| 5 MOST RECENT ENTRIES: |
| 8/27/08: Where I camped last weekend
8/22/08: Howdy 8/14/08: My, my-- a new record! 8/3/08: Elitist Lunch? 7/31/08: WHY DO KEYBOARDS HAVE CAPS LOCK KEYS? |
| Site Journal | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Here at romyb.comHowdy, and welcome to the site. As has been the case for the past two years, the site's most active day-to-day component is the blog/journal beginning just below. Note that although I'm in the business of making and selling bamboo flutes and other wind instruments, there is no price list. Every piece is one-of-a-kind with no standardization of offerings, since I'm more interested in bamboo instruments' uniquely organic, individualistic character. The goal is to fashion each piece into its own optimal instrument, so it's nice not to be pressured by a regular "line" of products. Although I'm willing to make flutes in specific keys or styles when possible, ideally prospective customers will have some flexibility, and in that case we can work with the best available material at a given time. Please do inquire about possible commissions or available completed instruments if you're interested, and thanks for visiting! About the blog/journal below: blogwriting is odd, in that it's a sort of backwards mentality. For a new reader, starting with the most recent entries is akin to reading a book from its last page, in reverse. There's a lot of relevant musical and flute information and pictures in the journal, most of which is buried here and there in the archives. We probably should excavate the archives and get them catalogued and referenced so that useful information--as opposed to silly, self-indulgent role-playing and rants--can be more readily located. Anyway, much of this site's less ancient (non-blog) material is in the information >> instruction category above, including a tablature system specifically designed to work with my minor-scale flutes; this tablature scheme will eventually be expanded to cover other types/scales of flute. The "introduction to bamboo flutes" subsection mainly covers matters of sound production and tonal refinement. Feedback on anything here is welcome; this site is destined to be an ongoing work in progress, and interaction will be helpful in its development. Thanks for visiting, and enjoy your tour! One more thing: When sending an email, indicate clearly in your subject box that it's a pertinent message: about music, instruments, adoration, or whatnot. I get much mindless spam, and am very deft with the "delete" button! If you scroll down from here, the rabbit hole is thataway...
August 27, 2008
 Ahhhh, summer does have its advantages. We backpacked up here last weekend, the second time in two weeks I'd been to this area on the north side of Mt. Hood. Even more wildflowers were blooming, and this particular meadow on a steep slope was full of hummingbirds darting about, gorging on that sweet mountain nectar. Get it while it lasts! I missed a great photo op of one feeding on paintbrush (those orange-red flowers in the pic) just three or four feet away, being so transfixed that I forgot about the camera. Speaking of, a few other shots have been added to page 11 of the personal pics gallery. Oddly enough, page 11 doesn't seem to show up on the gallery menu until you're on page 10...??? Between such alpine distractions and the garden, it's no wonder that we've seen very little flutework done this summer. Prime tomato season is here, and we're also buried in green beans. Good as they are, one can only eat so many fresh green beans, so I laid off them last night for a change and made a quick ratatouille -- hey, I actually spelled that right on the first try! -- with sweet onions, peppers, eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes and basil straight from the garden. Topped with grated parmesan cheese and fresh-ground pepper: wowsie. So what if the blackberry crop is much worse than last year's and the 2008 vintage looks shaky for local wines: we've had a few good midsummer rains and that bodes well for a long and abundant fall mushroom season. I really am quite fond of the Pacific Northwest... Well, back to reality. Got a recording-studio gig tomorrow morning at eleven for which a particular flute is needed -- an alto in G# minor, a very uncommon key for me -- and that flute's currently sitting half-finished in the workshop. We do live close to the edge here at the Complex, but it's high time to get over there and finish that flute! It'll probably be the ugliest thing to emerge from the shop this summer since I'm making it ONLY for recording and leaving it unsanded and completely un-prettified. Might even post a pic of it later just for laffs. --r.
