If you visit our News Blog (and you should!) you already know that I’ve added a slide show to our website.  It is the same slide show (minus a few archived items) that we have running whenever we do a show, wholesale or retail.  One of the most frequent questions at these shows is ‘Are all these pictures on your website?’.  In the ‘old’ days of the website, they were.

But, they were all in different categories, spread out and hard to navigate, even with the search option.  And one of the problems with searching is that you need to know what you are looking for.  So, there might have been an amazing Reindeer that was categorized and forgotten – only to be seen if you knew where to look or happened to watch all 400+ images of our slide show, at a show.

In order to fix this oversight we’ve hosted this huge file of images at Flickr, then linked to it on our website here so that if you have a spare moment (or a few hundred of them) you can browse the file and discover something new.  We’ve included some basic info on the image like the rough size (some variation may occur!), price and even a watermark so that if anything nefarious happens with one of them we can prove ownership.

Go ahead and browse around here.  It  will give me some time to crop and clean up the next batch of pictures for the next update!

Jac

I was tempted to title this post ‘A funny thing happened on the way to blog’ mainly because it was funny in an ‘oh crap, what’s going on’ way.  I’ve mentioned before that we are adapting to the new website (almost a year old now!) and one of those adaptations is having two different areas to keep an eye on.   In the old days of the 90’s we had a host for the site and used Frontpage (go ahead, snicker if you want) for updates and maintenance.  It’s essentially the same now, with Wordpress taking the Frontpage role – sorry Mr. Gates, but using the same host.  Well Jake at www.krekura.com did a great job setting up the site for us, but for some reason our site decided to save a complete version of itself every 12 hours or so.  The end result was that late last year we were up to almost 40 gigs of storage on a shared server and climbing.  Our hosting company was none too pleased.  After many hours on the phone with vague, disinterested IT guys we finally landed one who opened up the ‘guts’ on their server and discovered the over zealous code.  It was changed, and the superfluous backups were deleted.  And there was much rejoicing in a shared server somewhere in Massachusetts or Kentucky or wherever.

Now, the reason I’m going into this is because we were extremely tentative in putting up new info on the server, since we couldn’t figure out what was going on.  We even did a work around with Flickr that works really well, and we will utilize that in a way you’ll see soon.

So, we had a couple of months of new images and new items that have now migrated from our studio desktops to the server in Kentucky or Kashmir or Kalinda or  wherever.  Instead of doing a single page for the new items we’ve turned it into an Easter egg hunt by hiding them in plain sight in their respective categories.  And you may also notice that we found a neat little trick that allows up to pick the thumbnail image that will be displayed in the various ways on the site.  So no more fish midsections or odd choices making you wonder exactly what the larger image is supposed to be.

That’s it for now.  No pictures on the update as they are all (mostly) in bed in the categories where they belong.  Plus I’m tired of editing.  Check back soon for some pics of SNOW!  (like 75% of the country hasn’t seen that already this winter!)

Jac

Thanks to a heads up from Carl and Suzanne I learned that one of our crows (the Slat Tailed Crow to be precise) was in an exhibit at the Ward Museum in Salisbury, MD called Clever Corvids. They were also kind enough to forward some excellent pictures, which I added to our online photo album and are now posting them here for your enjoyment.

The show runs through the 29th of November, so stop by if you are in the neighborhood.  And visit our Flickr photo stream for more pictures from the show.

I’ll be back with many more posts in the next day or so – including news about our Holiday Open House Thanksgiving weekend!

I know it doesn’t look like much in the thumbnail picture, but the pile of shavings that came out of our most recent swan carving was almost three feet high and four feet square!  It never ceases to amaze me how this huge volume of wood shavings can be produced from a swan that only measures 32″ long.  And only about half of that distance is hollowed, since we don’t cut into the tail section, and the wings on this particular swan don’t get hollowed out at all.

In the ‘old’ days we did this work with a hand drill and an adze, but now we clamp the ‘body’ of the swan to be hollowed into a cradle and then use our large drill press – with an equally large forstner bit.  The drill press takes all of the elbow grease out of the initial work, but we still need to go in with hand tools and clean the area out smooth.  The tricky part is not getting too deep in any one area and creating an issue with any of the detail carving still to be done.

So, after the hollowing, and the carving, and the sanding, and the painting we get this:

That’s it for now.  I’ll be back later with a show update and an possible newsletter sighting!

