Johanna

Yep- you stop by your cousin's house the next time you are in NK. Do you think you can find something for shoes down there? ~J

I have found that direct to-the-point emails to webmasters usually gets the stolen content removed or properly credited pretty quickly. I let them explain to the owner of the site what the problem is unless they aren't quick about cleaning up. A phone call to the owner of the site comes next, then I guess legal action, but it's never gotten that far in my experience. Sometimes the webmasters have a pic because they needed one and googled for an image, sometimes they aren't aware that materials submitted by a client is not what it appears to be. The place to start is with the webmaster. Johanna

I wanna see pics of the pens! Hey, just glad you're okay. When people "disappear" I hope and pray nothing went terribly wrong and that they are just busy. Thanks for checking in- we miss you. Johanna

~J

The problem is that your pictures are so big. Try reducing them down between 300-600K each and you should have no problems. I merged your threads. Johanna

It is an excellent suggestion, Clay. How about if I make a guild calendar and turn you green so you can fix the two, and maybe you'll ask all the guilds to participate? I would be willing to go one step further and make a guild section where each guild could have their own (private?) forum to talk and post newsletters and so forth. Unless the guild program gets actively promoted, though, I'm afraid the guild calendar will get used about as much as the Live Chat calendar. It would be great if you had time to spread the word to the guilds and clean up the calendars. Is it snowing yet? Johanna

My cousin's husband, Steven Braun of Whitefish, Montana, has a display running in a gallery open to the public. We dearly love Steve, he is witty, kind, intelligent and fun to be around. When he points out our wastefulness at family events, we can't argue with him because he's right. He makes a point of "walking the talk", and does without modern conveniences that the rest of us consider ordinary. I admire him for sticking to his principles and not being some silly hippy hypocrite. Steve's the real deal, so if you are in the area and can visit his exhibit, you will see some neat art that teaches and entertains. His art provokes thought and conversation; it does not belittle or condemn consumers. But it does make you think...ouch. Johanna

You made my day, Jim!

We have some more goodies in the works, too! The purpose of LW is "education, entertainment & fellowship". We are fortunate that so many of our members are willing to participate, and share their experience and knowledge. We hope Paul Burnett's school inspires people to continue to learn and love leatherworking. Johanna The School is here: http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showforum=214

He sent them today...boy, are you folks gonna LOVE this! But...ya gotta wait until Monday. muhahahahhaha Johanna

Pete- nothing you wrote surprises me. I've known Kevin for 15 years. Kevin, no, I didn't put Pete up to this. That was genuine. Everybody: Not only does Kevin at Springfield Leather offer great selections and customer service, he also is a sponsor of LW. When you call him to place an order or ask him a question, please tell him you appreciate his participation here on LW. Thank him for helping to make this site possible. Johanna

Glad to see you again, Victor, and your work is just....WOW!! Your work is inspirational and beautiful, of course. Thank you for sharing with us- please help yourself to some coffee and doughnuts, and come back when you have time. Hope life's been treating you well! Johanna

With a decent printer and good paper stock, you can make any kind of check or M.O. you want. In Ohio, if I deposit a bad check in my account, the amount is deducted from my account when it fails to clear. I then have the option of going to the sherrif with the bad check and filing charges, because writing a check is a promise to pay. If the check is a fraud, they can add more charges if/when they arrest the person. True story: I received a $50 Canadian bill in the mail from a respectable saddlemaker one day. I'd never seen one before, but I knew it was good. I walked across the street to my bank. They had to call another branch, and they didn't know whose portrait was on the bill or how much the exchange rate was. I said to just deposit it, and left. They called me later to tell me the amount of the deposit after they sent it to their sister bank for verification. Canada is on the other side of Toledo, 2 hours from here. Another true story: A customer wrote us a check that bounced when he put a "hold" on the check after picking up his item. The bank told us "so sorry" but didn't do anything. Luckily, we knew where the guy lived and were able to confront him in person about the check when we saw him at a party a few weeks later. Coincidentally, he was bragging about his new saddlebags when Little Jon cut them off his bike and walked away with them. He didn't call the police- what was he going to say in court when we showed the bounced check? He didn't try to get the bags back, either. Little Jon was not a man to fight with. Johanna

