It’s shopping season for sure, and this time last year I had 8 broom orders to fill in the two weeks before Christmas. As soothing as it may be to smell fresh cut wood and fall into the rythm of sanding, there’s really only so much sawdust and paint fumes a person can inhale at 2 AM and retain their sanity. Not that I had a lot of it to begin with.

I love making brooms. Absolutely love it. So you know things are a little out of whack when I wake up every morning in a cold sweat and immediately check my email praying another order hasn’t come in. The truth is, as much as I hate the “c” word — you know… can’t— there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do my Actual Real Job, everything that needs to be done for the house, and make my favorite pieces of functional art.

So the last Crookedbroom of the year shipped out today, and I think the word that best describes shutting the shop down for the year is, um, suck. But there is another word entirely that describes the fact that I’m heading to bed tonight before midnight:

Awesome.

I just barely had time to finish half a dozen brooms on Christmas Eve (and I mean, the glue was still drying on these babies when I gave them away) but there are a couple of new fun designs to show off.

Zebra striped and the Ultimate Polka Dots in black and pink.

I had intentions of posting our MysterMan’s ingenious Christmas tree compromise before the big day, but no such luck…

The problem with the Christmas tree was that it pissed me off to buy a cut live tree because 1.) We’re going to be buying and planing a ton of live evergreens on the Memorial property, so why should we spend money on what is essentially a dead tree, and 2.) My heart breaks a little for all those trees that have been cut down… especially when I pick one out for my very own Christmas tree. (Yeah, yeah, I’m a tree hugger and I know it, so sue me.)

We we’re holding out to get a big ol’ evergreen with a root ball, which are amazingly hard to find in December… and just when I had resigned myself to buying a fake tree MysteryMan came up with a brilliant idea:

 Take three of those small little “Holiday Trees” from Home Depot…

Put one on a pedastle and make a pyramid…

And Voila! A real live Christmas tree… and all three trees can be planted on our property come spring.

Now… I’m convinced the reason that MysteryMan came up with this idea (instead of me) is because he is now a real live professional Engineer.

That’s right. We suffered through a year of studying, and me pretending to know what terms like “amplification factor” and “axial load” mean, plus two hellish road trips, and sixteen hours of exam questions (that last part was exclusive to the Man of Mystery himself, but were just as painful for me… especially when eight of them were spent working out of the back of the Xterra)

But all of that paid off… and now we can all refer to MysteryMan, as MysteryMan P.E.

And you know what? That has been such a highlight of the last three weeks that I’m going to end this post on that note… because honestly? It just fucking rocks. I’m so proud of this guy!

Tools were lined up on the bench in a row,

As a girl in her bare feet ran back to and fro;

She dreamed of night snuggled up in her bed,

But stayed up and got covered in sawdust instead;

The brooms were lined up on the bench one by one,

At midnight it started to look like great fun;

Then her focus got bad, and so did her rhyming,

And the work was only half done, so much for good timing.

To be continued…
 

Also, why in the hell does the word term “Polka Dots” contain an L? What’s wrong with people?  

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Basically, my workshop is a crookedbroom explosion right now:

We have 2×4′s, handles waiting to be routed, handles waiting to be trimmed, and handles in various states of paint and finish. There’s also a work bench in there somewhere, but you’d be hard pressed to find it with a shovel and a map. Welcome to my life.

Who new crookedbrooms would be such popular Christmas presents?

It’s hard to imagine with all this mess I also have an actual job that requires my actual presence in something other than ripped jeans and wife beaters. (Sometimes I feel like I’m  managing to fool people into believing I’m an actual well-groomed human being for most of the week… instead of the truth, which looks more like a gremlin.)

Ahhhh!

<Pause, while we all wipe the tears of hysterical laughter from our eyes.> 

Sigh. That shit never gets old.

Admittedly, I have way more hair than that now, but anyway… enough about my uncanny resemblance to Chinese gremlins in the morning.

The Memorial House

What about the Memorial House, you ask?

MysteryMan and I have been tucking every dime we can spare safely away in anticipation for the first of two additions to the house, which we hope to start in the spring. This will be the Master Bed/Master Bath addition, and the only reason I insist that this is done before we put my house up for sale is because it’s going to require tearing out the one and only bathroom. I spent the first 4 months in this house without a working shower, and that will be the only four months in my life I ever make myself live through that experience, let me tell you. 

In the mean time, I’m trying to convince MysteryMan we actually need to do something with the inside of that house. Namely, remove the ceilings.

He is understandably hesitant because 1.) He’s never undertaken a project of this magnitude. 2.) I’m counting on him to work some mystery engineer equations to make sure our roof doesn’t cave in. And 3.) It does sound a mite insane.

And also, he has a harder time visualizing the things that I do, probably because he lacks psychic powers or a magic wand to crack open my skull and see what’s going on inside of there. Suffice it to say, it looks something like this… but on a much smaller scale.