Jac

And speaking of older – (nice transition huh!)  here is an older work that we were recently asked to do again:

This is part of our ongoing effort to replace older, not-so-good photos with newer, better pictures.  We’ll have some more soon, as we get ready for the next marathon of shows.

Speaking on which – our next show will be in Boston on Halloween weekend, followed the very next weekend in Greensboro NC for the Saltbox’s 35 year celebration show (graphics here soon – as soon as I can .jpg some .pdf files) then followed the next weekend with the Wilton Historical Society Show.  That’s right – three shows in three weeks.  A first for us.

After that we take a break until Thanksgiving, when we’ll have a Christmas Open house here in the showroom on the farm.  Joining us will be Debbie and Donnie Rogers and possibly a few others – we’re still finalizing some details.  Then we’re all clear until the first weekend in Dec. for the Merion Cricket Club show.  That one is a benefit show with proceeds going to charity.

I’ll have all the dates and graphics put up on our News Blog page soon.  I really should add a Show Schedule page but we’ve already got enough going on with the site, I really don’t want to add any more.  If I keep going I’ll need to issue the visiting ISP’s balls of twine so they can find their way back out.

More later, got to go carve a couple of swans.

Jac

The show was huge fun, with lots and lots of people (many of who were decked out in support of Ohio State – Columbus being a college town after all) taking in the sights and sounds, and even smells – of the fair.  Speaking of smells, our booth was located almost equidistant from the Bar-b-Que concession and the kettle corn seller.  The weekend was like getting caught in an olfactory tug of war. One nostril pulled for the strong, smoky BBQ, the other for the warm melodious scent of the popcorn.   I didn’t get a chance to try the ‘Que, but the kettle corn – being easier to eat surreptitiously in the booth- was a hit with Tricia and I.

Before I get to the pictures from the show I want to take a second to let you know about an event going on right now over at Traditional Folk Art.com.  We artists are having a sale to benefit the American Cancer Society, and I want to make sure my readers (all two of you) are aware.  Here is the relevant graphic:

Click Here: if you want to see the work on sale.

Make sure you head over there and take and look.  And if one of the original pieces for sale strikes your fancy – so much the better.

Now, back to the topic at hand – the Country Living Fair.  It was great fun, and one of the best run shows (thanks Stella Shows!) that we’ve ever done.  Not only was it easy to set up and tear down, but having it in Ohio Village, coupled with the decorating talents of Country Living Magazine made it a visual treat.  So not only were we tempted by the delicious smells floating around the village, but the displays and booths were equally appealing to the eyes.

The only drawback, for us anyway, is that with a large crowd you don’t get the opportunity to interact with customers the way a small, intimate show will allow you.  So there were probably dozens of customers who had questions or comments but were unable to communicate them due to the crush of buyers looking over our booth.  But never fear – the WEB is here!  If you missed the chance this past weekend you can make up for it now by looking over the show pictures and emailing us with any questions you might have.  Plus, there is a lot more to see on the web than there was in person at the show.

So without any additional prattling on by me, here are the pics!

The other unusual thing about the show was the number of visitors to our booth who asked to have their picture taken with our Headless Horseman.  The first few were a novelty.  The next batch was a bit unusual.  The remaining people posing just stumped us; until a nice lady asked to shoot an image of it, then explained that on Halloween the Ohio Village has a program about the Headless Horseman, based on Washington Irving’s classic story.  So unwittingly we had displayed a piece that fit into the local narrative – completely unconsciously.  But what was so special about the explanation was that the kind woman explaining was the actual  ‘headless’ rider in the pageant!  If memory serves I think she was eating kettle corn when she told us.  At least my nose thinks so.

Jac

]]> http://www.threepointsdesign.com/news/country-living-fair-2009/feed/ 0 http://www.threepointsdesign.com/news/country-living-show-time/ http://www.threepointsdesign.com/news/country-living-show-time/#comments Sat, 19 Sep 2009 03:13:39 +0000 threepointsdesign http://www.threepointsdesign.com/news/?p=470 Howdy from Cloumbus Ohio!  We’re here exhibiting at the 2009 Country Living show at the beautiful Ohio village.

Before we got here we stopped in at Around the Bend Willow furniture for a brief respite before the craziness of set-up and show started.  While there I saw this:

This may look like a crow silouhetted against the early morning sky – and it is.  It’s just nt a real crow.   This is a special flying crow we had the last time we visited Ohio for a show.  Rounabouts 2004 or so.  The reason this is so remarkable is that I had completely forgotten about it!  It was ’sold’ to our friends and put up on their potting shed and put out of our minds.  I didn’t even get an image of it before it was sold.  It was a real surprise to see it sitting calmly up there, waiting for me to finally make up for lost time and shoot a pic of it!

