Moving on, again
February 28th, 2009
Turned a corner this week. It’s time to be making money, for real.
I’ve been working on making new money since I left my last regular source of income. For more than a few years, I had been pretty certain that having more time to devote to my art would allow me to make enough art to support myself. This turns out not to be true. Despite all the best advice from all the best writers on marketing art, textile art (which is mostly what I do now) sells at $15/hour. I do not see that I can change the hours/square-foot-finished-product rate, or the $/square-foot-finished-product rate, in the amount of time I have before my severance runs out.
I experimented with some other products that might sell more profitably. 2009 is not a good year to be commited to a luxury product line.
I have been to lots of networking events and thought about alternatives and am playing the job search game, along with millions of my co-hort. I’ve taken classes I might normally not have had the time to take. I’ve pretended that I’m independently wealthy (with a deadline) and enjoyed not having to show up anywhere regularly. For a while, this business of “drifting” and having lots of uncommitted time has been fun.
Just this week, I proposed getting together with a friend who said she was too busy and couldn’t make it. In truth, I think that is all she said. I don’t think there were any additional implications, like she had work to do and I didn’t. But within 24 hours, I knew my days of independent-wealth-daydreaming were done.
I feel like I’m walking across an intersection between whatever road my life will turn out to have taken and an unmarked road. Somewhere at the end of that side road is a destination that has a name that will turn out to mean “irrelevance” or in some dialects, “parasitism.” I don’t think there’s much to worry about in fact; the money will run out and I will have found a new source of income before then. Long-term idleness is not an option.
But now I know something I didn’t before this week. I’m good for three months of not working. No more.
Useful information.
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)
Buying Health Insurance
January 23rd, 2009
What I learned in the past week about buying private-pay health insurance:
- “Converting” (as opposed to continuing coverage under COBRA) a company-paid policy is no longer an option. You simply buy your own policy. Not all financial advisors understand that today HIPPA provides the equivalent protection as conversion.
- Allow that the prices listed on any company’s website, even if “adjusted” for your age, gender, and geography, may have NOTHING at all to do with the price you are actually quoted after answering a number of questions about your health history. The questions are much the same as you might answer before a first visit to any new health care professional. Depending on your answers, the actual cost may be hundreds of percent higher than what you see on the “public” screens.
- Allow that there may be a two-week delay in the start of coverage. Many major carriers start coverage on the 1st and the 15th of each month, and cut off eligibility on those dates two weeks earlier. That is, if you haven’t applied before the 15th of the month, you will not be eligible for coverage on the 1st of the following month.
- COBRA coverage can be purchased “retroactively” should one need protection in that gap, providing any medical event that might happen in the gap between corporate coverage and applying for COBRA coverage doesn’t completely disable the insured.
- Exactly how COBRA coverage is priced and obtained is complicated. Educate yourself.
- A bit more research at other vendors and programs (my alumni association, AARP) indicates initial prices that are more in line with the final price I received from my first vendor (perhaps 25% different, rather than 300%). This suggests to me that the first vendor is advertising near loss-leader prices, which are available only to people who have never used health care services and don’t intend to in the future, either. People with actual medical histories may not able to buy insurance at these prices. YMMV.
- Shop early and often.
2/28/2009 Updates
The stimulus package is providing (up to) 65% discounts on the cost of COBRA insurance for people who are unemployed, for up to nine months. This money changes the overall cost and in my case, will save me approximately $2000 over 18 months of coverage, even allowing for the fact that COBRA is more expensive (for better coverage) than private pay.
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)
Sealing Windows: It Was Supposed to be Easy
January 23rd, 2009
It all started with the energy audit in 2008. Bill Hill, of Air By Design, suggested that I take a window frame apart because he suspected the replacement double-pane windows might not have been sealed to the house; that the windows themselves were not particularly drafty, but gaps around the outside of the window were letting air into the house.After I finished addressing several of his other suggestions (sealing the dry wall in the closets that had never been finished, spraying 28 cans of Great Stuff to seal the gap between the sill plate and the basement which had left the house essentially open to the unheated basement), it was time to tackle the windows.
unframed kitchen window showing gap and a trace of daylight just below corner of window.
base of kitchen window, showing gap to daylight under window, same window as above
top of kitchen window, showing back rod and original window framing
I started with the most easily-accessible window in the kitchen and a prybar, taking both the inner trim (3 pieces), the outer mitered trim (3 pieces), and both the sill and the undersill trim off, for eight pieces total. (This was a different window from the one in the picture but the results are the same.) I found a lot of daylight. Bingola! The gap between the window and the house was not sealed in any way; pink insulation had been stuffed in the space (in some of the windows) but that does not have the same draft-stopping power as backer rod and caulk. In addition to the gap between the window and the wood frame, there were suggestions of gap between the wood frame and the brick wall. I fixed up the window and painted and reinstalled the trim and went on to the next. Over two months, I rebuilt all of the windows that I could get to without moving furniture.
