I have a studio assistant, or really an office assistant, a lovely woman who has fast become my sounding board, my tech support, occasional warp winder, walking buddy (we do three miles 3x a week around town, accompanied by my beloved brat of a dog Ranger) and we joke that between us we have a complete brain.
It isn’t that she is fabulous at technology, it’s that she isn’t afraid. I know that sounds odd, but like my late husband, when she doesn’t know the answer, she starts a query, starts a “chat” or starts pushing proverbial buttons. She always figures it out. My husband complained that I’d always gave up too soon. Which is odd, considering what I do and how I do it in my studio life. But technology never fascinated me, it was always something I had to do to promote my business, streamline my life, and live in the 21st century. Back in the day, my studio assistant was actually a programmer, and business analyst. She excels at Office Programs (pun intended).
Anyway, one of my goals, once I got my eShop upgraded and cleaned up (my late husband set up the eShop back in 2005, which in technology equates to the stone age) and it was no longer supported and functioning, plus there was the issue with my blacklisted site… My highly paid regular tech support eventually figured it all out, and though I won’t reveal sources, he was able to unblacklist my site going through a family member who worked for Google, and all is well on that end. So the next step was to clean up the eShop and look towards the future.
Many of you know I’m getting tired. I have not applied to any conferences for 2019, and I really don’t want to. There is so much I want to do in life, that dragging around 70 pound suitcases no longer seems appealing. I would still love to teach my 5 day retreats, I do adore my students and a bit of travel, but the grueling pace of travel, the prep, and the shear volume of variety of things I teach is keeping me from moving into the next phase of my life.
I still have lots to contribute, and with the technology available today, I should be able to do that without leaving home and even (don’t tell anyone) working in my pajamas, in spite of the extensive handwoven wardrobe I have… So my office assistant and I have been stealthily working over the past couple months, to reformat my monographs, many of them more than 10 years old, to clean up the fonts, (yes, many were still using Comic Sans, which in today’s world is a standing joke), the photos, the headings, the text and to create digital downloads of them. It has been quite the process.
Testing the downloads and figuring out how to upload and link and cleaning up the look of the site (yes that was using Comic Sans as well) has been a daily challenge. At one point Cynthia, my office assistant said, as we reviewed a download on my Samsung Tablet, once she figured out how to get it to download on said Tablet (after calling Samsung, who thinks to do that?) and downloading the app that allows downloads, she said to me, “You need page numbers.” That created an entire new set of problems because the books were written in PowerPoint 2003 or 7, but not in 2016, which apparently now requires Master Slides, or something like that, and hours later, we have page numbers.
Scrolling through the digital file on my tablet I came up with the idea of an index or table of contents right up front. What if you wanted to know how to do Turned Krokbragd in the Advanced Inkle book, are you going to scroll through some 80 slides of a PDF file to find it? So that meant that we had to go back and create a table of contents for each of the presentations.
The maximum size of a PDF file is 8mb so a couple of my monographs needed to be broken into pieces. Which isn’t a bad thing. So there is the Closures Monograph, the Bound Buttonhole Monograph and one on Zippers. The content remains basically the same (without using Comic Sans) as my printed monographs, but they are cleaned up, fresh looking and consistent. And you only buy what you want. I’m still working on the Seams and Edge Finishes Monograph, again that will be broken into smaller downloadable parts, but there are a number of digital versions of my monographs available now in my eShop. I got an order yesterday morning for my two inkle books from someone in Japan, which made me so happy because it was my overseas supporters who were missing out on much of the information I have to share because of cumbersome and expensive shipping and customs issues. Download and done. No spending $650 a month on toner and paper. Done…
And we are investigating using conferencing software to be able to create virtual guild meetings, I’m scheduled to do one in Indiana in March, which will mean again, no travel, cheaper rates, and I can work in my pajamas…
Meanwhile, I’m heading to warmer parts shortly, an educational tour of Cuba with Peters Valley, I’m very excited and instead of shopping for new clothes, I spent a couple days (while Cynthia was reformatting monographs) altering some of what I wasn’t wearing anymore in my closet. I shortened things, resized things, and made some of the clothes I had fresh and fun. Seems like the season for upgrades! I even upgraded my old standby point and shoot camera yesterday. And while I’m gone, my contractor is moving in for yet more repairs. And Cynthia will keep plugging away at the office stuff.
So here is what’s available so far… Click here to access all the books below [1]…
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