Here’s another pic, this one a quick cell-phone job from setup day at the show.

Once I get back to the studio I’ll upload more images from the show.  Time is short here in Columbus and bandwidth is slim, and I want to save what little is left to update some client’s commission pages.  So enjoy the two pics and sit calmly and wait for the rest.  It won’t be long.  I promise!

Jac

Speaking of schedules: I’ve started to add our fall schedule to the News Blog page of the site.  Visit there for all the current info about dates, times and maybe even some promotions.  Since we added the schedule we moved the last show’s images away, but I’m posting them here for continuities sake.

These are the images from the Small Friends Show on Nantucket this past July.  I’ll be adding individual images into their respective categories as time permits.

So what did we do on a rainy back-to-school-back-to-work Tuesday?  We created stuff!  Specifically we finished up this custom commissioned 40″ Codfish (say that three times fast!)

And we assembled and shipped this piece for a client in Canada:

It is a wall mounted piece of driftwood with shorebirds perched on it – obviously.  But this one was special due to the absolutely perfect way the driftwood lined up on the wall.  It made it easy to orient and attach the birds, and is balanced so well it hangs with a single corrugated picture hanger.  This is a special work, since I doubt we will be able to find driftwood exactly like it again.  But finding new and unique bases for this type of piece is what keeps out work interesting, and hopefully keeps you, faithful reader and customer, coming back.

I’ll do some more updates later, but the rain has slacked off a bit, and it’s time to go and check the rain gauge to see if it’s hit ‘biblical’ yet.

Thanks for reading.

Jac

Seems that I started a post, realized that the new Flickr plugin wasn’t working properly and bailed out on it, but only after having published it to see if it was in fact working correctly.  Once the plugin was working I went back to it.  Then  I just edited the previous post, which was earlier in time.  So from my point of view I did two new posts in as many days, but the website didn’t show that.

Oh well.  All that really matters is that everything still works, and we’re starting to seriously plow through the image archives and start uploading and adding images en mass to this section (the blog) and in turn add individual images to their respective categories in the main section of the website.

Here are the most recent uploads to our Flickr page, soon to be divided and conquered to their proper individual pages – enjoy

The next thing to look out for will be a new newsletter, as well as a show schedule page.

Due to the downright weird year we’ve been having (weird in the sense that there’s a large recession bearing down on all of us!) we scheduled more shows this fall than normal.  Unfortunate for us, but good for you, the public.  Since we did this foolhardy thing we plan to make the most of it and try and see as many customers and clients as possible between now and Christmas.  So keep an eye out for the schedule, and don’t be surprised if we show up at an event near you!

Jac

But it is just really exciting when things actually start to mesh and workout.

I know I mentioned previously that I wouldn’t bore you with the details of our blog outage.  So I won’t give you details.  But part of the problem was the amount of images we generate and the willingness (or unwillingness, depending on your point of view) of our hosting company to allow us to continue.  So, in order to continue to offer customers and clients as many images of our work as possible we found a neat little work around.  Flickr.

Now we’d had a Flickr account for years, but never really used it.  Turns out the good folks at tantannoodles have a great little plug-in for WordPress that allows you to store and retrieve images off site on your Flickr account.  Presto!  We’re back in the image producing business.  Impressed?  I was.  If you are still as fuzzy as I was when it was explained to me let me give you an example:

This is a nine foot long custom Codfish we designed and created for the new Main Street location of Nantucket Looms.  If you’re on island drop by and see it in the window – provided it hasn’t found a new home by now.

Still not convinced?  O.K. we’ll try another one, but this is the last one:

This is the window display piece we did for our June gallery show at City Folk Gallery in Lancaster, PA.  It is a solid tabletop swan with a crooked neck position and ‘flying’ wings.

A few months back I would’ve hesitated to post these images on our website because of the server limitations.  So they would’ve been filed, only to come out when a client asked to see other fish or other swans we’ve done in preparation for ordering a custom piece.  But now I can throw caution to the wind and toss images around willy-nilly like Annie Liebowitz playing 52 pickup!

So as long as I have the time for updating this site (unless I can train someone in the studio here to do it!) we’ll be posting more images.

And I apologize for giving out boring details.  But you did get two posts in two days out of it didn’t you?

Jac