I'm working as a printer for a clothing company. The equipment is pretty crappy and temperamental and the pay is the lowest they can legally get away with. The factory is positively Dickensian. I can't help remembering Scrooge in his office overseeing his business and scrimping on every possible penny. The owners of this place have a very similar approach, right down to the 'Bah humbug' at Christmas - but only at the factory. At home they have an entire room dedicated to Christmas junk and apparently decorate the whole house. All very tasteful I'm sure.
Here's a glimpse of my 'office':
I've cleaned it up since then. Chucked out tons of dried up or rotten inks. Now we have a whole shelf of blue and another of green. With lesser amounts of black, white, red and yellow. Now I can actually find stuff. Whoopee! This means I will (hopefully) not get in trouble for using the 'wrong' blue. I've tried to get the requests to be made being a little more specific about colour, but my employers are not trained in colour theory and are just assuming that my psychic skills will allow me to understand which of the 30 blues they mean when they say blue.
On a very happy note, I've recently had a visit from my marvellous friend and fellow artist Kate Ward. She blogs too, here. She's doing beautiful and delicate print work and establishing a business . She's been very successful of late being selected to purvey her wares at some very selective markets.
Last weekend we visited the Tasmanian Craft Fair at Deloraine, which is about 40 minutes from here. It's a gorgeous little town and the fair is held all over the place. There were 14 venues with buses ferrying people from one venue to the next. We saw lots of fabulous stuff and even bought some of it. Kate was researching how other people run their marketing businesses and collected loads of cards and other promotional material. It was a really good trip and energising. When work settles down a little, I'll have to get to work on producing some new work to market. Kate and I are talking about being exhibitors at the next Tas Craft Fair in 2011.
It was great to have Kate here. She's a bundle of positive energy and an inspiration. The cats also really appreciated her company:
I thought that as there are two cats, we could have one each. The cats clearly had oher plans.
Life is settling back down now. I'm concentrating on the house and garden at the moment. It's great to have a job so I can pay the mortgage and buy a few bits and pieces and have fun with friends when they visit.
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