The moving truck has not yet carried our belongings to Nashville, but we're already loving the vibrant city that we now call home. By next week, my husband will be working at the city's daily newspaper and I'll be taking this bookbinding adventure "full time." The first order of business is to organize the studio, as many exciting custom book requests have arrived in the past week.
From our apartment in East Nashville, I'll be a short walk from coffee shops where I can work on Etsy listings and blog posts, the post office for shipping orders, and art galleries to glean ideas.
The one upside of having a nearly-empty apartment this week (due to delays by our moving company) is that my husband and I have been out and about exploring our new city non-stop since last Friday. We enjoyed stopping by The Green Wagon, an eco-friendly general store, and we had some amazing ice cream at Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream. (How could you resist flavors like riesling poached pear and wildberry lavender?)
Also exciting is the news that the city's first-ever handmade book festival has been scheduled for the end of September. I was thrilled to find out about the Handmade & Bound festival hosted by Watkins College of Art, Design, and Film.
Such an exciting and positive start for you! I wish you much success with your new Full Time status - just so long as you don't get so beguiled by the coffee-shop Etsy & blogging time and art gallery inspiration, that you never actually make any books! It all sounds very tempting...
ReplyDeleteI hope you get the studio in order nice and quick - and that your furniture etc returns to you in good time. We have deliberately delayed the re-delivery of our furniture, for the past 2 house-moves. It was so useful to spend a few days getting the place straight, doing a bit of re-decorating, dealing with small issues that are less of a pain when the house is empty, laying new flooring etc. We were lucky, in that my mother lives up the road from both our current and previous houses, so we had free accommodation!
Good luck with both your new jobs and enjoy Nashville! Maybe I will visit there one day (perhaps for a future Handmade & Bound Festival!)
Hi Lizzie! Thank you so much! I'm thrilled about being a full-time bookbinder. Hopefully the coffee shop and gallery time won't distract me from the bookmaking too much.
ReplyDeleteI've set up a plan for how to organize my workflow to (hopefully) keep me from getting distracted too much. I think I'm going to start my days in the studio, and not get on the computer right away. Then in the afternoons I can get out and about a bit to ship orders, do some blogging, etc. I'm also planning to work on custom orders and books for my shop Mondays through Thursdays, and then save Friday for some more experimental work.
As for the move, we're really hoping to get our furniture soon. The moving van was supposed to arrive yesterday at the latest, but they delayed the delivery. We've got our fingers crossed that it will arrive early this week.
Let me know if you ever make a trip to Nashville! It would be wonderful to finally meet in person!