On the Monday holiday, John and I decided it would be a good day to tackle the north window in the bedroom. It should have been so straightforward: pull the bed away from the wall, take the curtains down, unbuild and seal the window, replace the trim, rehang the curtain, and replace the bed. With a little bit of attention and motivation, we should be done by dark with a shopping trip in the middle of the day while the caulk dried. I count seven steps.
What actually happened:
- Lower the bed drape.
- Move the cedar chest.
- Move the bedside tables.
- Find safe places for the lamps for the duration.
- Adjust all the electrical items on the bedside table because the cord won’t reach to the new location.
- Clean the floor under the cedar chest.
- Move the bed.
- Clean the floor exposed by the moved bed.
- Take the curtains down.
- Clean the linen mat of the painting.
- Take the painting down and find a safe place to keep it for the duration, which by now is just barely showing signs of extending past one day.
- Take the mini-blinds down and find a safe place for the little plastic piece that keeps them in their brackets.
- Unframe the window.
- Discover this window frame is in the worst shape of any we’ve rebuilt so far (9 out of 12), with daylight visible on three sides of the frame. (In this case, this is between the original window frame and the brick, due to settlement on this end of the house.)
- Seal the gaps with backer rod (where needed) and caulk.
top of bedroom window, showing caulk and crack; the gap between the original window framing boards really was as wide as that bead of caulk.
- Using the whole-house fan and a stick of incense, test the sealing work.
- Discover the entire wall leaks along the quarter-round at the floor, as well as at the cracks in the plaster, the ceiling trim, and the electrical outlet box. The window is tight, however.
gap behind quarter-round, showing edge of floorboards and inner surface of outer brick wall.
- Although I had sealed the gap at the floorboards from the basement side in 2008, it was clear something hadn’t worked. I pulled up the quarter-round at the baseboard floor intersection and examined the space behind the baseboard. There was no sign of Great Stuff foam. (I had pulled the quarter-round along the front of the house, and there, the Great Stuff was actually gripping the quarter round.) The problem lies in the construction of the floor. Where the joists run perpendicular to the wall (long sides of the house), the Great-Stuff-from-the-basement effort sealed the gap completely. Where the joints run parallel to the wall (short ends), the Great Stuff did not penetrate all the way up to the baseboards. I believe the air from the basement had been stopped. However, there are significant cracks in the north wall of this house. Outside air enters these cracks and comes into the space behind the baseboard and from there, around the quarter-round into the house. (BTW, this is a brick house. All brick, not brick veneer. The inside surface of the exterior walls is plaster laid directly over brick. No gap, no insulation. Cracks matter.)
- Mask the floor boards.
- Shoot one can of Great Stuff into the gap between the baseboard and the floor, trying to fill the space behind the baseboard where possible.
- Mush the expanding Great Stuff flat to make it easier to reinstall the quarter round
- Meanwhile, John scraped and cleaned the trim. The north side of my house faces the Moncure Factory district and picks up air pollution.
- Go shopping and get lunch.
- Come home to discover the Great Stuff had reexpanded and set up enough that mushing it back again was very hard work. Wish I had thought to mask the vertical surface of the baseboard at the same time I masked the floorboards.
- Re-test the sealing effort and note progress, albeit not perfection. Despite foam insulation behind the face place, the electrical box leaked massively.
- Before quitting for the day, peel off most of the masking tape and overspill of foam. Make a mental note to mask the baseboard next time.
- Remember to bring the clean trim inside before nightfall so that it will be warm enough to take paint in the morning.
Next day, with snow delay.
disconnected electrical outlet with some caulk applied along joins in the 1952 metal box.
- Turn off the power to the electrical box, remove the socket, and wipe caulk over the gaps in the box. Not enough room to spray great stuff. Can’t get a complete seal but it’s a bit less leaky afterward. Reinstall socket, restore power. (Some people might think this was five steps.)
