We are currently enjoying some lovely Southern Hospitality (no offense to those of you reading this from above Mr. Mason and Mr. Dixon’s line!) while we exhibit at the 2010 Country Living show/fair at Stone Mountain Park just outside of Atlanta Georgia.

In honor of this event we decided to salute one of the local ACC teams (sorry Clemson) and make special piece just for this show.  So if you are a Georgia Tech fan, this Yellow-jacket is for you!

The weather has been great, and the crowds have been large and enthusiastic.  There were several times this weekend when our booth was packed and customers had to skip us and come back later when the frenzy had died away.  I even had one client from Alabama stay over so she could have the booth to herself this morning during early buying.

The show runs through Sunday (Oct. 24th).  If you are in the area stop in for a great time.

And now that I’ve made you skip over my sub-standard prose, here’s what you visited for  – pictures!

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Many thanks to Country Living Magazine and Stella Shows for an outstanding event.  They are the best.

Jac

…not that it was a huge priority compared to other concerns.  But it is refreshing to navigate the maze of oauth logins, login keys, apps, etc. and come out the other side with something that functions.  I’ve also added a wholesale order form in anticipation of getting the wholesale section of the website set up.  I’ll also be adding a page with an update on our crushing fall show schedule. And crushing is mildly accurate – what withe three shows in four weeks of October.

But I wanted to get the automatic Twitter upload done so that I could update what we’re working on as we go, instead of having the photos/copy sit in a folder until I had a window of time to add them to the blog as an update (like this one).

If this works then all of our new posts will hit Twitter when they’re published on our site.  If not, then its a night of troubleshooting for me.  Again.

Jac

… if I can get it to work.

But even if it isn’t working right now we’ll get it straight eventually.  In the meantime you might notice that on the bottom of the pages you will now see social networking buttons.  Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.  Feel free to click them and try them out!  I’d love to know that they’re working.

Next up might be an actual by-God Facebook account for us.  Maybe. 

Jac

Before I get to regular explanations for the neglect of this section of our website I’d like to take some time  to remember that nine years ago today we as a nation were attacked.  This isn’t a political blog, and I have no interest in re-hashing American foreign policy pre-and post 9/11.  The attack happened.  Anyone with a TV or an internet connection saw what happened.  It just ‘is’ .  Not was, IS.  As a day it will live, like Pearl Harbor, in infamy forever.  More so now, in the digital age, when every horrible, heart wrenching moment can be revisited at will.

In honor of those who lost their lives and those who stand ready to protect us I’m going to do something I haven’t done before  – I’m going to add a link to an outside article.  This is  written by Captain Alexander Marshal and is a first-hand account of the recent rescue mission undertaken against Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden  – The Magellan Star.  The highlight of the article (for me at least) was when a Sgt. in the assaulting force  showed the US Flag patch from his shooter’s kit to the Captain of the Magellan Star.  Read it and see if it isn’t your favorite part as well.

It is fitting to read and share that article and reflect on today of all days; and a fitting reminder that serious men and women with American Flag patches on their shoulders stand watch so that we can enjoy our lives free of fear.

Below is an image of a flag that hangs on the back wall in the production section of our studio.  Some of you who have visited in person might have seen it and wondered why we keep such a battered and tattered version of Old Glory around.  That flag was put out on display nine years ago today, right after the first tower fell.  After a year (give or take) of ’round the clock display we decided it was too battered and faded to keep out.  But at the same time it was unthinkable to me to destroy it.  Thanks to the events of 9-11 that Flag that we displayed, along with millions of others, stood for something more than just the obvious grade school patriotic themes.  It is part of the solidarity that we as citizens displayed for days, months and now years later after that tragic day.  It will hang from the wood rack on the back wall of our studio for as long as we have Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines in harms way overseas continuing the fight that was started on the morning of the 11th of September, 2001.

Our 9-11 Flag

I’ll be back later on to explain why another month went by without us updating the blog section.

Thanks for reading.

Jac

Nothing like working non-stop to make you miss days.  Or weeks.  Or months.