The one thing we have going for is us that unlike a lot of the men in my life that believe power tools will be the death of me, MysteryMan has faith. I’m also starting to see a bit of humor on his face instead of a look of sheer panic when I use phrases like “demolition” and “I have an idea…”

His sense of humor even extended so far as to look me in the face the other day and tell me (absolutely deadpan) the girls that are putting together his ten-year high school reunion next year want to have everyone over to a bonfire at the Memorial house afterwards, and he told them that was cool. And I was like, yeah, awesome, have ‘em over… I love a good bonfire. And then I did a double take so fast it put a crick in my neck and was all “you-mean-next-year-as-in-the-year-the-house-will-be-without-a-bathroom?” To which he replied with a shrug, “What? They can piss in the corn field.”

I’m not sure if I’m rolling my eyes right now at men, or at the country… but either way I am not pissing in a corn field, so I guess this will be good motivation to have at least one bathroom complete by this time next year.

Because there’s really no limit to what you can do with a broom handle. Even crazier polka-dots coming soon…

Seems that I have been starting more computer/printing projects in my free time recently, as opposed to wood/power tool projects. (Made some progress on the recycling cabinet last week though, so don’t count that one out yet.) This should be depressing, but really it’s fun to brush up on design skills, and even more fun when they directly relate to my brooms.

It occurred to me when I was working on these business cards, well, first, how bland and boring regular business cards are. Why do we let a 2×3.5″ piece of paper define us in such a generic way? Obviously because its safe and expected, and would the general public really take a medical doctor who handed us one of these seriously?

I would… but I appreciate a little humor and like to believe that people are actual people, whether or not they are CEO’s or surgeons. (And because I stole their picture to use as an example, check out the website for Show Off Cards. They really are fun.)

Anyway, my thought really wasn’t about business cards so much as it was about the broom business, which really is more like a broom hobby that has business-like attributes. It’s fun to have a reason to a.) work with wood, b.) buy more power tools, and c.) play around with funky ideas for business cards and websites without having to worry about the acceptance of the general population.

My challenge to everyone with access to scissors, paper, and glue (man, these tools never get old, do they?) is to see if you can define yourself in a 2×3.5″ card. Can you make something that says something genuine about you?

*If you loved the show off cards, check out IDEO’s “Identity Card” project, which is one of those things that just makes you think.

…as requested by my oldest and dearest friend, who I first met when I was sixteen days old.

She will tell you stories of our childhood wherein I bribed, beat, begged, and otherwise cajoled her into leaving her barbies at home and playing “army” in the cornfields and building additions to my treehouse. And while that may be true, it’s fairly obvious that these early excursions into the land of scraped knees and grass-stains did not influence her obsession feelings regarding the color pink one bit.

Needless to say, we are on opposite ends of the female spectrum. She’s all blonde and gorgeous and fluffy pink. And I’ve still got grass-stains on my jeans. (But if you’re reading this SarahBeth, I’ll have  you know my actual toenails are actual pink at this very minute. So at least your influence was not completely wasted on me.)

I took a break from broom-painting when my mom brought over my very first birthday present for this year. And can I just say, I am now in heaven.

In the last four months I have only purchased two new books for myself (thank you, budget restrictions). But books are like oxygen for me. I need them the way I need a palm router. (Hint, hint, Ricky.) Because life without books and power tools? Not. Worth. Living.  

Some of these books I actually owned in a previous life (about a decade ago) just before my mom  cleaned out a closet in her apartment where I had stored some things and, seeing some musty looking old books, experienced a moment of temporary insanity and threw them away. I’ve heard that there are people in the world that do this, but I am not one of them. I hoard books the way old ladies hoard cats.

But now, my Badass Hatchet-weilding Mother is totally forgiven for her overeager closet cleaning. If I don’t pace myself these books may only last me for a week or two (the final Harry Potter book only lasted 5 hours), but it’s still a couple weeks of heaven in my book.

The leopard broom!

Handle close-up.

MysteryMan demonstrating improper sweeping technique.

This was an experiment gone right, and thank god since it was a present for MysteryMan’s sister and I finished it the day of. MM saw this in the basement and said, “Hey, I think you could actually sell these.”

No kidding?

I’m going for a zebra print next!

MysteryMan often gives me the “what else do you have to do??” line, which he may be right about when I can spent that much time lamenting about the circumference of my cranium.

I’m doing things, okay? Such as…

The beautiful dark one in the middle is going out today, but I couldn’t resist snapping a few shots of it first.

Gift wrapping…

Everything you need to know about a crookedbroom…

Crooked brooms now reside in Washington, Canada, Ohio and very shortlyin Texas. And shortly after than in Monroe, MI, since one of my oldest and dearest friends is a hair stylist (is that the PC term Sar?) up there and has requested a pink broom with pink stripes. She also requested rhinestones, and possibly feathers. I had to remind her that I work with powertoolsnot a bedazzler.

I don’t know if I ever formally announced that there actually is a crookedbrooms website now… It’s more of an iterem website as it was completed one night between the time MysteryMan left for the bar, pretended he had a normal girlfriend that was at home cleaning or some such thing, got bored with it, and came back home. (I was racing him, even though he didn’t know it. I often play these kinds of games with him without his knowledge, which probably contributes to the fact that he thinks I’m insane. Mostly.)

Stay tuned… the boy is back from Texas and I am going to post some pictures of the cactus garden he built while there with stolen railroad ties, along with goats clibing trees, and the antics of a baby miniture donkey. Let me just say that again… Baby. Miniture. Donkey.

I mean really, can the universe come up with anything more adorable than that??