We’re Hanging Our Shingle
I designed some signs on my computer and emailed them to Faith, who then did whatever happens in something called Inkscape, took that to MakeHaven, and laser etched the signs. Today, I hung them.
Sign #1: “It’s a Beautiful Day To Make Something” is nothing more than workshop inspo and inside joking around. I didn’t actually “hang” it. It’s just sitting on a shelf in a prominent spot with some live edge and exotic wood. It’s a Grey’s Anatomy thing, a show we love to watch and rewatch. Derek Shephard, a brain surgeon, starts his surgeries by saying “It’s a beautiful day to save lives.” Now you know. You’re an insider.
Sign #2: “The Sarah Collins Barn” is an homage to Sarah Collins, who - and here you should probably read the very first blog post - we were told by the previous homeowners was the original purchaser of the land our house is on and the woman who had the house built in 1886. She was single at the time, which had to be be a rare thing, but she married Albert sometime later. There’s a very old sign on the front of the house that reads “Albert Collins House, 1886.” Um, no. I don’t know who Sarah Collins was. I don’t know what she did or how she was able to purchase land and commission the building of a house as a single woman in 1886. But, frankly, this Albert dude sounds like a gold digger. We’re setting the record straight.
Sign #3: “elm city wares” is now a “shingle” on the barn. I always thought the shingles in that saying, about starting a business, referred to slate shingles hung outside the door of a business on Main Street or wherever. More likely, it’s referring to shake wooden shingles that were common on roofs in the 1800s. We had our roof redone almost as soon as we moved here, and it had shake shingles. People used to turn shake shingles into signs and hang them, and that led to “hang out your shingle” becoming a colloquial saying for starting a new business.
We’re not a business just yet. We’re giving ourselves a year for product development. But (obviously) we have a website, not publicly listed, currently, so what you’re now reading, like every previous post, was written into an empty abyss, like some tree falling in a forest that no one heard, raising the question of whether it made a sound. (Faith’s response to that metaphor: Wait, like it takes human recognition for something to exist? So anthropocentric!”) My response to that: So academic.
The reason we hung a shingle today is because already, it seems like the abyss is hearing a sound. A neighbor saw a thing, a coaster, and took a pic and showed it to a friend, a business owner. The friend was interested. Hey, could they make some for us, maybe with our logo? For an event? Sure, event coasters now exist. Then, a phone call with the neighbor’s friend. Could you make more, and could you make some signs? Maybe some other stuff? Show us what you have, tell us what you can do.
ANYTHING is the logical answer to that question if you’re planning on hanging out a shingle. Because we can, and we will, and the abyss heard us.
It’s always a beautiful day to make something. Hanging the signs is a way of not only saying that we can make things, but that we can build a community that appreciates the experience those things enable.
