Its beginning to look like... something, not sure what yet.

I worked this weekend(first weekend in April 2013) at the shop. Saturday I kinda milled around and wasn't sure what I was doing, I swept out the storage room, sorted some more newspapers, not sure what was important. So I decided to work on the front, thinking that if I can get the shop area looking like something, then the rest of the space will sort itself out.
So before one of the last dump runs I took the UGLY mustard colored vinyl off the counters and it left behind some sticky adhesive that new was going to dry out. How to deal with this? I tried some stripper, some industrial strength cleaner, sanding it off, and if it did anything, it kinda pushed it around.   Hmmm what to do what to do. I decided to go by several gallons of goop off, or whatever that product is that get sticker adhesive off...
 Then something wonderful happened. I went that night to my brother's house and took some of my home made kombucha and we had a little tasting. chatted, and mo was in the other room watching a show I hadn't heard of, "Flea Market Flip". I wasn't paying attention. Well after we were all talked out me and mom went back to her house and I stayed up and watched some mindless TV. I watched som dumb show about a girl apartment hunting in Bankock, and I couldn't get over how much of a brat she was! then Fleamarket flip came on again. They pit 2 design teams against each other and give them 3 design "projects", such as a lighting solution a storage solution and an art piece, give them a budget and they go to a flea market to buy components to build the things. Then they go re-sell them at a more upscale arty show. Really some interesting ideas.
  Then that's when it happened. I got the Idea, or rather they gave me the idea of how to deal with the sticky counters. Decoupage! but not just any decoupage, vintage sewing patterns, layers of thin printed tissue paper, only I will modify it with layered in images from godeys' lady book drawings, and Harper's Bazzar pictures of men in top hats and they made an antiqued patina by staining it with soy sauce!  Brilliant! so I raided my mom's pattern box(with her permission) and found some ugly dated patterns that I didn't think should ever be used again, and in the process found a few more patterns for clothes I think I will be making sometime soon.
  So back at the shop, with patterns, glue and sow sauce, I watered down the glue and set to work. The first layer went on easy because I was using the adhesive that was the original problem that I had to deal with, now it being an advantage, instead of being a problem! So I kept applying the tissue and layering it on, and since I didn't have the other images that I want to layer in handy I stopped feeling renewed with a distinct purpose and vision for how the shop is going to look. Then, as I looked around I could see how the different areas of the shop should look and I could see it coming together in my imagination.  I moved the now partially reclaimed countertop from where it was to where I had already wanted it to be, and felt like I had made so much progress! Leaps and bounds!  So next time I go to work on the shop I will go with the images needed to layer in and finish the countertop project. After it dries then I will coat it with layers of thick Urethane. Shiny!

 This Counter Covered with Goo! Oh dear what is a hatmaker to do?

 

Layer on pattern paper!

 

 

the trim off the extra and Apply Soy Sauce!

 

And serve :)

 

 

 

 

This counter is going to be so cool!

 

  with the counter moved and a couple of hats hanging up, its starting to look like, um....well something different than what it was.

While I was there this weekend Tavros made a brief appearance.  Kooky little lizard.
Can you see him?   Look closer... 


Next time I will tell you about the dream I had, just before coming out to Harper this time...



making progress

So a week or two ago I went out to Harper again and worked on the shop, Tavros wasnt around but i did get a few pix of the progress I am making.
I decided to mave some work benches around, and the two in the main room "were" hooked up with power above them.. untill I strted messing with it. I got a bit impatient and cut the top off one of the benches so I could move it, because I didnt need power because there was power along the wall I am moving it to. SO once I had the bit of wood with the power cut loose and when it dangled it put stess on the wires and ZAP! POW! sparks flew and a big flash. I was afraid I was going to burn my shop down, so I turned off the breakers to the power in question, and called my brother and he thought I had thigs under control, and a few days later my brother followed up and fixed my mess. I am thankful for my big brothers!
While I was there it was my other brother's birthday and we went out to dinner and he had made a gluten free pineapple upside down cake, and it was Yum!
anyway on to the Pix!

 Various handles for rifle barrel cleaning rods

Hats in the hat shop!

 The slag pile phase 2

 The new location for the 1st workbench

 This is where the first workbench was, and where the fireworks were. 

 

I hope to see Tavros again, and I will be back working on the shop in another little while. I am excited! painting soon...

The Slag Pile and the resident lizard

So it is still slow going fixing up my dad's gun shop, and I forgot to take my camera(!) last time I went to work on the shop. But I gotta tell ya scraping the slag pile off the floor really wasn't all that exciting, or photo worthy. But! I thought I might tell you about the resident lizard. I went in one time and T om thought he saw a rat, but I had already seen the lizard a few times by then, this time I saw him he was definitely bigger, I guess hes been eating well there in the shop. He about 7" long from nose to tail, He is what my dad called a mountain boomer, I will have to do some research but he is not a Gecko, the latest non-resident species to get to Texas. Geckos are cute and s shaped on the screens and eat bugs and all, but they are not these desert lizards.
I remember lots of horny toads around when i was a kid, easy to catch and they would sit in your hand and look at you with those tiny black eyes in their dinosaur heads all tiny and pocket sized. My dad told me when i asked him where they had all gone, that the red ants gotem. A friend recently told me that they ate the big red ants that the fire ants have edged out, and the horny toads wont eat them, so in effect I guess he was right. An eco system is a delicate thing...
I bring up the horny toads, cause they look a lot alike, deserty colors and little spikes all down their backs, but the horny toads had bigger spikes, similar looking tho i guess.
Anyway back to my friend the mountain boomer, it had been cool, so he wasn't moving at all and he was covered with spider webs, he let me pull some off them off, Its gotta be weird to be a cold blooded creature and not be able to move when huge critters are pulling junk off you.
When i was in high school I had a run-in with a mountain boomer. I used to catch the bus to Harper high school at my dad's gun shop. One cold morning there was a HUGE lizard on the porch, I swear it was at least 18" and maybe more like 24". It looked like it might spring on me and go for the jugular if i went anywhere close to him, so I kept my distance. I had my back to him and there was a loud *crack* and i looked up and saw the grass making waves like a motorboat had just gone by.
My friend who told me about the horny toads and the fire ants also told me that these lizards run on their hind legs, I'm sorry i missed it...
So I asked my daughter what we should name it and she said Tavros. So Tavros the resident Lizard. If hes around I'm going to take a picture. Maybe i should find him some ants.

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.