custom order and a groovy new tool

This was the most amazing weekend! I'm not at all sure how there was so much leisure AND we got so much done, but we did! Made of awesome.  I finished one of my two "hot" custom orders, and it came out really nicely. Here are some shots:

I love this trim. Cheeptrims.com rocks my world.

 And a nice, doubled, wired plume:

And....AND! I finally won an auction on ebay for a hat stretcher! I've felt pretty sure that I needed one for a while now but I didn't know what size I needed or if they would work well and there were always other things I KNEW that I needed, etc.

After losing dozens of auctions because I wasn't willing to go over $50, I finally decided that it was just time to pay what the thing cost. It came last week, and this custom order was the first time I've had to use it.
The big surprise to me was that I think I'll be using it primarily for double checking the size of hats, which I need to do much more often than stretching them.
Though it may be obvious, this thing expands or contracts when you turn the handle in the center and is intended to stretch a hat that is a tiny bit too snug. I hadn't really considered that I could use it to determine the exact size of existing hats.

 When I put the stretcher into a hat, I turn the crank till it "fits" the hat, and then I can read the little gauge on the metal expander piece. It reads in inches on one side, and in hat size on the other. I am absolutely thrilled about this, and it's going to become on eof the most used pieces of equipment I own.

I am absolutely certain that the custom order I just boxed up is exactly 24 inches around :)
Hooray for the right tools!