I've received a couple of complaints about the speed of the site, and they were usually resolved on the members' end. We are moving the ads to a different server this weekend, and we hope that will speed up the site a bit more. We upgraded the site to get better security, add more features and be able to accommodate all the traffic on the site. We are growing pretty quickly, and I don't know what you mean about "going Wall Street"? To make this site possible, there are bills to pay. Our sponsors are reputable companies with products and services of interest to our members. Between them and the members that really care about LW, we'll be here for a long time to come, sharing education, entertainment and fellowship in Leather Land. Without the financial support of the members and sponsors, we die. Let me know next week if the speed improves for you on your slow connection. We are doing everything we can to improve the performance, and many members have noticed a significant speed-up. (Thanks folks, for writing to let me know it helped!) I'm sorry you feel like we're letting you down- quite the opposite. We're trying to make leather info available to anybody anywhere without turning people away just because they can't pay. Membership here is free because of all the blue, brown & green names you see online and the sponsors at the top of each page. They are the heroes of LW. Johanna

Roz would be proud! Gotta send her a pic of the pizza, Kathy! You win for "most original item made of leather" this month, hands down. Clay, happy happy birthday to you. May you have as many smiles every day this year as you've had this weekend. Johanna

Does it help that we luv ya? {{Drac}} ~J

Tim, my laptop needs one of those. I'm jealous of Mrs. W. (My initials are "JAMS") Love the quilting and the dots. Does it have a tote handle or just the shoulder strap? Very nice basketweave. Clean and nice. Keep tapping! Johanna

Pic fixed. Good info, Ben, thanks! ~J

Yep, that about covers it. I have to show this to Wade. Johanna

LW's friend Jim Simmons has shared another fantastic lesson with us- the California Slim Jim Holster. California Holster Patterns.pdf California Holster Tutorial.pdf Nice, huh? Johanna California Holster Patterns.pdf California Holster Tutorial.pdf

Wade took today off, and none of our kids are home so we...ahem...slept in. Thank you RDB!! Posts are gone, spammer deleted. Every now and then one slips by, thank goodness for everyone's help. Johanna

Ray, This is an ambitious project. The guilds here in the US that sponsor shows usually make their money off the raffle table and cross their fingers that enough people get rooms at the venue so the cost of the conference rooms isn't sky high. Nominal charges apply to vendors (you will probably want as many as you can get there) but they can't pay for the show unless they can expect super sales, like Sheridan (which is sponsored by the LC & SJ, not a guild). I would ask vendors for their money up front to be sure they show up. To get participants, you may have enough contacts by word of mouth, but to get attendance you're going to have to advertise somehow and a lot. Depending on attendance, I've seen guilds host shows wind up with a little extra money, break even, or go broke, depending on the organizing and the publicizing of the event. To start a show from scratch, I would ask for sponsors. Do you have a local leather guild or organization to help support your efforts? Competitions are tricky. Assuming you get a fair amount of entries, who will do the judging? I like your ideas for catagories but for a first show you may want to make the leatherworking areas very broad. Having been a judge at many guild shows, I have been forced to compare apples to oranges, and it's better to do that then to cheapen the whole event by handing out ribbons to undeserving pieces. You might want to prepare an objective list of goals that the entry should be judged on. The IFoLG has basic rules like "edges must be finished" etc. The guild shows competitions were originally designed to help the entrants improve. To this day we try to scribe (write down) what was done well, as well as suggestions for improvement. If you try to stay with an educational or fun theme you will be safer than "Best Wallet in the UK", KWIM? LW will of course do whatever it can to get the word out, and you can call or email me any time if I can be of use. I wish I could travel to the UK to help and attend. I would love to visit your country and meet the UK leatherworkers and suppliers. Johanna

Joe, have you tried using Internet Explorer? I had a friend test the uploading on a win 98 in IE and it went fine. I don't know enough about Firefox to be much help there. Johanna