new year, new outlook

so i havent posted in months, the last interesting thing I did at the shop was to make a dump run. When i was taking photos of the dump in Fredricksburg, my husband asked WHY are you taking pictures of the dump? it seemed to make sense at the time...
Weve been working on my moms house which hadnt been painted in 30 years or more and was positively dim. So now its almost a new year, and the world didnt end on 12/21/12 so after the beginning of the year, perhaps I can take more photos and make more progress at the shop,
An interesting thing happened in Harper, a town of 500 people, another hat shop has opened! So before I get my shop open another shop opens here! I met the guy, Dennis i think is his name and he is all about having locally made stuff, so we talked about cross marketing, his hats in my shop and my hats in his. So really I will have a presence in harper before my shop opens!
Cool!
I have another load of stuff to run to the dump, so I probably wont show anymore dump photos, maybe Tom is right.
Time to get to work and start making this space a hat shop. Im ready 2013!

Reflections, and things to think about...

Im in Austin getting over some nasty bug and getting ready for a Labor day Music festival, where I will be selling hats.  I was looking at photos that I took last time I was there and thought I would post some more...
I suppose I am my father's Daughter. Made from the same stuff I guess. He was kindof a slob, Im kindof a slob. He had ADD, Im sure I have ADD I know. easily distractable and having a tendancy to wander from project to project...

More cleaning photos, some of this is a result of this stuff sitting for a long while, some is just slobbiness, some is ADD. (sidenote - Ive been listening to AWOLNATION lately, Sail lave a listen-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPtSKimbjOU)

Anyway...

 Aint this the truth!

 Like a creepy Haunted Gun shop, so many big spider webs


This little mole critter has a tiny fedora- hes going to be my cleanup mascot- hes cute but needs a life!

 I straightened out the front counter, then Tom starts asking if I want to move all the counters, take them out, re arrange, start over? When I have a blank slate its a little overwhelming thinking about what I want. Hmmmm..

 There are lots of gun and rangelands magazines, but this one was interesting; "Varmint Hunter"  Wow.

And the best find of this day was this: a tube of stuff stuck to the top of the workbench in the back room, "Glop Type 8". makes me wonder what glop types 1 through 7 are used for, and how many Glop types are there? 9? 13? 536?

It was super sticky after years of being up there, I had to chisel it off.

The cool thing about this shop is that there are more cool work benches and so many shelves that I will have so much room to put everything!

So the next trip is more cleaning, but soon I will have to start thinking about what colors to paint, what I want the shop to look like, how it will work. 

How many puzzles?

In the retail end of the shop there was quite a stack of puzzles. Big 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles. Boxes and boxes,  teetering stacks of boxes of puzzles. I took a count before i started sorting them and counted 120 boxes. I filled a big box with the puzzles that had been noted to be incomplete. then as I was looking I noted that there were 2 or three years of puzzles where Dad had come to the shop and put the last completed puzzle on a stack, and they were dated and sometimes had little note like "difficult" or "nice puzzle" so that a stack was the evidence of how he had spent months of his life.

He was averaging one puzzle a month or so. I found myself wondering what was i doing during those months. I found a lot of them dated 1998, which was when Tom and I were working a lot and Maxine was small.


One puzzle in particular looked familiar and i realized that he was doing it when I had come for a visit when Maxine was about a year and a half old and we came down for my Parent's 50th wedding anniversary. I kept that one, the one that said "nice puzzle" and a few more that struck my fancy, one that was from the 60's and one of a bunch of russian eggs.  Im thinking at some point i may do them and think about my dad.

Im looking forward to coming here full time to take care of my Mom. I think Tom is too. I am struck at how time feels different here than in Austin. Not slower exactly, just less busy... maybe I will find i have time to do puzzles...

Der Gunmeister: Origins

  In 1976 we moved from college station TX to Harper. I was going to be a freshman in high school, and Harper was such a small town compared to what i was used to. But for my mom and Dad it was a new beginning. My Dad had been a professor, a rancher, a pilot during world war 2, and then a gunsmith. He had been a national skeet shooter as well. So when he opened Der Gunmeister the local paper featured it with some photos and a little story.  I found the original papers folded up in a little shelf as I was cleaning up the puzzles... My dad looks happy and proud of himself in this photo, and so much younger than he did at thanks giving. I wonder if they will write up a little story about my shop when its ready to open?
So Im back at the shop this weekend and so much happened in 2 days that it will take more than 1 post to cover, so this post will focus on my Dad the Gunmeister himself.

