happy (and gorgeous) customer

Hello all -

I owe a great big post on the awesomeness that was the Texas hat sales event. (took 35 hats, sold 19!! It was good to be down south again for a bit.) But - as I have not managed to take the leedle memory card out of my awesome new camera, that post will have to wait.

In the meantime, for your viewing pleasure, I present to you - Jenn.K (of http://periodmovies.blogspot.com/)who wore her squeaky new Trulyhat to the California Ren Faire and her hubby took the most amazingly awesome portraits!

I lurve me some yummy customer photos. Don't you?

Off to go read her blog now......

Hat shapes, parasisals, and a couple of custom requests

 In hat class last night, I made some more progress on felt hat #2:
Here it is on the block:



I got it off the block, basted a wire into the edge and and tried it on. Despite the fact that my classmates LOVED it on me, and the fact that I think it's coming out really beautifully, I believe I may have struck out for a second time in the "hats I personally want to wear on a daily basis" department.
 It's so funny - I can look at someone else and have a great guess on what will look best on them, but I'm apparently not so great at choosing the best shapes for MY face - at least not just by looking at a block I haven't used before.

The jury may be out till the hat is all done, cause I've got some fun plans for decoration on it, plus - it is shaping up to be a fall hat, and and my wardrobe is shaping up for spring. Spring! Where hats are straw and sinamay and parasisal:

Izzie had a sinamay hat she had just finished, which she let me try on. I don't have a picture but, ladies and gentlemen, THAT was *my* hat shape. Here is the block, covered with plastic and ready to start:

 I asked to start one of those, despite the fact that I'm actually supposed to be in the felt class. Izzie had a gorgeous cranberry red parisisal hood lying around that she let me purchase, which I had been eyeing since day 1.

 

Here it is just initially placed on the block:

and here it is with the string on and after some work:

We ran out of time for me to pull the brim, but I'm really excited about it - since I'm much more certain that it will look good on me, having tried the shape on already!

In other news, I had a request for a custom Greek sun hat like in these two images:  

He wants the point from the second image, but the brim from the first. I can do that.

Something about the images suggested to me that they might be made of straw, and with that in my head, I picked this awesome hat up to use as a blank. (for WAY less than it should have cost)

I look forward to showing it to Izzie and seeing what she thinks of the straw. It's lovely and fine-woven and pliable, and I think it will make a really nice quality hat.

Also had a request for this gorgeous hat:

Which also looks to me that it might be made of straw. (something about the lines that go around the crown).

Maybe I just have straw on the brain?

I don't own the right brim block for this one, and I don't know if Izzie does either. But - the requestor is a friend....so I'll look and see.

And that's entirely enough.

TrulyHats are on the road to Texas! (And new Camera)

And by on the road - I really mean it. Four big boxes of TrulyHats (pretty much everything on the store page and a couple more) are all boxed up and mailed off to my friends Kim and Erik's house in Houston.  The hats will wait patiently for me to arrive and take them to an SCA event there (Stargate Baronial) where two fabulous old friends will be taking on an awful lot of responsibility, AND I'll have a merchanting booth.

(Apparently, out in the real world, these are called  "trunk shows")

I'm quite excited to go back to the land where my hatmaking began, and am hopeful that I will see lots of old friends and meet a bunch of new ones.

Also: Camera!

In other exciting (to me) news, after a long search (ok - only about a month. What can I say, I've got the attention span of a gnat.) I finally stopped with the research and actually ordered a new digital camera. I spent a whopping $89.00 on it, and am quite a proud cheapskate that way.

My real, no, ONLY criterion was that I wanted to be able to take excellent macro shots with it. I couldn't care any less about megapixels or zoom Xs or sepia tones or anything. Good. Clear. Easy. Closeup Shots.

Today - it CAME in the mail! Naturally, being a good technical writer, I read all the instructions first (praise me!) and then tried it out on whatever was handy, which happened to be some jewelry cast-offs that a friend gave me to use as possible hat decor.

Here is my "first time out of the gate" resulting photo:

May I just  please say: Woot!

For anyone who is also shopping for an extremely inexpensive, fabulous macro-mode extrordinaire camera, 

it is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FH1, and I got it from Amazon.com