- Caulk gaps in the plaster on the inside of the wall. Add “concrete caulk” to shopping list for the next trip to the hardware store.
- Paint the window trim.
- Reinstall the window trim. Look for missing piece. Attempt to get bent nail out of window sill; give up.
- Hang temporary curtain for the second night.
- Attempt to adjust ductwork grill in second bedroom so that more hot air will flow into master bedroom. Discover grill is not adjustable. John suggests switching with the grill from the bedroom, which is adjustable.
- Discover the reason the grill in the second bedroom is not adjustable is that the ductwork was installed too close to the side wall, leaving insufficient room for the adjustable grill. Installed a “return” grill instead.
- While reinstalling the adjustable grill in the master bedroom duct opening, notice that the adjustable grill directs air to the right and left, while the return grill directs air upward (as installed). A bookcase sits to the left of the duct. My books have been warmer than I am. Add “return grill” to my hardware store shopping list.
- Despite the fact that it’s 25 degrees outside, clean both sides of the window. I can’t lower the panes to clean the outside when the bed is in its normal place.
- Discover “return grills” are sized differently than regular duct grills, so the first one I purchased won’t fit and will have to be exchanged.
And so it goes. The top piece of trim is still missing. It’s too cold and mushy to work on a ladder and caulk the crack in the exterior wall, but this is NC and it will get warm again before very much longer, almost certainly before the end of January, at the latest. The base of the quarter-round will get caulked before it gets reinstalled. The curtains will be thoroughly vacuumed before they are re-hung. Most of the lessons in this exercise will be applied to the windows in the adjoining bedroom. One window shares the north, short, wall, and therefore we’ll have to look at the baseboard in that room, too. Will get some caulk inside two electrical outlets in that room before we put the furniture back.
If you’ve read this far, I hope you aren’t too discouraged. If you live in a house that’s 50 years old, you could write the same article with different activities. With everything I’ve done so far to reduce the leakage in my house, my fuel use is down 30% in gallonage over a similar amount of degree-days. This is progress, and this has more than paid for my part of the energy audit (Progress Energy picked up most of the fee).
I still plan on sealing up the remaining three windows; removing the trim from the front door and sealing the framing to the brick (the back door took two cans of Great Stuff to seal); sealing the join between the drywall and the fireplace brick. Stay tuned.
Posted in Rural Living, Uncategorized | Comments (0)
What is a Dog Portrait? Part One of Several
January 11th, 2009
As I’ve noted elsewhere, I am investigating what it would take to become a professional dog portrait photographer. I’ve taken some interesting pictures of dogs, read books, own a good camera. After studying the differences between pictures in books and “duds” that I have taken myself, it became obvious that one characteristic of the pictures I liked was “controlled background.”
To this end, I built a backdrop. My first idea was to dye a canvas drop-cloth 18% gray, but drop cloths are not cheap and we’re pre-beta with limited cash flow. I found a set of gray cotton sheets at the PTA Thrift shop for $4.50. After sewing them together to make a large piece of fabric, I was ready. I had already decided I could use my hoop rack as a support for the backdrop.
Chester had served as the test model for a different setup and I know I can take pictures of him anytime. This time I wanted a bigger challenge, so I called Nigel the black lab mix. He weighs 85# and at five years old, is calmer than he was as an adolescent but a long way from staid.
Nigel was certainly happy to have the attention and to be in the front yard alone with me. However, he was absolutely disinterested in posing for a portrait. Sniffing the camera was good. Sniffing the wind; tearing up his latest teddy bear; napping. A host of other activities but nothing that let me get a good shot of his face, and the pictures I could take were pretty boring. To some extent, most labs look alike and it’s only worse for the black dogs.
I was pretty disappointed. “This is your dogfood ticket we’re working on!,” I told him. He does not understand the relationship between income and dogfood. We tried again, this time allowing him to stand on grass in the event it was the sheet under his feet that made him uncomfortable. Nope.
I am not ready to give up, but for the time being, I was most certainly feeling defeated: a promising line of work nipped in the bud by an uncooperative dog.