August 22, 2008
For quite a while now, each new blog entry has apologetically mentioned the scarcity of new blog entries. This is getting tiresome, and sooner or later we're gonna have to get back to bidness for real. But it's midsummer, such a beautiful and fleeting time of year here in the Pacific Northwest. So many things to do... the garden desperately needs to have fall and winter crop seeds planted NOW, so I'd better get over there today and put some in. Would also love to get out to the mountains again this weekend. There are a couple shots from our Mt. Hood backpacking trip on p. 11 of the Personal Pics gallery, and I'll add more soon. The gallery's been pretty static lately, so we'd better get cracking on that. News: the die is cast, and I'll be visiting... Africa this October! Tanzania and Zanzibar, via Amsterdam, where we'll also stay for nearly a week. Much more on that soon, and if THAT doesn't present a golden photo op, I dunno what would. I've recently acquired six Patrick Olwell bamboo flutes in trade, one of which is currently listed on eBay. They're very simple flutes, but highly sought after by the Irish/Celtic crowd for reasons of scarcity and brand-name value. I've been very circumspect about commenting on the Patrick Olwell bamboo phenomenon, since being perceived as criticizing a highly respected fellow flutemaker might come across as sour grapes or self-aggrandizement. Also, no matter how diplomatic any critique might be, people will inevitably misinterpret ANYTHING. Overall, they're good flutes and you should buy them! I'm actually glad that those simple Olwell flutes command high prices for what they are, lending general credibility to the inherent value of superior bamboo instruments. I'll soon have more confidence for an honest, in-depth appraisal and discussion of Olwells since close inspection and play-testing of six examples will provide solid data for that. Coming up in the next week or three! OK, off to the garden now, then the studio. See you again soon... --r.
August 14, 2008
At least I think it's a new record for consecutive days without posting, but maybe not. Anyway, we're in the ballpark. Sorry about the silence, and I blame summer and its distractions again. Went on the first proper backpacking trip of the season last weekend, and perhaps a few pics forthcoming soon. Say, there's an RB flute up on eBay right now, but I'll actually be selling more of someone else's flutes over the next few weeks: struck a deal to take 25% of the sale price as a commission and extend flute credit for the other 75%. What the hey.... Back again soon-- really. Gotta go water the garden now; it's supposed to hit the high 90s today for only the second time this year. --r.
August 3, 2008
Today for lunch we had fried fresh anchovies accompanied by garden-plucked salad: is that an elitist lunch? Shouldn't be, since the salad was virtually free and the anchovies were only about $3.00 a pound. I'd never had fresh anchovies, so when I saw them in the fish market it was irresistible. They're somewhat time-consuming to clean, but delicious if you like that sort of thing-- nothing whatsoever like the salty canned ones. Fried quickly for just a minute or so per side, they were slightly crunchy and full of rich fishy flavor. Beats fish sticks any day, and if that makes me an elitist so be it. Here's a pic: Lunch --r.
Posted by Romy
03:49 PM PST
July 31, 2008
And more importantly, why is that blasted key placed in the left pinkie's normal realm where a passionate but inexpertly flailing typist can so easily punch it by accident? Pardon me-- we should be addressing long-overdue flute business now, at summer's peak when many seasonal distractions spell extended neglect for the site. BUT GOSH-DARN THAT BLASTED CAPS KEY! Sorry again-- the American political season is in full swing, and as usual THE STUPIDITY IS SO THICK YOU COULDN'T CUT IT WITH A BLOODY CHAINSAW (oops). It's only gonna get worse for the next few months, so this may be the year when we depart from protocol and weigh in on all that. Oooh, I WISH: if that firewall falls, we'll easily return to the realm of yore when 5,000 words per month were the bloggy norm. Might even get to ten or twenty thousand in that politically nightmarish scenario... WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED WEB-SURFING. --R.
Posted by Romy
11:01 PM PST
July 25, 2008
I'm sitting here listening to persianradio.com on the 'net, and a selection featuring the Persian ney just played. That is absolutely the wildest and most intriguing flute sound on this insane planet, and I've GOT to learn to appropriate it. An LA friend who does much film and TV work demonstrated the basic embouchure for me several years ago, and I sat there for over an hour trying to get so much as a peep out of the thing: silence. This is the only flute-type at which I've been totally unsuccessful so far: it employs a unique "interdental" embouchure in which the end of the flute is inserted into the player's mouth, resting against the upper teeth. The windway is then formed between the tongue and the roof of the mouth and directed onto the flute's rim... sheesh. So, does anyone out there know of a student-friendly Persian Ney player in the Portland, Oregon area, or perhaps Seattle? Not holding my breath... Links later. In the meantime, you can easily find examples of this amazing flute style via a simple search. --r.