After a successful Nantucket show I’ve got a bit of a breather so I thought I’d catch up on some posts.  This one is dedicated to the just completed Nantucket show.  Upcoming future posts will focus on past commissions we’ve finished as well as some of the more unique items we’ve recently done for galleries.  You didn’t think we’d taken the last few months off did you?

Nantucket images are up here:

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The ‘Event Under the Tent’ to benefit Small Friends of Nantucket was a huge success this year.  The tent was immense even for mainland standards but was outrageous for the small island of Nantucket.  It was so big that I was looking for the zeppelin that should have inhabited the structure – or as I asked one of the chairpersons of the show ‘why didn’t you get the big one?’

The tent sported a hard floor and carpeting; which while an improvement over the dust and weeds of past years it lacked the charm and literal ‘grass-roots’ of the previous shows.  I have to admit it was a bit disconcerting this year as the tent was so large it was hard to tell if the show was well attended.  In the past, with the smaller tent, the pack of customers into our booth (or any of the others ) was a good metric to gauge the customer’s interest.  This year the big big top could have hosted most everyone in Town and left room for most of ‘Sconset, so only our sales gave a good indication of the show’s attendance.

Thanks again go to Small Friends, Nantucket Looms and Cheney Brothers Building for putting on such a wonderful event.  And thanks also to Plum TV for giving us the extra publicity by using our booth for interviews!  Including one cringe worthy interview of yours truly trying to act like it wasn’t the fourth or fifth time I’ve done an on-camera interview.  It was still better than the Good Morning Atlanta interview I did years ago.  That was so bad I never even watched the tape afterward.

And special thanks to all our stellar customers on and off the island.  I can say with all sincerity that the best part of our year is getting to interact with you, our customers, on island during the Small Friends show.  We really wouldn’t be doing what we do without all of you.

Thanks.

Jac

PS: and a special thanks to the Robinsons for their hospitality- there is nothing better than good food, good company and good wine Al-fresco in Nantucket- and our two boys enjoyed the ice cream!

Well, I’m late again.  I wanted to have this post up and done the week before our first Friday show at one of our favorite galleries (and I’m not just saying this because they sell a lot of our work!)  -City Folk in Lancaster, PA.  It was a bittersweet show for us since the founder and owner turned over the reins to a new owner just a month or so before.  So while it was great to get to know the new owner,  it was tough to know that our old working relationship was done.  That said, our April show there has been going great, with the signature piece:

sold shortly after the gallery show opening and Karen, the new proprietor (proprietress?  don’t want to be sexist) has been magnificent in filling some big shoes.  I expect big things for us and the new City Folk.

But the changeover did delay us getting our promotional material out, and delayed us getting our new work done and photographed so we weren’t able to get our Constant Contact email invites out, and I didn’t get this blog post up before the show.  One delay around here has a habit of throwing sharp elbows at other deadlines, then the injured get prickly; and they act up and before you know it I’m assembling the awards for the Chesapeake Swamp Stomp at 2:30 in the morning to meet a 1pm deadline the next day.  So if you are running in this year’s half marathon through the Great Dismal Swamp: Good Luck!  I ran a (figurative) marathon to get the awards done in time.

I still need to get the rest of our slide-show up on Flickr for your amusement. And we need to finish the formatting on the Wholesale section of our website, and I need to add our 2010 show schedule to the site, and I need to make inventory for next weekend’s show - Art on the Square – on Duke of Gloucester Street (DOG)  in Williamsburg, VA.  If you are in the ‘Burg or York county come by and see us!

More later.  There’s a deadline pushing and shoving now….

Jac

PS – Almost forgot the pictures! 

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PPS- Just for the fun of it – here’s a new Lobster too:

…this year so I skipped pictures from the snow at the Market Square wholesale show (20+ inches!), or pictures of snow here on our farm in southeastern Va. (10″, plus 2+ inches two other times!) and instead added pictures that people have actually, well asked for.

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

It may seem that we totally went away for a couple of months.  Off to some warm tropical isle perhaps.  But no, we were always right here, in (currently) snowy SE Va.

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

Well, shucks.  This was supposed to be my Halloween update but for some reason *cough*toomanyshows*cough* I didn’t get to it by my self proscribed deadline.  So here it is now.

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!