Another milestone...

This is just a quick post, because I have to make a note of what happened today. On Monday, I received an email from someone who went into the downtown Dover store where I might soon be selling my pens. He told me that he spoke with Evelyn, and he was looking for a pen as a gift to a friend, and she gave him my contact info.

Well, this morning he showed up and bought one of the pens, a maple burl Classic American pen. It is the first pen I have ever sold to someone whom I did not know! Shakey Le Tree Designs lives and breathes, apparently.

In other news, I have severely messed up the sharpening of my roughing gouge, so I took it in to Woodcraft on the way back from Burlington on Tuesday. Don is taking it home to sharpen it, and I will get it back from him at Woodcraft on Saturday, as that is the next day that he is working there. So, no pen making until the weekend.

In the meantime, my lovely wife is helping me to create a web site for Shakey Le Tree that will just showcase the current stock and other items that I have made. It will not give the back story that I give here, about the mistakes that I make along the way. :-)

Speaking of which, I still do make mistakes - I just tend to catch them earlier. For instance, I recently attempted a pink ivory twist pen, but I did not sand it enough before polishing, and the pink ivory had lots of little pock marks (they were smooth, but visible). So, I am going to start over with that instead of making a pen from it. That way, I save the tubes and the kit, and only the wood is lost.

Income: $40