Posted by Romy
11:43 PM PST
July 23, 2008
 Funny thing about summer: the days are long and yet seem far too short. That is, there's so much to do that each dusk finds me raging at the sun: Leaving so soon? But I have more WORK to do! NOOOO..... Finally got a new camera and getting familiar with it, so here's a shot of two Walla Walla sweet onions pulled from the garden yesterday. These two weighed three pounds between them, and the others left in the garden are still growing-- yikes! They're the most decadent onions ever: sweet, crunchy, mild... I'm not a huge fan of raw onions in general but you can put half-inch slices of these suckers on a sandwich and they're superbly succulent. Off to pick blueberries and raspberries now... peak of the season! Oh, and here's a quick shot of four flutes currently in the shop. More soon. --r.
Posted by Romy
12:42 PM PST
July 17, 2008
Dust still settling from the midsummer show, and I've almost recovered. Now's the time to attend to a few unresolved obligations that were swept under the tatami mat for the last few weeks, so it shouldn't be long now before your overdue flute/message/CD/?? finally arrives. I'm still agonizing over whether to finally dive into a DSLR or just spring for another cheapish compact digicam... gotta do something very soon since photos are so important 'round here. Got some purty flutes to picture! --r.
Posted by Romy
09:35 PM PST
July 14, 2008
Ahhh, midsummer-- so much to do in this short stretch of long days! We've returned from the Oregon Country Fair and are rarin' to run with more summertime plans: still have a few exceptional flutes on hand, and I'll probably get a grip on the recent photographic dysfunction and post some new pics soon. Our new full-sun community garden is a wonderful thing: several vine-ripened tomatoes were pluck-ready today, and a veritable avalanche of prime seasonal produce will issue over the following weeks and months. Anyway, this is just a brief note to re-engage and I'll catch y'all again tomorrow or so. --r.
Posted by Romy
11:16 PM PST
July 4, 2008
For lunch today we had baby Yukon Gold potatoes sauteed with Walla Walla sweet onions and sugar snap peas-- all from the new community garden plot! The early tomatoes are beginning to ripen already, which is great: much faster results than we get from the partially-shaded Swamp Shack garden. At this rate we'll have a good three to four-month season for vine-ripened, homegrown tomatoes. Yowza! This rocks-- it's a lot of work, but worth it on so many levels. I still refuse to grow corn, since it's a high-maintenance crop that requires lots of space per unit of yield. Besides, when fresh corn is in season it can be bought for a song at our numerous farmers' markets and roadside stands -- far as I'm concerned, local peak-season corn on the cob is the only kind worth its salt and butter -- and when it's really good, just a couple minutes' boiling is plenty. All you need to do is heat it up enough to melt the butter... mmmm. But corn is still in the mid-to-late summer future. Lots of other great stuff on the plate already, and I'm looking forward to putting next weekend's flute show in the rearview mirror in order to concentrate more fully on summer's bounty. See y'all again tomorrow! --r.
Posted by Romy
11:55 PM PST
July 3, 2008
We're getting down to the wire for the latest manic production run, and it appears that around 38 new flutes will be finished at the usual last minute. Unfortunately most of these will be gone -- dust in the wind, dude -- in about ten days, and then what? Well, in the words of Jackson Browne, you get up and do it again. Seriously, it's scary how much work I can do in a short time when whipped into a frenzy of craft-show anticipation. I've always struggled to find a middle ground between these crazed phases and more relaxed periods without a pressing deadline: although I certainly *work* when not pressured, it generally veers into more languidly experimental territory, without much finished and marketable product emerging. I do have a tentative plan to work more seasonally in the future: to do most of the unpleasantly grimy hole grinding from summer into fall, entering wintertime with a large stock of half-completed flutes that can be finished at a relatively sedate pace over the dimmer low-energy months. Perhaps that will work! Anyway, more tomorrow. Happy stoopid explosions day! --r.