However, I am nothing if not resourceful. Later in the day, we piled in the truck and went to the lake for a bit of frolic. I carried my camera. In the process of chasing Nigel with the camera while he was chasing, retrieving, and attempting to destroy sticks, I realized one element of the problem. Nigel is a Dog of Action. He really doesn’t have that much of a “face,” per se. He has expressions, to be sure, and I can tell when he’s happy, or upset. But in the world of doggie communication, he is 95% body language. Chester, on the other hand, is all face and just a little bit activity. (Could be that Chester has white around his eyes; will have to study on this problem. It’s also that at least one of Chester’s grandparents was a Chihuahua.)
I’ve never been one to “think through” my pictures too much, aside from looking for the telephone poles and bad backgrounds. I know a little bit about how changing the angle between lens and subject changes what gets captured (hugely crucial when there is a dog-human-sized difference in height, BTW). Now I understand I’m going to have to take this “thinking through” to a new level. Not all dogs will do well with a posed head shot portrait. Some dogs live to move (truer: all dogs live to move) and to capture their portrait-essense, the picture will have to be of them in action. More studying required.
Posted in Making Art, Uncategorized | Comments (0)
I Can Do That
January 11th, 2009
As part of my preparation for needing a new source of income, I started keeping a list of things I could do that would earn income. My target was 50 items. I have 42 activities on the list at the moment. I am trying to do all of them. I have hands-on experience with more than a few. I have been paid for teaching hooping. I have published a book. I sell rugs. I have edited and organized and written for a major corporation for 20 years. I have sold furniture I made myself, and I am a competent chainsaw carver. I do not know whether I can put together some package of these skills and gifts that will replace the income generated by showing up to a corporate inbox and responding to everything they asked of me 40 hours a week, but that’s a different post.
What I’m pondering this morning is, “What on earth makes me think I can do ‘this’?,” where “this” is “any of those activities I haven’t actually done before, but I’ve seen someone else doing for (presumed) profit, and my reaction is, “I can do that!”?
Take, for notable example, Dog Photography. I live with a fluctuating pack of (currently) 3.5 dogs (my neighbor’s dog spends the days with my pack and goes back to his house at night). Ever since I was given If You Only Knew How Much I Smell You as a Christmas gift in 1999, I have wanted to take portraits of my dogs that have the evocative qualities of Valerie Schaff’s work. When I found Amanda Jones, it got worse. I tried. I bought a book. It didn’t work, at least not within the amount of energy, money and attention I was willing to give the attempt. My black dogs looked like blobs; my Chihuahua looked frightened; my white dogs were (what I now know is) over-exposed; almost none of the pictures captured the essense of any one dog the way Valerie’s and Amanda’s work does. (Add Kim Levin to this list.)
“Almost none” <> “none.” I have three pictures that kept me thinking: Grover, the very old dog; Butch the pitbull, and Chester, shot when he didn’t know I was taking his picture. Grover’s picture was taken on film; the other two were digital when I could afford to experiment more generously.
And now I’m working on an income replacement plan, and I think that maybe people will pay for portraits of their dogs. (Down the road, I would also like to see if taking better pictures of shelter dogs makes them more likely to be adopted, but that will have to wait a bit.) I think I am able to take these pictures, because I have three (of of how many?!?) pictures of dogs that “sing,” that say, “THIS is Grover, a Very. Old. Dog.” (film photograph and my scanner does not work with Vista.)
This is Butch, who could, but will chose not to today, bite through your wrist, and please come again about what's wrong with trying to eat the cat?
and
This is Chester, who spent three months on the road alone and is very brave, except for vacuum cleaners and everything else that is Very Scary.
Am I nuts? Well, yes. My tag line in match.com was “Crazy but beautiful,” something Lou Ranhoffer wrote on my whiteboard in college and has been true all these years. John says, “You are a walking Ponzi Scheme of projects” and I can see a certain truth in that statement. I do have a blind spot when it comes to acting on my ability to estimate how much energy any one task will take.
However, being crazy is not a “get out of jail free” card. Anyone who held down a series of positions over 20 years with a Fortune 500 company, dodging nine years of post dot-com-bust layoffs and only “losing” that game when 24,500 positions went to China, is probably not going to be eligible for Social Security disability based on mental health.
So how do I find the sanity in thinking, “I can do this?”
