Couranteer in the Works.

I’ve been working away on bags for the last few weeks, This Couranteer being one of the last few in this batch. I’m a about a week and a half’s worth of work in on this one. Once I get to this point it all comes together pretty quickly. Relatively speaking

As I work away I’m thinking about all that has changed with the way I make these. I dye all this leather by hand. It is a three day process that has to take place before I even start making anything out of it.

There isn’t really anyway to recycle leather. I can’t melt it down, or kneed it back into a mound and start again. Once I start cutting the leather down every step I take is one I’m committed to. If the knife slips a little while I’m cutting out the edge of the body of a bag I can’t call my customer and ask if it’s okay to deliver a Couranteer that’s 13.5” wide instead of 14”. If the knife slips I have to start over. Hopefully it’s early on in the process. Rather than a few weeks in.

The knife has slipped more times that I’d like to admit. When it happens there is a whole grieving process. At first I can’t believe it happened. Then I try to convince myself that it’s fixable. Finally comes acceptance and I start over.

Ten years in I’m cutting out the parts slower than I ever have. I’ve done this hundreds of times at this point. Yet still in my head I’m double checking every step I’m taking. I have an itemized list in front of me with each little step written out. I check it as I go. Like an anxious novice looking over a recipe.

The knife makes a cut following along a groove I’ve made to demarcate the borders of the body panel. This first pass with the knife makes the trench deeper. The next pass with the knife will make the trench deep enough to hold the knife to the line. The third cut will pass the knife all the way through the leather. Slowly. Slowly progress is made. One pass at a time.

It has become a mantra I recite to my students in class. Go slow. Pay attention to what your hands are doing. Get each step right. It all adds up. Go slow to go fast.

The body panels are cut out and I’ve moved on to the pockets and gussets that will make the sides of the bag. This is what I’ve done for weeks now. This level of concentration requires all other work to stop in the studio.

As I cut and shape I’m thinking about the future of these bags. Three different weights of leather. Hardware. Strap leather. The commitment to dyeing all that leather. The concentration required. Thousands of spent dollars sitting around me waiting to be made into a bag. This system works when I’m doing nothing but bag making. When I’m doing anything else it’s thousands of spent dollars sitting around not doing anything. Slowly drying out and becoming stiffer and harder to work with.

I honestly don’t know where the future lays with these. I’m proud of my designs. I’ve never had to be pushy with selling them because there really isn’t anything else out there quite like what I make, If you want a nice bag there are lots of options. If you want one like what I make there really aren’t.

At the same time they are so resource intensive that I can’t really experiment with them. In every other area of my practice I’m making progress. Advancing my style. These haven’t changed.

In these few weeks of bag making I’ve done little else. All my other work is on hold while I do them. It’s coming down to math between sticking with what’s comfortable and safe in the past and what holds promise and potential for the future. I wish I could do both but it is becoming increasingly obvious to me that I can’t. There aren’t enough hours.

On any other decision the math is easy. I move forward. It’s what I’ve always done. These are different. I use these bags every day. I get stopped on the street and asked about them. I still catch myself looking across to studio at the display models thinking “Damn. I made that.”

But to stay on that path means giving up the one that I’m headed down. I just don’t think I’m the kind of person that can stay in one place like that.

It would be nice to end this with a clean ending. I don’t have one though. As I work through this bag I’m working through what to do about them. Slowly. With patience. Committed to each step. Watching my hands, checking the plan, thinking of the finished picture, trying to not let the knife slip.

I had the pleasure of getting out of the workshop briefly for a little human to human interaction the other day to drop some stuff off at my friend Stephanie's place for a photo shoot. We got to talking about some of the things she has in the works for the future. You have to understand, this is quite a list. Like a a lot of driven creatives Stephanie has a lot going on. Her two business (The Cleveland Flea and The Indie Foundry) keep her schedule full with planning events, organizing vendors, promoting the events, coming up with inspiration for new ideas, lots and lots of networking, and all the graphic design (and other ephemera) that going along with all of it. That is in addition to; traveling quite a bit, providing guidance to fledgling makers, being a cheerleader for anyone around her who is thinking about starting a business, being a Drum Major for many of us who have, running a pop up shop, and she just signed a lease on a new (or very old) building that she is going to run as a "creative clubhouse". One thing she said that stuck me at the time was, "Sometimes I have so much going on that I just have to focus on what I am doing this week."

That got me thinking about how I go about managing the precarious available-time/available-opportunity tightrope-walk that most of us in the creative community have to do every day. Sometimes it's really frustrating trying to figure out what to do with your day when a bunch of good opportunities are pulling you in several different directions.  What I have found helps me is a little system based around two simple questions, "What can I do to make money today?" and "What could I do to make money tomorrow?"

Make money today always takes priority. After all, today is what really counts. I don't want to look back at my life and think "Man, I had some really great ideas for the future".  So when I'm planning out my day I ask myself what opportunities are available today. For example: designing new things is fun. It's exciting to turn the great ideas in my head into physical things in my hands. Designing is important. I might come up with the next big thing and make it big. Who knows? But will designing a new product actually make me any money today. I already have plenty of things (maybe less glamorous) that I could be taking advantage of. I already have a strong product line. Am I making the most of it? How could I use what I've got right now to make a better living today. Could I try to get my products into more stores? Could I be working on developing traffic to my website? Would some better photographs lead to more sales? Could I build up my inventory so that I'll be ready when those orders come in?

This helps because it frees me from getting distracted by opportunities I might not be ready for. Laying a strong ground work for today will lead me to those plans for the future anyway. Another example: take that amazing thing I wanted to design in the previous paragraph. Had I focused on what I could do first (get in more stores, develop web traffic, take better photos) when I do finally develop that new product I'll be able to offer it to a much wider audience in a stronger way.

I'm not saying abandon the future. I have a giant notebook called "Make money tomorrow" that has all the ideas I wanted to pursue but didn't think I was ready for. When I'm ready to take the next step I have a great resource to draw from. It actually feels kind of liberating to take a really good idea that I might not have time for , write it down, and file it away, knowing that it will be there when I am ready for it.

Carpe diem, focus on one week at a time, make money today, call it what you want. The idea is always the same. The best course of action is frequently to capitalize on what you have right now and deal with the future tomorrow.