Hopefully, pleasant dreams

The last few days I've been toiling over various projects, seldom falling inline with my usual routine of checking my favorite sites every 5 minutes while I wait for inspiration to strike. Instead I've found myself totally forgetting until bedtime that I haven't checked my MySpace or Facebook pages since I woke up. I don't even think I've been in contact with a single soul in nearly a week. It's a wierd feeling... falling out of my routine.

The past week feels like a delirium, like all I have done for endless days is stare at wires and solder, leather and thread, mess and pile. Quite frankly, because I have. And all night (morning to you surface-dwellers), I toss and turn, embroiled in dreams of equal toil and delirium. I'm seldom one to ever get a "good night's sleep" though, regardless of circumstance. I never wake rested and ready to take on the day. My nights are just unconscious continuations of my day.

Well, here are a couple pics of a couple of things I've been up to lately. There is soooooo much more behinds the scenes of these two items, and it is that in which I've been so enthralled.


The prototype strap for Batch II


A new audio switch for the studio

Oh... and a new audio player for the website! can't believe I forgot about that after all the mind-numbing work I did on it.

w00t! Leather Day has arrived.

Got the 2 pigsuede hides in today and am now ready to start the next batch of straps.



The two hides (the yellower leather in the pic) came in the same color, you might call it a camel or cornmeal color. To be honest, I was hoping to get a different color on each hide (maybe the trick is to order assorted colors on separate orders?). I can live with this, though, because I'd rather have two hides in a color like this, an earthtone which is easily usable, than two in some oddball color (like this rather horrid turquoise I've seen) that I'd have a harder time using.

There's enough material here for maybe 7 straps, I can get well over a dozen if I order some additional middle-layer veg split. May do that since I need to order a couple other items anyway. But first, I'll design a prototype strap (since this is a different style from my last batch), that'll give me a much clearer idea of what I can get out of the rest of the leathers.

Meantime

Got word my leathers will be here next Wednesday (w00t!). Can't wait to kick out some new straps! In the meantime, I've been working on music. Adding some extra parts to an older ambient guitar track and wanting to finish up some others that have been lying around. Don't hold me to it, but maybe I'll have a new track to post before I dive into the straps.

The Next Batch of Straps

So, I'm really wanting to get started on another guitar strap but I don't have all the material I need yet. 2 hides of pigsuede are still on backorder. What I did this time was order some "mystery package" leathers, the mystery lies in what colors I will receive. I figured I would make a batch of 3-layer straps from whatever color-combos I had to work with (3 layers of thin leathers sandwiched together, makes them more flexible than 1 or 2-layers of thicker leather).

For the top layer, I received a huge piece of black grained cowhide and a smaller hide of slightly olive/grey-colored pigskin. I also have a large piece of natural veg-tanned split (suede) which is for the middle layer. Just waiting on the bottom layer stuff to show up. Fortunately, the black will go with whatever other colors I end up with (though I was hoping for something more interesting than black). Hope I get something that matches that olive/grey hide.

Also trying to think of how I can give these straps some uniqueness. There are several places that make similar straps and they generally only have their name or logo stamped/printed on them. These thinner, grained leathers don't work the same as the heavier veg-tan stuff I've used when it comes to drawing/carving/dying designs. But I have a bunch of scrap leathers that I might be able to put to use 3-dimensionally, plus a few other ideas.

Still, I find it easier to get ideas when I have all my materials in front of me.