One of the odd things about cleaning up is finding things around like he was in the middle of doing something when he just closed up the shop and left, like an empty wallet with his social security card, tax documents and membership cards, in a pile on one of the gun racks.

 Somebody made the little shop scene for dad, (did I?) and he has it in a place of prominence, along with a carved Der Gunmeister wood plaque, both of which i will keep along with the newspaper clippings in a kind of memory corner. I found a number of Printed targets too... My husband Tom who is practicing his target shooting will probably use them.

There are so many things that feel like they were important once, and at what time do things that were important, loose their importance? Is it as simple as a decision, a redirecting of your life, or was this stuff all important to my dad and the moment he passed away, they lost importance because the one person who cared about them was no longer on the same plane as these things. And if his spirit is somewhere aware of his life and that is is over, as such, how does he feel about these things now? What is really important?

I will try not to wax philosophical too much, but Im afraid it might happen anyway. Perhaps everyone who goes through their parent's things goes through the same kind of processes. There is something I am discovering about myself while doing this, in a way discovering things I never knew about my dad, and about myself. Too bad my Dad cant learn who I really am, or maybe it is more important for me to let my daughter know who I am. Hmmm.

First enlightenment, then its Laundry Day

So, when I came home from the first weekend of working at the shop I had a box of old rags and stuff. When I washed them bits of metal shavings came off them and it made me wonder if these were from the last time he used his lathe.. and there was an apron that I washed too, I remember him wearing it. They hung on the line and the faded red rags were waving in the warm Texas breeze. They still smell like the shop. I will take them back for more cleaning.

In the meantime one of my brothers, Louis, is moving some stuff around and setting up some shop space in part of the shop. Sounds good to me! We talked about putting up a plastic wall to keep the sawdust out of the fabric... well eventually!

I am planning out how this will work in my head. The space is taking shape in my imagination. there are things I will need to set up, a shipping area, where do the sewing machines go?  I will need a spray booth out back for the spray adhesive. And the big crazy top hat Im thinking about building out front... wood and concrete a big hat box with a hat on top... that will stop some traffic! Hmmmm maybe I'd better rethink that, nah! What color will the walls be eventually? Maybe I keep the deer antlers to use as hat racks? (I think so) and the old sign will get re painted. In keeping with the Germanic feel of the region, do I use a German form of Lucky Day Hats?
 Glücklichen Tag Hutladen?
Glücklichen Tag Hüte!
Glücklichen Tag Hut Maker...
Der Glücklichen Tag Hutmeister!  If may dad was Der Gunmeister I suppose I can be Der Hutmeister! 


I gotta say Im getting pretty excited about this!

Staking my claim

My Father passed away last november. He was a gunsmith in Harper Texas, he WAS Der Gunmeister. He was kinda famous for what he did, and he was very good at it. My mother lives alone and tho 2 of my 3 brothers live close by, My husband and I have decided within the next 2 years to go live with her and that I would set up shop in my Father's old gunshop.

So with the urging of friends I have embarked on a journey and I am going to document it on this blog, I am re-creating, re-inventing, re-envisioning by fathers dream.

I however am not a gunsmith. I am a hatmaker. I have been doing cut and sew prouct development for 15+ years and 3 years ago when the economy collapsed I began a business that turned into 2 businesses, a pet accessories website, www.BadDogHats.com and a people accessories website www.LuckyDayHats.com.  Both are doing well considering I started from nothing, and growing by double each year so far. So now I will be not only be having my websites, I will also have a retail store. But before that can happen, there is a lot of work to do.

It is as if he decided to stop working sometime in the mid-90s. 1996. and left and closed the shop and just didnt go back. They sold off the guns and most of the equipment and what is left is a big disaster with a lot of potential... This is what I found when I started cleaning:

This is the front if the shop...


This is inside the front door, the retail space

Lots of stuff to clean up and figure out what to do with...

A storage room

 the first work bench. I started here. It was more than a little overwhelming.

 This is the second work bench. Wow. there were magazines and letters around as if he just got up and left and never went back.

 What are these? wooden dowes carved for a special purpose...

this slagpile is where the bluing tanks were...like I said its going to be a big job.
This looked like a cartoon speech bubble to me.


 Mud dauber had built a fine nest a long time ago.

 these random wires were hooked carefully over the top edge of one of the work benches...


the back room, lots of tools left, most of them will be divided up between me and my brothers.

 
and boxes of metal lathe turnings... wht Am I going to do with all that? who knows. But as you can see, there is lots of potential!

As I work on it I plan to continue to blog and post photos of the progress, Ive got big plans for this place and I hope my Dad will be proud, and approve of what I have done with it!