When you come into our booths at shows, you see the finished product that takes us hours to build. But sometimes there are a few monkey wrenches thrown in along the way. This story is from setup at the Syracuse show in May . . . and I should begin by saying that I took the first picture because Julie told me to . . .
Julie and Tom Creek from Creek Bank Creations were rolling one of their carts past where I was setting up my own booth when I heard Julie yelp and looked up to see her going to the floor. I was afraid that her back had gone out, or worse -- and when I ran to her, she couldn't talk for a moment. Then she gathered her senses and explained that one of the wheels on the cart had rolled over her toes. Ouch . . .
I had packed my lunch, so I had an ice bag in my cooler and Julie put it to good use.
By later in the day, we were laughing about it -- and Tom and rigged a way to get Julie around the room without putting weight on her foot.
You had to know that I couldn't tell the story without an image of the affected digits. Julie is a trouper -- worked the whole weekend and I don't think a single customer knew that she was less than 100%. And fortunately, nothing was broken.
This has been a work in progress for a long time. I suspected for a long time that we needed to start a blog where we could post information, pictures and such. But it took Cheryl Darrow from Ten Seconds Studio to finally convince me to take the plunge.
When I started building our website more than 18 years ago, I barely knew how to turn on a computer. I learned a lot and got a lot of good advice along the way, we rebuilt it five years ago, and now I can update it in my sleep. This blog is much the same -- at the outset I had only a vague idea how this page would best serve our customers. It has become a place to post pictures from conventions, tutorials, a quick sale notice, some of my stream of consciousness thinking, and pictures of my dog from time to time. I have also discovered a group of foodies who enjoy my recipes and a group of prayer warriors who helped carry my mom through chemotherapy.
You folks are great -- most of the best ideas we've ever had weren't ours at all. They came from our customers.
Someday I'll tell the story of how we entered the world of rubber stamp conventions, mail order, wacky costumes, and more. Again, it wasn't our idea -- two of our customers get all the credit.
