned leather to give them some rigidity and they are designed to be used with a real koozie inside. The tricky part was the sizing - long neck bottles, short neck bottles, and cans all have different diameters. The owners of these will need to use different koozies for different beers, but I don't think that will be a problem:

Deep sea isopod clutch purse

Sometimes when Xmas is approaching you're completely stumped as to what to make your significant other as a gift. And sometimes that special young lady, a few days before the actual holiday, makes a joking remark about how cool it would be if she had a clutch purse that looked like a deep sea isopod. Challenge accepted!

Some thoughts on the concept of a waiting list

I am terrible at managing my waiting list, and here are some of the reasons why:

1 - My unrelated, full-time job doesn't leave me much time to dedicate towards working on items in the queue. I think of my leather work as a second job, but I really only have the time to spare that one would use for a hobby.

2 - When I do have spare time, it doesn't always go towards working on the projects that are waiting. Sometimes I need to make new designs, or refine existing patterns, or just try new things to keep this line of work from feeling stale. Sometimes I create wallets for my Etsy store. Sometimes I work on a legitimate hobby (lock picking, learning to make and crack whips). And then there are the requests for small projects that I know won't take very long, so I squeeze them in right then.

3 - I believe it was Bruce Sterling that said "the more you can do, the more you will do." There's a lot I can do, so there are things other than leather working that occupy my time. If my car breaks, I fix it. If my bike needs maintenance/modification, I do it. If there's something I need for the house, I'll probably try to build it.

Recently, I took a long hard look at how I've been spending my time this year, and it was kind of a shock to see just how little time I've spent working on items from the waiting list. Then I spent way too much time trying to think of new and exciting ways to approach the queue, as the traditional, take-them-in-the-order-in-which-they-came approach didn't seem to be working for me. I gave some serious thought to declaring "waiting list bankruptcy," and just erasing my waiting list. This was to be paired with a very simple approach to requests - I'm either available to work on one project, or I'm not. A waiting list would not be maintained, and I'd either work on a request right then or interested parties would have to check back later. There would be a notice somewhere, probably on this site, when I was available, and it would be removed when I took on a project. The other option was to just stop doing custom work altogether, but this option seems less likely as I really do like new challenges. 

After lots of thought in this vein, I decided that declaring waiting list bankruptcy was the cowardly approach to avoiding a lot of awkward email and/or phone conversations. "Hey, um, I know it's been years since we talked about this and you probably forgot who I am, but do you still want that guitar strap?" So, I'm going to keep working through the waiting list at my customary glacial pace, but I am going to make a change or two. Without a regular supply of free time, giving someone an estimate as to how long it will be till I can get to their order is both optimistic and foolish. From now on, I'm going to be much more honest and just tell interested parties "I don't know how long it will take, but it's going to take a long time."

One other thing - when I do contact people to tell them that it's their turn in the queue, there is a good chance that I'll never get a response from them. Maybe their contact info changed, maybe they don't remember who I am, or maybe they (justifiably!) got sick of waiting for me to get in touch. So maybe this waiting list isn't nearly as daunting as I think.

As always, feel free to get in touch if you think your project has been forgotten.

Mostly wallets and some transportation issues

Lots of work happening lately...that is, when I'm not having to do repairs on my truck or making major modifications to my daily commuter bike. Up first is yet another trucker wallet, this time with a prickly pear/eyeball design:

On a whim, I decided to make myself a newer, fancier wallet. The exterior is ostrich leg and uses cowhide for the edge braiding. The interior is an eye-watering shade of green, and a side snap keeps all my essentials secure (I usually throw my wallet in a bag):

Here is a batch of nubuck front pocket wallets for my Etsy store:

Here's a snap bifold in that same ambiguous not quite gray/not quite blue nubuck leather:

Then I made a batch of really simple front pocket wallets/card cases. Also on Etsy:

Then, I decided to spring for some Horween shell cordovan and made a couple of, you guessed it, wallets. Up first is a snap bifold:

And there was enough left over to make a front pocket wallet/card case:

Last but certainly not least is a pipe and tobacco pouch for a rather long, Gandalf-style pipe. This was yet another opportunity to tool a design with that Great Old One, Cthulhu. It's got four inner pockets for tools and/or cards, and one large zippered and undyed pocket for tobacco: