DOTS

If you go to your doctor, you sometimes hear medical terminology or insurance terminology you aren't familiar with. If your take your car to the mechanic, you may hear mechanical terms that you aren't really sure about their meaning. And if you stand in front of the Windsongs booth at an art show for very long, you will hear us start to talk about "dots". Now, the initiated customer understands and knows to order the "four dot" bell or the "two dot" bell for example,and is comfortable with that meaning. But a new customer ofter has to ask "what do you mean - dots?" And then once a new customers discovers those little bumps in the corner of the bells, they usually think that they have something to do with the sounds the bells make.

But not so, and the unwitting customer then receives a lesson in history from Philip about his youthful days in Edna, Texas and his ventures in consumerism spent purchasing snuff for the older neighbor (you know that story - all the little boys in town camping out at the home of the  'Betty Davis like" mystery woman who had the big TV set where they could all watch the innocent kids shows of the era without interruption from their parents). And his story continues with Philip's adventures of going to the Rexall Drug Store on her behalf (I need to mention here that the lady was visually impaired and could no longer drive so she let Philip, who was 12 years old drive her car) to buy her snuff and how she taught him to tell the difference in "snuff strength" by the dots on the bottoms of the snuff bottles. And then he ends with "that's where I got the idea from about using dots on the bells to mark their size difference".

Well, I can tell many of the older and even the middle aged customers understand because they shake their heads in agreement. Perhaps they have actually seen these snuff bottles at homes of relatives or in antique stores, but often the younger customers still seem unsure. So, in order to truly clarify once and for all, I have dug through my boxes of ancient glassware and found three snuff bottles that I own (I can't temember why) and taken the following pictures to provide further clarification.

Now, as you can see, all of these bottles are sporting four dots but in different configurations. So, I did some quick research on the internet and did NOT come up with a clear answer as to whether the number of dots signify the strength of the product once inside or something else? I found no mention about the arrangement of dots. Nevertheless, here is proof of at least part of Philip's story about getting the dot idea for our bells from old snuff bottles. 

Now, as to WHY we needed to indicate the bell size with something other than measurement, I will save that story for another posting. In the meantime, if you have knowledge of said snuff bottles, please feel free to post your comments. Philip does remember that the brand of the snuff he would purchase was Lee Garrett, if that helps. 

In Memoriam

As with many things in business and in life, we began making bells for people to use as a means of honoring the memory of someone who had passed. And sadly, we believe, if our memories serve us correctly, that the first bell we know was purchased for this purpose was bought by a father in memory of his teenage son who was killed in a car crash. It was to hang in a tree at the cementary where his child was buried. We were very surprised and honored by this purchase.
Now, many years later, we have lost track of how many customers have purchased bells for this purpose. We are still honored and still touched by all of the stories shared with us about the loss of someone important and a wish to have one of our bells honor their memory.
While these memories are very private I will mention two that were particulary touching to me. One bell was purchased by the friend of a person with a vision impairment. This person's friend had had a seeing eye dog for many years and the dog had recently died and that friend had purchased a bell and asked that words of honor be punched into the attached sail.
 The second very memorable incident came only this year at the Kerrville show. A woman stopped by the booth when I was there alone and said that she hears our bell ring often and that it brings her comfort. She went on to state that it was a "memorial bell" honoring her son who died in line of duty as a law enforcement office several years ago. And ironically, as we conversed, I realized that her son was the person for whom a stretch of the interstate right at our exit has been named for. We had read the sign about this part of the highway being named for someone, but did not know the reason for his death. But now, we had a connection. This was a very sweet woman and a very touching moment for me.

We have punched a name, a date, a significant word or phrase that is meaningful to the customer or to the person being honored. Philip has often worked through a phone conversation helping the buyer to decide what will work best on a bell's sail to meet their needs. So, while this is not an area we will "market" for sales of bell, it will be a task we will continue to do, as needed by our customers and we will be honored to do so.

Rockport!!

The Rockport show was a great success. The weather was actually not bad. Certainly it was not as hot as it has been and there actually was some breeze. Saturday was extremely busy and Sunday was good. The folks who run the Festival did their usually good job of organizing things and of taking care of the artists.

