Out takes

We're trying to get our current mens t shirt collection onto the website. If you take photos of the t shirts on coat hangers they just look big and saggy so Ed had to wear them.
Here are the pictures you won't be seeing on the website.

The Ros Wallet

Although we don't normally give our products names our latest wallet is definitely a 'Ros'. I made my own version a couple of years ago. After an unfortunate incident of wallet based incompetence I made a wallet I could chain to my bag which would hold lots of small change and business cards.

Initially we thought it was too large for people who don't regularly carry £50 in small change, but I eventually tried making a few to sell. The picture shows the my first batch. Also available in dark brown, tan and black hopefully we will get them onto the website this week.

Hunter Gatherers

Living in the countryside we have started foraging in the hedgerows for foodstuffs we can find growing wild. Our Shoe-making Landlady Chris has done spectacularly well on this front. Local fly tippers have deposited a load of pub snacks at the end of her road. Pictured is one weeks collection.

I'm partial to Sweet Roasted Almonds and Ed sings the praises of Gherkins in Anchovy Oil. I'm not sure what Chris' favourite is but as I keep finding half finished bar snacks cans she's clearly enjoying the fruits of her finds.

Making Screen Printing Frames

We've bought pre-made Screen printing frames before but find the ones we make ourselves last much longer. The pictures above show Ed adding the mesh to the frames. This is actually a two person job as you have to stretch out the mesh as tightly as possible, but I'm taking the photos here.

The worst thing about the job is putting all the staples in which leads to sore wrists, blood blisters and all sorts of other problems. So we're asking Santa for a Pneumatic Staple Gun.

Loglike

Our friends Jen and Steve who run Loglike used to have a stall at Spitalfields on Sundays but recently moved to North Wales. From the looks of their Blog they're having a great time.

Country living has already inspired new Loglike products. This set of badges is beautiful. Like all their products even just the packaging is gorgeous.

Print Day, Friday

Once again Friday was spent printing. Earlier in the week we cut the leather then we print invariably on Friday. Ed does the printing and I do the positioning both to print the items and to dry them while Ed prints the next item. When we've tried swapping roles it's always a disaster. I am always subject to Ed's very critical eye as I do his job but less skillfully, similarly I can't help interfering as I find him so slow with the positioning.

Anyway I position the pieces once printed to dry. As we have limited drying space you have to lay the pieces out as efficiently as possible so you tend to end up with a table covered in the same image. They always look so lovely at this stage it almost seems a shame to sew them up.

Hold the liquor

Our friend Huw has a shop in Brighton (they even sell some of our stuff) and a website; Junkfunk. Was nosing on his website this morning and spotted this nifty little item I hadn't seen before. It appealed to me.

Stabo goes Green for Winter, or is that Blue

It's that time of the year again, when it just gets a bit chilly. Less auspicious than the notorious 'first swallow of summer' is the 'first Thermals for winter'. That was quite a while back. We have now reached the stage of lots of layers and hats indoors.

As you can see the Stabo scarf is coming in very handy.

We love the weekend

Actually we don't love it that much but I thought a 'we hate the weekend' title might be too grumpy. In particular Friday nights are a bit of a drag as we always end up working late. This is what we were up to last night; screen printing. Ed tends to do the printing and I do the running around placing printed items on all spare spaces to dry out.

It wasn't too bad though we were made a glass of mulled wine and had a break watching fireworks. Of particular note were the sparklers, you don't realise quite how much smoke a sparkler gives off until to avoid the rain you light 5 of them in a small marquee.

There was a Jolly Hunter

This is not exactly Stabo related but has taken precedence over everything else.

We have a rat problem. They were getting into the house so our landlady boarded up the probable entrance and exit holes. Unfortunately she trapped at least one inside under the floorboards in our part of the house.

We tried to trap them last night but they managed to steal all the bait and safely go back down under the floorboards. Ed has decided that an air rifle is the solution to all our problems. I'm not quite sure how this is going to play out in the confines of our kitchen but it keeps us entertained.

Fantastic Mr Wallet

We are trying to sort out new products and photos for our website.

In particular the photography is rather labour intensive. Clothing is especially difficult to make look good which is why we are taking photos of t shirts on clothes hangers rather than people.


I spent a few hours faffing about with the light cube moving card holders by a couple of millimetres at a time in order to fit them perfectly in the frame. Inspired and greatly entertained by Fantastic Mr Fox perhaps we'll take our new skills in moving things by infinitesimal amounts and create a wallet based stop frame animation. Probably not.