I was processing rug photos for a show application yesterday in my brand-new Photoshop Elements 7.0 program and started playing with the “Hue” adjustment. Wowieola! When I move the slider all the way to the end, I get some magnificent ideas for “Next Rug.” Honestly, I felt my knitting world shift with the possibilities. (See the “Stash-driven Design post for the results of this experiment.) Never played with graphics software much; my old photo program baffled me and I never got far enough into it to do anything but crop, hardly. (I have known I needed more graphic-software mastery in order to publish my book of rug patterns; I did not expect that I would find completely new rug colorways in the process.)
So I’m thinking about colorways, and that got me thinking about the Munsell color sphere*, and that reminded me that the world of “things you can do for income” is enormous and there are HUGE swaths of it that I have absolutely NO interest in awareness of likelihood of ever pursuing. I feel better. (Some colorways leave me utterly cold, too, notably anything in the “denim” blue line.) Knowing that there are actually activities that, if they cross my mind at all, inspire a “Heck, NO!” response, rather than “I can do that!,” reassures me that I am probably acting on inner truth (presuming that’s different from insanity) when I investigate something that looks interesting, even if there are now 43 items on the “I can do that” list and most job counselors would suggest maybe three, max? (BTW, although “Editing other people’s writing” is an item on that list, “Shortening my own sentences” does not pay and has not made it.)
(*This whole essay turns on the reader’s familiarity with the Munsell color sphere; if that term means nothing, I’ve lost you right there. See the wiki article; the Munsell web site is suprisingly dull (IMO) for a company selling color.)
(Some years ago when I was addressing a character defect of finding too many other people irritating, I took a similar comfort in noting that I took an “irrational liking” to a visiting co-worker. Knowing I was capable of “instant like” reassured me that my “instant dislike” was probably based on some form of fact, and that it might be more productive to change my social scene rather than learn to “like” people who were actually not good for me to be around.)
I will never say, “I can do that” to: anything military, law enforcement, full-time sales not related to my own production or efforts, HR departments, accounting for other people’s money, food service in any form, child care, banking, politics, professional beauty or project management or event planning. Acting or making movies.
Things I looked at once and decided against: welding: fun, but a direct overlap with chainsaw carving in terms of energy, investment, and opportunity and I’m already equipped for chainsaw carving. Programming computers. Sitting on a telephone help desk. A host of other things that didn’t register with enough force to make it into this essay.
The segment of the income-generation universe that leaves me cold is actually much much bigger than that part that attracts my attention. It is a minor problem that the part that does catch my mind is still significantly bigger for me than it is for many other people. That is another day’s problem. (So is the fact that the part I don’t want to do pays better than the part I like. Such are the trials of an INFP.)
To repeat the initial question:
“What on earth makes me think I can do ‘this’?,” where “this” is “any of those activities I haven’t actually done before, but I’ve seen someone else doing for (presumed) profit”?
My answer for myself: I HAVE actually done something similar before, and I’ve had some success, and whatever it is that has caught my attention this time is somehow similar to other things I have done either for fun or for enjoyable money. I am NOT randomly grabbing “income ideas” from the entire universe of such activities. If I could get back far enough from myself, I might actually see a pattern, just like my Meditation rug looks better in the photo (tiny) than it does in reality, because the pattern gets lost in the up-close detail (knitted that one way too big!).
There’s a whole ‘nother post about being willing and able to do the work and drill that are needed to turn the idea into a tangible product. With regard to the dog portrait business, my friend said, “You have to practice with a lot of different dogs.” Somehow, that struck a different nerve than my understanding of a need for a portfolio with lots of different dog portraits, beyond the three above, but it makes sense. I need to know how different dogs will react to a formal portrait setting. People who do this regularly have this knowledge.
And one of the items on today’s to do list is making the first version of a backdrop for said portraits. Go.
Posted in Making Art, Rugs, Uncategorized | Comments (0)
Stash-driven Design
January 11th, 2009
Fact is, I have enough stash to last till the Second Coming, but that wasn’t reassuring, esp. as I am in the process of working to make more of my income from art = rug production. (Not to mention, no-one’s been right about the date of said Second Coming yet and it is unlikely that my running out of stash will have anything to do with it.) I didn’t exactly panic, exactly, but I for sure didn’t cut back any. It’s pretty normal to stock up in the face of an impending shortage, no? Some people would call it “hoarding.” I’m not ready to go that far. I’m also (still) not collecting fabrics and fibers I don’t like (all poly; any blues in the “denim” family). But I didn’t cut back any, and I’m doing about a load of stash laundry every five or six days.