We met so many interesting people. We met people who were from Austin, Houston, Midland, Dallas and of course, the coastal area. The gentleman who is the Harbor Master for the Rockport area was there and exchanged information about our possible visit to the area once we move our boat, Hey Jude, to the coast later in the year.

We sold many bells and took several orders, which we are now in the process of fulling. Winsongs has a break now from shows. The next one isn't until September in Midland!

Guess What This Is?

If you said "a sail run over by a lawnmower", you would be correct!! A Nashville customer brought this by the booth in Nashville to show us. Needless to say, we gave him a replacement and are now considering using this one as a paperweight.

Thank you, Nashville!!

We had a great show - good weather, good booth, great neighbors and good sales.

As we do every year, we bring a generator and supply electricity to run fans for our booth and several neighbors'.

This year, the show had music on Sat and Sun afternoons. This was something started by the city of Nashville, but because we were in the park, we had to have it as a part of the show. We don't really like music because of course, it is competition for our bells. Now this music performance also had a dancer who performed both afternoons for the entire performance. I believe this is one of the homeless gentlemen who frequents the area.

I'm sure there was an interesting story about his hair, but no one I asked seemed to know.

Lucien is pretty much the only person left who has been with the show all the years we have been going. She will be missed.

We had our on entertainment out in front of the booth when this beautiful young lady stopped and demonstrated her skills.

We met up with several sets of friends, Carla and Bill Plunkett and Michael and Diane Hughes. Michael is a great photographer plus he arranges travel adventures and takes people to great destination.  His website is http://www.treadlightadventure.com/about.

Here are a couple of other shots I took.

The lower front of the booth.

A one dot up in front of the neighbor's landscape painting.

A close up of one of the sails on a display bell.

 We made it home Monday night. Travel was uneventful - even though I did get locked IN the hotel room on our last night out (well the next morning, actually). That was interesting. I finally had to be let in to the room next door and got out that way. Apparently the locks on the doors needed oiling! Anyway, we are home now. It rained 2 inches while we were gone, so everything looks great. And we are working like crazy to get all of those Nashville orders out.


                       Next comes Rockport!!  July 7th and 8th. Get ready to SWEAT!!

 

http://www.rockportartcenter.com/exhibitions/detail.php?uid=45

We meet the most interesting people...

We always meet interesting people at art shows and certainly Nashville is no exception. First of all there are the artists around us . For instance: Greg Davis, who is a fine travel photographer (my terminology) is here. His website is www.gregdavisphotography.com. Dave Piper, of course the best sandal maker ever. His website is www.pipersandals.com. Our neighbor is Suzette Nesbitt, a fine jewelry maker from Missouri. Her studio is called Rowdy Blonde Studio. Then we had a guy who came by the booth and bought a bell. Turns out he is a master fiddle player up here who has played with/for a lot of famous singers. His name is Rob Hajacos. Go to his website and see the people he has played with. His site is www.robhajacos.com. Will Conner is here with his great photography and I really mean great. His site is www.willconner.com. Threads of Change is a shop I had previously seen on etsy, but yesterday I met the artist. Just google her name an her website and her Etsy shop will come up.

Nashville Bound

We finally finished getting everything ready for the trip to Nashville. Well, we would like to have more bells making the trip, but you can only cram just so much stuff into any given space.... so we had to stop, pack up and go. Philip got the paperwork in order....

These were the last three bells ordered ahead by Nashville customers and were wrapped and ready to be packed.

Then began the loading process. We used to pull that giant trailer, so we had all the room in the world, but paying for gas while pulling that monstor cut deeply into any profit. So... now we manage to make everying fit in the back of the truck.

The old adage, "A place for everything, and everything in its place". is very appropriate for us!
But we also adapt with almost every show. Philip has now begun to use shrink wrap to temporarily hold the boxes together while we travel. And for this show, he decided to hold the 5 dot bells together in a stack.

                                              And actually, this gets a second layer later!
                           The sails are compressed from two to four boxes for the sake of space.

Ava, the current "shop dog" watched over the whole packing event.

   More is packed in. Those three bags are full of all the supporting poles and canopy pipes.

Now, I had to stop taking pictures so I could finish loading, get the ice chest ready, get the suitcases packed, etc.... but, when we get to Nashville, to the beautiful park in downtown, I will try to remember to take a picture of the back of this truck FULLY loaded!