happenings in mohopland

Oops. It's been a long time since I've been back here... things have been particularly crazy here lately.

My new studio - which I love - was a bit on the dirty side when I moved in. So I spent about a month cleaning it, literally scrubbing every square inch, buh. (My cousin Abby helped out for a few days too, bless her.) It still needs a lot of work, actually, but at least it's no longer making me shudder. So excuse #1 for not posting in a while is that I've been spending all my spare time cleaning.

Excuse #2 is that I've had an insane cold, not like anything I've experienced before. For two full weeks, I've been totally exhausted and my head was in a thick fog where I can't think at all - it has been SOOOOOO annoying. Today is the first day that I feel like my old self, although I'm still blowing my nose every 10 minutes. Gross.

On top of this, my wood supply burned down at the lumberyard, and my new machinery arrived nearly a month late... good times. But there's nowhere to go but up from here, eh?

There has been fun to be had in the last few weeks, though. Siamak (that's my husband, I call him C) and I went up to Minneapolis in February to visit my new CNC machine. CNC stands for Computer Numerical Controlled, basically it's a computer-run cutter that I'll use to carve my new collection of shoes. The machine was manufactured by a really neat family-owned company outside the Twin Cities, and we went up there to get a little lesson on using it before it was shipped to us.

The CNC has two cutters so I can carve shoes twice as fast :) Since it's kind of two machines in one, we've named it Bunker (left head Chang, right head Eng) after the "original" Siamese twins. Ben at the factory (above left) was a doll, patiently teaching C and I how to use the machine (that's me at right). There's SO MUCH to learn, it's a little overwhelming. But I'm really, really excited about Bunker, because it'll really increase the variety of shoe styles that I can make, as well as our production capabilities.

So I'll be trying really, really hard in the next few weeks to add new shoes, but I'll also be learning how to use Bunker, and it's the start of sandal season, so I probably won't be able to post as much as I'd like...