Now that I have more freedom in how I use my time than I did before, I’ve made a point of keeping on top of the incoming stash and working to get it sliced and processed in pretty good order. I can slice up a basket of incoming clothing in about an hour’s phone conversation. While I’m not getting ahead, I am at least keeping up, which was not the case before the shift.
Unfortunately, this change has only moved the problem. Instead of bags of incoming clean clothing waiting to be sliced, I now have bags of sliced and rolled fiber, sorted by color, waiting to be knit into rugs. Given I do most of my knitting in “tweener” time, when I’m riding in the car, waiting, in a (private) meeting, and sometimes on the phone, I am not keeping up with the flow. It was storage progress when I split out “red” into “red” and “pink” and “orange” and “purple,” but this weekend, “red” overflowed into the “black” drawer. My tenant gave notice on the adjoining property, and I am so seriously tempted to keep it off the market and use it as space for more stash. This would not be a good financial decision.
When I was preparing some jpgs for a show application on Friday, I played around with the “hue” adjustment in Photoshop, and all of a sudden,
Seascape flipped its colors 180 degrees and turned into Sunset.
I was amazed. Not only is it beautiful, it’s also red. I didn’t get time to pull colors yesterday until it was too late (no light) to work with reds; they’re pretty demanding about being sorted in full daylight. I put that activity on my calendar for 1 PM today and just now got done. Whew! I’m already thinking, “Well, if I go a little bigger than Seascape (42 x 46″), I can use up more. I can go up to 48″ width and easily mount it on a sheet of pegboard; what’s that in length? (Golden mean applies here.) 76″. OK. That will fit on a 4×8 sheet of pegboard… (what we use as a base for mounting the rugs). It will be big. But maybe I’ll draw down the red some.
I have knitted a number of rugs specifically to draw-down the stash. Red Triple Spiral was one.
It grew and grew and grew, but by the time I got it sewn up, I had easily refilled the bins with new colors. I am only kidding myself. I might have to start knitting in real time, time that could be used for something else. Maybe I should bump my Netflix up again, to three at a time, and knit in the evenings most evenings? Don’t know. Red is hard. There are only so many things I can do with red. Even Sunset is going to use more pink than red.
Suggestions welcome.
Posted in Knitting, LinkedIn, Making Art, Uncategorized | Comments (0)
Unemployed, or Self-Employed?
January 10th, 2009
I was laid off from one of the high-tech companies with the three-letter names recently. I have a fairly generous severance package and I have wanted to be a full-time artist since I started down this path after the lightning strike on Labor Day, 2000. Seems like it’s as good a time as any to see what I can do.
Was composing a different post in my head just a minute ago and found myself saying, “I’m unemployed right now and…” and then caught myself. OK, maybe I am unemployed. I no longer have a job. But if I’m on this path of being a full-time artist, writer, hoop dancer, taxonomist, etc., then I’m really “self-employed.” Am I allowed to say that before I’m really making much money? (I have been making money along the way so far. Just not enough.) But do I have a choice? If I’m telling the world I’m unemployed, then the appropriate response from the world is to send me a job. That’s what unemployed people want. (And if you have a job that needs a person like me, please feel free to give me a call. Talking is always useful, probably for both parties.)
However, if I’m self-employed, then what I want is art sales and projects and gigs and commissions and contracts.
A few weeks ago, a friend with a lot of experience in the self-employment universe said, “It will take about a year to wash XYZ company out of your life.” I thought, “No, I was way ready for something new… it won’t take that long.” I did not invest heavily in that response; simply observed it and let it go knowing that I actually had no way TO know how long it would take and that it was entirely likely that I would still be finding new ways to think about myself in December 2009.
And so here’s one: I’m not unemployed. I’m self-employed.
Posted in Making Art | Comments (0)
Investment or Extravagance?
December 16th, 2008
Previous posts have indicated that I have a collection of antique Singer sewing machines; three Red Eyes and a Memphis Sphinx. Three of them work; two of them are people-powered and one is electric. (The non-working machine is people-powered, but sticks somewhere in the stitch cycle.)
I am experimenting with a new product for the studio, a line of personal luggage. Progress has been a bit slow, given the distractions of finishing up a significant assignment, Thanksgiving, and the Studio Tour. However, that’s all behind me now and it’s time to see what it takes to get these cases out the door. I understand I will have to make several up-front and hone the design and production steps.