Posted by Romy
10:58 PM PST
July 2, 2008
It's just after 1:00 AM, and if I had any sense I'd long since have bedded down. Unfortunately I'm an inveterate night owl, and despite the fact that alarms will ring again in about six hours here we are. Been running on about five or six hours' sleep lately-- maybe it's a midsummer thing, but every morning finds me sluggishly regretting the previous night's length. It'd be great if I could leap briskly from the bed at sunrise, ready to confront the day's toils from moment one-- --Nope. Instead, each morning requires two or three hours of semi-comatose caffeine engorgement and lethargic indifference before anything productive happens, and (with luck) at about ten or eleven AM the cycle begins again. I do try to rise at dawn and Walk Among the People on at least a few midsummer days, and it's always a revelation: there are strange, preternaturally cheerful individuals strolling about, often accompanied by dogs, and they invariably smile and offer chipper greetings such as "Good morning!" So, where are these cheerful people during my usual sentient hours? Must be sleeping in brightly-colored caskets or something... --r.
Posted by Romy
01:40 AM PST
June 30, 2008
Bill and Ted are in Ancient Greece: Hard to believe that I didn't think of the Dust in the Wind angle earlier, since I traffic in dust and wind... well, it's mostly been dust over the last couple of weeks. The massive batch of flutes is coming along nicely, and it's too bad that they'll be immediately bundled up and presented to the masses without much of a chance for close analysis, photography and discussion. That's show biz! Someday I'll figure out a way to harness this manic, wildly productive flutemaking energy even in the absence of a looming show deadline... --r.
Posted by Romy
08:21 PM PST
June 29, 2008
Whew! The last few weeks have been intense-- formerly, when facing a *big show* deadline I'd typically futz around up to the proverbial last minute, indulging self-indulgent creativity rather than hard-nosed production until the final crunch. That final crunch was then a blur of multiple fourteen-hour workdays leading straight into the show's opening date-- but no more! I resolved to reset the crunch calendar this year, shifting the manic-productivity zone two or three weeks earlier. This way, most of the nitty-gritty work should be complete well before opening day, enabling me to enter the fray and confront the public with a much more relaxed, rested and positive attitude. --And you know what? It's working! What a gorgeous batch of flutes this is, and it's too bad that we probably won't have a chance to photographically catalog them. At this rate I may even return to doing two or three shows a year rather than just one. --r.
Posted by Romy
01:07 AM PST
June 23, 2008
Oops-- been a mite quiet 'round here of late! We're still plugging away here at the Complex, and two or three dozen embryonic instruments should reach full term around the second week of July. Not that you'll see them featured here: no, these flutes are destined for our sole major meatspace show of the year, running July 11th-13th. The insistent demands of my two separate gardens also continue to overwhelm-- man, that 20x20 plot in the nearby community garden is a beast! This is the first time I've grown veggies in a 100% full-sun situation, and it'll take another year or two to fully grok the space and get a confident handle on its seasonal rhythms. The studio is finally fairly functional, but it took a good month to move everything into that much smaller room and make it all work. Still don't have a decent photography space, much less a functional camera -- which is another, longer story -- but we have scant time for frivolous excuses and tale-telling right now, so it's back to the grindstone. --r.
