What happened to all the elongateds?

It was an exercise in frustration tonight, chasing around to two cities, four stores and finally settling for less than expected. That is, we are still missing one elongated seat. Anyway, I did manage to carve up 8 seats tonight, and get a base coat of paint on them. But it is late and it took all of my motivation to get that far. So I will finish painting them tomorrow and with a little luck, the stores will RESTOCK! Com'on Keep up the supply, guys! Because I have not posted any origami as of late, here is a new bird, based off the french guy that does origami. It's easy and has a wonderful rounded shape. Enjoy!

Odd ball Tuesday

Odd ball in that it is one of those days where there are no similar seats to carve and paint. I guess you just have to do it to know what I mean. Basically, all the seats and their color pallet are different and thus, I have to use every paint color at my disposal and wait for them to dry. It takes a long time to do fewer seats. This doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it means a late night for me. ( It's 6 am as I write this. And I still need to sleep!) Ah well, I'm off! I still have two more for tomorrow, And we are out of boxes! ( Yippee!) So only Mondays and one seat from tonight will be going out in the morning. ( err, afternoon, depending on how you look at it, Even I'm confused! Oh! And before I forget, I may have a project in the works for this weekend! Cheryl wants me to build a set of bookshelves. The fancy kind! I can't wait to take a crack at it.

I hate elongated seats!

Not that they are any more difficult to design or carve than the standard, It's just that they are very difficult and frustrating to find! We went to 4 stores tonight to find 5 elongated seats. FOUR! DIFFERENT stores! We ended up buying expensive seats which means I carved them up for practically nothing! The good news is that we are finally caught up and everyone seat will be going out tomorrow. It never seems to fail that there is always a stash of elongated everywhere when we do not need them. But as soon as we sell them again, all the stores are out at the same time and it will be another week before they are ordered again. BLA! Even Red the shop cat disapproves! Maybe tomorrow I'll start another round of boxes. It will depend if we have some cash to buy the lumber though. Fingers crossed!

Finished boxes

I finally finished the boxes and snapped a picture of them. I also carved up 4 elongated seats. I like the way the boxes turned out, but I still have to baby sit the seats it they are planning on going out tomorrow. There is once again a shortage of available elongated seats. What fun! tomorrow will probably be spent trying to find more. We still have 6 we have to find! This morning the cats were having a little fun with a red squirrel. He was awfully fearless with that window protecting him.

Elongated or Standard seat

One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is whether The seats are standard round or the elongated. In some cases, even the customer does not know what type he/ she has. So I wanted to write a little entry to try to show some of the differences in measurements and looks. As you can see from the pictures, the elongated are longer when measured from the hinge to the tip of the seat. The length is approximately 18.5 to 19 inches. On round seats the length is 16.5 to 17 inches.
The elongated sets are obviously shaped a little different from the round. A side by side comparison helps shows this.
The Big problem comes when people do not know their size and order the wrong one. Since each seat is custom, ( that is right, we carve them up as you order them) there is a certain amount of time and effort put into each one. More than just pulling it off a shelf and packing it up for shipment. Another problem is that the elongated seats cost more, and are not as readily available as the standard round. It may take as much as an additional week to send the order. For this reason, we do not offer elongated seats anymore in our normal listings. We do, however, reserve the right for special circumstances.

Thanksgiving weekend carving.

Finished the 7 seats I had for today, Still have two more for tomorrow. We we forced to buy some elongated seats from a place we usually don't visit. but luckily, they had them. So from now on...NO MORE ELONGATED SEATS! It's simply a logistical issue we don't want to deal with anymore. Until I actually make my own, that is. Then I can take a more control on how they are assembled. Well, it is late here so I'll keep this post short.

The plight of the elongated seat

We sold 12 seats today. That's more like it! Christmas rush is coming. I could only carve up 7 seats tonight because, as is always the problem this time of year, We have run out of seats. So we will once again have to travel to distant places to purchase and stock up on more.

Our main problem is elongated seats. Till now, we have not really offered them for sale. We used to, but our supplier switched up on us with no warning ( see previous posts) Well, one customer has requested 4 seats for her home. So Cheryl and I stumble on a few late last week and Cheryl puts them up for sale. The lady bought them all as well as several other customers. And would you have guessed, all the seats are GONE! ( temporarily, of course, but grrrr!) So we have to travel to distant Holland to get them out before thanksgiving "no mail day" I am hoping that we find them all ( 5 total) at Holland, but I have to be real. Most stores do not Carry more than 4 at a time. I was hoping I could get my own elongated seats up and running before the new year.

In other news, the cats have caught a mouse that was chewing on our furnace gas hose. I have to tell ya. I am not feeling much pity for the mouse. The cats are loving it because it is a toy that does not need batteries. This mouse has been chewing on the small gas hose that causes the ignition sequence for the burner plate. causing the ignition to fail. So we have the furnace set to 70 and it is not getting any warmer in here. I have had to fix the hose several ( three in all) times and the furnce is in a crawlspace under the house! ( can you say duck walk) But today we bought traps and hopefully the cats will finish off the rest.