John put the new motor on the electric Red Eye Sunday night while I worked on the treadle machine, and Monday, I was set to sew with electricity. Except the machine wouldn’t go. The connection between the motor and the flywheel is not tight enough to drive even a denim needle (size 16) through several layers of silk and interfacing. The treadle machine has no trouble with this. Frustration.
A fair amount of people-powered progress is made, but I can also see that it’s going to be hard to turn a profit if my production line is powered by a treadle. It doesn’t take long to get back to Craig’s List, and lo and behold, there’s a newly listed used Industrial Singer machine for sale, in nearby Sanford! $425, with several bolts of awning fabric thrown in for good measure.
So here’s the question: How much do I spend to test the idea? What is “investment in a new product line that could, possibly, have a decent profit margin,” and what is “extravagant collection of equipment I won’t use to its fullest and will only drain my cash reserves, and take up precious, non-existent floor space in a house already giving shelter to five sewing machines, three with tables?”
The question is actually bigger than any particular machine, per se. The problem is, I don’t have a reliable decision tree. This has always been a bit of a problem for me, but with a steady job and regular paychecks, any mis-spending tending to get corrected in time. Now that I’m in bootstrap start-up mode and cash flow is king, the consequences are much more serious.
I made an appointment to look at the machine, and John and I talked about the problem, and the machine inventory. We can sell some of the Red Eyes and probably recoup what we have invested in them. (We’re talking pretty small numbers here, like $35. All less than $100 each, for sure.) John understands the problem.
I went to look at the machine, and the Muses* of Decision-making and Machinery smiled on me. The thing didn’t work. It ran well enough, but the thread kept breaking. For $425, I’m not going to decide that this is a minor problem I can fix myself. The owner had used it once, 18 months ago, and couldn’t figure out how to get the thread moving smoothly in the amount of time I was willing to wait. I did have time to notice that one oil port was packed full of sawdust, probably from leaving the machine uncovered in a wood shop, if not from actually running it in the wood shop. Lint in a sewing machine is to be expected. Sawdust is not.
*I know these aren’t muses.
While I was testing the machine, I was able to gather some additional data about my problem. A commercial Singer of this age (unknown, but I expect they’re all pretty similar) is in essense, no different from a Red Eye made in 1920. The commercial machine is larger, and heavier, but is otherwise built with exactly the same mechanical structure. The power and speed are a function of the electric motor, NOT of the machine itself.
And to tell the truth, I’m not so sure speed is what I need. That puppy is FAST. (Probably 3000 stitches per minute, and at even 10 stitches per inch, that’s 300 inches / 25 feet / 8 yards (rounding) a minute. Speed of stitching isn’t my problem. Running a needle through my finger would be. People who have heard my adventures with cast iron frying pans will understand why I might be hyper-conscious about working with a very fast and powerful sewing machine.
I need power, not speed. And I have power in my treadles–they’re handling the thick layers just fine. The problem is, it can be tricky to get a treadle machine started in the right direction. Perhaps more time-on-machine will fix this as my feet learn the rhythm; given that pretty much everyone who owned a treadle Red Eye switched to electricity as soon as it was available, perhaps not.
On eBay today, I could find at least three Red Eye or Sphinx-model machines fitted up with new motors, being sold as “industrial.” (Responsible sellers, and sewing machine resellers tend to responsible, do admit these machines won’t do saddlery, or anything thicker than 3/8″. 3/8″ is a lot of thick when it comes to sewing.)
Given more time to think, John came up with some possible solutions for the upgrading the machines I already own, including using a belt connection between the motor and the flywheel rather than a friction-driven link. (OK, belts are friction-driven too; what I have now is wheel-to-wheel, non-geared. Too much slip.) I also know a little bit more about commercial machines than I did. Do they really all use bobbins, or was I seeing older technology that has since been upgraded? I can’t believe the ladies on the Levi’s line are swapping out bobbins every few hundred yards of leg seam. Not sure where to go to find the answer to this question, but I expect it will come to me soonish.
I don’t know that I have any formal Lessons Learned to take away from this experience that are clearly applicable to the next shopping problem. I know a bit more about my ability to test sewing machines. I’m 2 yes, 2 no, and I could as well have said No to one of the treadle machines but at least I got a working table out of it. John can probably get the machine unlocked with a bit more attention. (I thought it was a trivial adjustment when I tested the machine in the owner’s garage, and it turned out to be a more systemic problem.)