Posted by Romy
01:05 AM PST
June 17, 2008
GULFPORT, Ill. -- (RB News Service) The rising Mississippi River interrupted travel on two bridges between Iowa and Illinois and threatened thousands of acres of farmland Tuesday. People stacked millions of sandbags near 27 levees the federal government said were in danger of overflowing. The river blew a massive hole in a levee near the farming community of Gulfport at about 5 a.m., covering at least 5,000 acres of farmland by late Tuesday morning, Henderson County Chief Deputy Donald Seitz said. "The whole town will be under water," Seitz said, calling the levee break "very devastating" for the small agricultural community near the Illinois-Iowa line. More than 10,000 acres could eventually flood, he said. The break forced the closure of the Great River Bridge that connects Gulfport to Burlington, Iowa, via U.S. Highway 34. Two people who were working on the levee were rescued by boat, said Henderson County Sheriff Mark Lumbeck. Three other people were lifted by helicopter from a rooftop, and seven others climbed onto a 4-wheeler and sped down a railroad track as the levee gave way, Lumbeck said. The town of about 200 remains dry but was evacuated because of concerns about a second levee to the north where seepage was discovered, Lumbeck said. Two residents in the town refused to leave and stayed behind, the sheriff said. The Illinois governor's office originally reported more than a dozen people had to be rescued by helicopter. But Patti Thompson, a spokeswoman with the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, later said the number could not be confirmed and to rely on local officials' accounts. About 20 miles down the river from Gulfport, the BNSF Railway Co. swing span bridge was closed early Tuesday to car traffic at Fort Madison, Iowa, near the Iowa-Illinois line, Lee County emergency management director Steve Cirinna said. The bridge hadn't closed to trains, BNSF Railway Co. spokesman Steve Forsberg said. Near the Gulfport, 83-year-old Lois Russell watched the floodwaters that surrounded her home about a mile away. She said she evacuated her home because of flooding in 1965 and again in 1993, and returned each time - but that she wouldn't return again. "It was a good placed to raise my seven kids," she said, crying. "I know I haven't lost anything that feels important because I have a big family." The federal government predicted that 27 levees could potentially overflow along the river if the weather forecast is on the mark and a massive sandbagging effort fails to raise the level of the levees, according to a map obtained Monday by The Associated Press. Officials placed millions of sandbags on top of the levees in Illinois, Iowa and Missouri to prevent overflowing. There was no way to predict whether these levees will break, said Ron Fournier, a spokesman with the Army Corps of Engineers in Iowa. Amtrak service was disrupted between Burlington and St. Paul, Minn., because of the flooding. The disruptions affected the California Zephyr, Southwest Chief and Amtrak Empire Builder routes. A sandbagging operation at the Oakville Apostolic Church was moved south to the outskirts of Burlington after floodwaters streamed across Iowa Highway 99. "The church is now an island," said Carly Wagenbach, who was shuttling food to levee workers. Officials were concerned about spot spots in a levee that protects a drainage area south of Oakville. "It's outrageous," said Steve Poggemiller. "We're hanging on by a thread - or a sandbag." Jeff Campbell, a farmer carrying sandbags on his 4-wheeler, said he spotted hogs swimming away from a flooded hog operation near Oakville. They were climbing a levee, poking holes in the plastic that covered it, he said. One tired pig was lying at the bottom of the levee "like a pink sandbag," Campbell said. Donna Dubberke, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Davenport, Iowa, said the river level would gradually begin to rise again once the flooded areas fill up, but that crest projections could be lowered by several inches. At Burlington, the crest forecast was lowered to 25.8 feet, down from the earlier projection of 26.1 feet. That was welcome news to volunteers fighting to save a levee north of Burlington. "Nobody knows how close it was," said Brian Wiegand, 48, of Oakville. "It was by a whisker." Two more deaths were reported Monday in Iowa, bringing the state's death toll to five. On Tuesday, there were signs that much of Iowa was starting to return to normalcy: Interstate 80 reopened near Iowa City for the first time in days, with Interstate 380 to the north scheduled to reopen early Tuesday. On the University of Iowa campus, officials began to take stock of the damage. In Cedar Rapids, where 24,000 people were evacuated when floodwater covered about 1,300 city blocks, more people were being allowed to return to their homes Tuesday. "The water has continued to recede, so we've moved those barricades in and there's now a large section of the city where residents are allowed to go back in," said Dave Koch, a city spokesman. On Monday, broken gas lines, sink holes and structural problems caused officials to stop taking residents into homes, said Dave Koch, a city spokesman. Officials hoped to allow residents in soon. Where floodwaters remained, they were a noxious brew of sewage, farm chemicals and fuel. LeRoy Lippert, chairman of emergency management and homeland security in nearby Des Moines County, warned people to avoid drinking floodwaters. Mixed in are pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer from Iowa's vast stretches of farmland. The American Red Cross said Monday its disaster relief fund has been completely spent, and the agency is borrowing money to help flood victims throughout the Midwest. (Original reporting by Romy Benton, totally NOT ripped off from the Ass* Press)
Posted by Romy
01:31 PM PST
June 16, 2008
Tomorrow is Monday, June 16th, which is the designated *panic* date for our Oregon Country Fair preparations. Many embryonic flutes in the pipeline, and the only question is how many of them will be brought to full term by the second weekend of July. The next three weeks would be an excellent time for flute inquiries, since many will be available for consideration over the home stretch. I used to attend a dozen or so big art/craft fairs every year, but no more: the OCF is the only major event remaining on the docket, thank heavens. I'm much more critically discriminating when recommending instruments over the Internet than in a face-to-face interaction, especially when the meatspace interaction takes place in the context of a chaotic craft fair. Customers who obtain flutes over the 'net get the cream of the crop in most cases, since a customer who can't play-test the goods in person deserves my best shot. On the other hand, if you show up at a fair booth and are attracted to something that might not be my very best effort, go for it! Actually, I should return to doing do three or four major meatspace shows a year in order to clear out the back-stock. --Not to imply that we'd sell inferior goods under any circumstances! Nope, even the second-tier flutes are *ahem* sublime works of musical art worthy of any discriminating collector's attention. I discard many flutes in the early stages-- many more than are actually completed. In fact, some of the finished ones I'd carelessly classify as second-rate might even be superior in many respects-- especially for casual beginners or others who aren't attuned to such nitpicky standards. After all, how many of us are seriously invested in playing in the third octave of a bamboo flute? --r.
