It's Been Busy Times at the Shop Lately

It'll be a hot day today, and I'm going to be grateful that I'm at the shop instead of at home. I'll be sweating the heat out tomorrow, but today at least I get to be in the air conditioning of the shop. Today the landlord and the fire inspector will be trundling through. Yesterday the landlord's "Minion" Andrew came through, gathered our fire extinguishers and had them recharged so that they were/are current. That happens about once a year or so, and it's always a good thing. I don't how how our landlord gets them done so quickly - I always had to wait about a week before I could pick mine back up after dropping them off for recharging - but, he's got the "in", I guess. Two hours later and we had totally recharged fire extinguishers. 

We have two commercial fire extinguishers 
in the shop - one for each floor. The landlord 
provides them and maintains them as part of 
his building care and maintenance. We know 
how to operate them, but that's about it. I'll 
need to get an updated one for home when I 
set up my workshop in the breezeway. 

Fire inspections are always pretty minimal, it's a poured concrete basement, and the main floor is concrete walls. Still, they check for functional EXIT lights, working alarm systems, and dangerous things like overused extension cords, etc. The previous fire inspector was a delightful woman whom I'm still in touch with after many years on FaceBook. We run into each other every now and again and it's always a joy to see her. 

My wall of boxes isn't quite this bad, and also isn't 
quite this organized. But, it's just about this daunting. 
We have a LOT of boxes of paper for shredding, and 
we'll be paying Shred Rite some serious $$$ to shred 
all of it. It's WAY too much for us to shred in-house. 

DH has been working very hard on the basement and it's looking better than it has since we moved in. I suspect the landlord will be quite impressed. We do have a wall of boxes stacked for the paper shredding people, but we're not quite finished accumulating them yet. Then I'll call Brian and arrange for the boxes to be collected and taken to the shredder. It'll be an expense, but it will be well worth it. At last count, I had 33 boxes of papers for shredding - at least eight of which are double-long boxes. And it's all in the basement, so the guys will need to carry them up to the main floor to get them into their truck. We'll be paying for this, but it's necessary and well worth the cost. 

They never made the baby blankets with a lot 
of styles. Ours is this "Beaver State Chief 
Joseph" style, but with a grey background 
instead of the white. It's quite pretty, despite 
the damage. This one is on EBAY for $150 - what 
I used to sell the full sized blankets for in the 1990's. 

All in all, we're getting closer and closer to the point where we can actually close the store. We're finding this and that in terms of merchandise or damaged merchandise that we can still put out for sale. For instance, yesterday we found a nice child's Pendleton blanket shawl. It's a bit moth-eaten, but it's an old one - when they were still making the blankets in Pendleton, Oregon (they have shifted their manufacturing to Mexico now - I don't carry or purchase or collect their blankets any more since that happened). A person could easily make some pouches or other small projects from this shawl, and we have a price of $10 on it. I suspect it won't last long before being snapped up. 

We've been busy at the shop. Last week people were dropping 
their beading projects off at the State Fair for judging and 
display, this week they were arranging the Upper Midwest 
Bead Society's exhibit at the State Fair and dropping by the 
shop on their way back to their homes. It's been fun catching 
up with people and I look forward to seeing their work when 
I go to the Fair at the end of the month. 

So, I'm off to the pool. Tomorrow will be a SUPER busy morning - swimming, and then directly off to the orthodontist for a small procedure. I get to repeat the whole thing again next week, for a slightly more extensive appointment. Busy, busy. That's my life. I hope you have a wonderful Tuesday, I'm heading out to the swimming pool for an hour of relaxing exercise - LOL. I'll be back tomorrow. Slava Ukraini.