One partial answer came to me overnight: If I change the assembly process, I won’t have some of the sticky spots that cause trouble with starting and stopping the Red Eye. Hmmm… Did Judith Leiber think this way? What about the Birkin bag design team? I’m sure they do…
Tags: LinkedIn, Red Eye, Treadle power
Posted in LinkedIn, Making Art, Uncategorized | Comments (3)
Red Eye to Vista in a weekend
December 13th, 2008
Not long ago, John and I spent the weekend getting my new PC working the way it needs to, transferring files from my old PC, and learning Vista. It’s all rather shiny and marvelous (and purple) and new. Great graphics, large screen, all the latest styling.
At the very same time, we had the base of my Singer Model 127 Memphis treadle sewing machine (Sphinx) disassembled so that we could increase the distance between the treadle and the sewing surface and give my legs enough room to work the treadle. This machine was made in 1922. It still works. It changed life for the families who owned one. It changed life for pretty much anyone who ever touched a textile, for that matter. I also own three Singer Model 66 (Red Eye) machines, two treadle (one working, one seized up) and one electric.
We take the sewing machine so much for granted that more people in my life know how to use a PC than a sewing machine, but if it hadn’t been for the sewing machine, most of the female people in my life wouldn’t have had the time to learn to read, let alone make the progress that let me and my cohort use our new PCs. Cast iron, machined parts, leather belts and people power and 90 years later, it still works. I will bet its cost that my PC will not still be working in 90 years.
I somewhat accidentally found myself owning four antique sewing machines, after finding a Red Eye on eBay with an industrial-strength motor, offered as a machine set up to sew leather. I will need an industrial machine for the laptop bags, and the pictures of that Red Eye were stunning. That lit the fuse. Two came home from Craig’s List ads; these are the ones with treadles. The electric Red Eye and the Sphinx were found on eBay. They are all beautiful.
I have one Red Eye set up with a leather needle. We used the leather needle to poke holes in the leather belt that runs the machine so that the ends could be connected with a staple. I have a new cell phone, indirectly the result of my new Vista PC, and it is slimmer than its predecessor and wiggled around in the old phone’s case. I was able to alter the cell phone case to fit the new phone.
There is something very comforting about using 90-year old technology to make a cell phone more useful.
Tags: Singer 66 Red Eye
Posted in LinkedIn, Making Art, Rural Living, Uncategorized | Comments (0)
Oh how I love my Martelli Ergo Rotary Cutter
December 13th, 2008
Dull headline, wonderful product.
Let’s see. 50 rugs, average 12 SF each, 60 yards / SF, that’s 36,000 yards of sliced t-shirts. Not counting the stash deep enough for another 25 rugs, give or take, bringing the total to 54,000 yards. That’s a lot of rotary cutting.
I did the first 45,000 yards with a “normal” cutter (after the first shirt cut with scissors). At best, I could cut for an hour at a stretch and even then I would ache the next day, even after I “ergo-d” my cutting station by raising it 4″. Traditional rotary cutters don’t make it easy to cut on the return stroke, so each yard of cut is effectively two yards of shoulder and elbow motion.
I saw the Martelli in an ad in Threads magazine, and my body recognized its value before my mind did. Even so, it took me a while to buy it, debating whether a new piece of equipment would be sufficiently different to be worth the money.
Ergonomics matters. The cutter is worth the money.
The angled cutter takes the effort of cutting off the muscles of the wrist and moves it into the triceps and biceps. I can cut for hours at a stretch and I’m even gaining on my pile of slice bags. I can cut on the pull or return stroke, doubling my slicing efficiency. As advertised, the edge lasts longer (slicing 40-60 garments before it needs sharpening, vs 20 garments before), adding more efficiency. I ponder buying a left-handed cutter and teaching myself to cut with the other side of my body. At the moment, this remains in the “idea” file.
Some months ago, a friend who had seen me knit approached me and said, “HOW are you preparing your fabric?!? You are NOT using scissors…” I laughed and said, “You’re right; the scissors experiment lasted for about one t-shirt” and then explained about rolling razor blades and rotary cutters. I think the Martelli Ergo Rotary Cutter is as much of an improvement over traditional cutters as is a rotary cutter over scissors.
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)