Back around Christmas, one of my regular Etsy customers asked me to create a font for her, something light-weight that would be good for t-shirts. I had never done a font, but I said I would give it a try. It turned out to be harder than I expected, in more ways than one. First, I had to create the stitches for the letters, themselves, then I had to - or rather wanted to - figure out how to make them a true-type font so that my customer could simply type words instead of cutting/pasting individual letters to make words. After a couple of days of working on the alphabet, I got side-tracked and moved on to something else. My customer has rattled my cage about this font a couple of times since then, most recently while I was in east Tennessee. I promised her I would try again when I got home, so yesterday I sat down and created the remaining letters. They are still not in true font form - she'll still have to cut/paste letters to make words - but she should be able to manage until I do figure out how to make a font.
While I was working on the letters, I heard Cousin Roger coming around the back of the house on his lawnmower. He had come over here last week while I was working on a "totem" that I was attempting to carve on the stick I'd saved from Nanny's crape myrtles. By that time, I had peeled all of the bark off of my stick and was trying to carve shapes with a Dremel. I switched off the Dremel when he came to the porch.
"Whatchoo doin'?" he asked.
"Carving a totem."
I could almost hear bells dinging in his head.
"How'd you get that bark off?"
"Pocket knife."
So yesterday, he rode his lawnmower over here to see if I had any marbles. It seems one of the crape myrtle limbs we gave him had a crook on one end that reminded him of a snake head; he was in the process of carving a walking stick out of the limb, and he wanted marbles to make the snake's eyes. Once upon a time I probably could have found him some marbles, but it's been a minute since I've seen any around here. I do, however, have a plastic bin full of beads for jewelry-making, and I plunked the bin down in front of him and told him to help himself. He chose two green turquoise beads for the eyes.
As Roger was digging through the bead bin, he commented how hard it was to carve the stick with a knife, and he kept glancing over at the Dremel that I'd left laying on a table. I did not volunteer to let him use it.
Before he left, he said that he'd finished refurbishing our swing and would bring it over. The Husband said he'd come get it in the truck. After Roger left, I said to The Husband, "Tell Roger we'll give him $75 for the swing, or if he thinks he can sell it for more than that, he can sell it." (I could buy that same kind of swing for $85 new.) We didn't have $75 in cash in the house, but we did have a $100 bill left over from our trip money. I knew that Roger probably didn't have $25 in his pocket, so I went to the store and bought a bag of chips, a package of hot dogs, and a couple of other little things, hoping to break the $100 bill. Wouldn't you know, my total turned out to be $13, which left $87 in change, and the heifer behind the counter would not give me two tens for a $20. So we ended up paying Roger $80 for the swing.
Maybe he can buy himself a Dremel with it. ;)
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