Posted by Romy
12:48 AM PST
June 13, 2008
11:30 PM, June 12th: just got home from the Complex, where we've finally sorted out the relocation wreckage enough to get some actual work done. Feels good! This morning I lingered for awhile at the Swamp Shack before heading into the Complex to work, since the weather has finally turned toward early-summer norms. Might not last, though: fingers still crossed. It's a birder's paradise here at the Shack: we live on a riverside surrounded by mixed woods, and the list of local species is long. This morning I took the binoculars across the small creek which empties into the Tualatin river at the corner of our lot and spent some time observing a red-breasted sapsucker nest. These birds are cavity nesters, and the nest in question is pecked into a dead tree just across the creek. It was great sitting twenty feet from the nest and watching the parents visit again and again to shove beakfuls of bugs into the gaping maws of the loudly-cheeping youngsters -- well, I couldn't see the actual feeding, just the parents ducking repeatedly into the nest hole -- but the fledglings should soon be peeking out of the portal in anticipation of their introduction to the wide world, and I'll be there to watch! Good-quality 10x binoculars are da bomb, man. Where to begin on the bird list? We get occasional bald eagle flybys over the river, and ospreys are our neighbors: in fact, last year we were treated to the 45-minute spectacle of an osprey feasting on a sizable fish in our backyard! (And an osprey flew right by while I was watching the sapsucker nest.) Kingfishers dart about all day with their distinctive rasping calls, and pileated woodpeckers visit from time to time. Redtail hawks and turkey vultures soar high overhead, and great blue herons are regular visitors to the riverside, even entering the yard when the water is high. Of course, Canada geese and ducks of several species swim by with their broods at this time of year. At nightfall, we're regaled by the resonant hoots of great horned owls... ...And that's just pecking at the surface. The feeders we maintain year-round attract innumerable chickadees, juncoes, jays, finches, hummingbirds, sparrows, bushtits, downy woodpeckers, nuthatches, flickers, thrushes, grosbeaks, warblers, towhees and more. (List to be expanded after memory refreshment.) Practically all paleontologists agree that birds evolved from a certain class of dinosaurs -- note the generalization here, since I'm too lazy to look up citations right now -- so in a sense it's silly to say that dinosaurs "went extinct." Indeed, many of them still walk and fly among us in the contemporary form of birds. Birds rock the ages! -r.
Posted by Romy
12:48 AM PST
June 11, 2008
At last! I've actually been working on flutes the last two days, after a three-week+ hiatus due to studio-space relocation. The downsizing was even more disruptive than I'd expected, and combined with all the other pressing activities of the season it knocked the fluteworks out of action for the better part of a month. Only a month to go until the Oregon Country Fair, so it's time to dig in and get serious about production for that event. I'd vowed to prepare long enough in advance to avoid a frenzied, stressful rush in the last pre-fair week or two, so we'll see how that goes in the wake of our long production lapse... Still don't have all the seasonal garden veggies planted either-- although we've been eating greens and stuff out of the new community garden plot for the last two weeks. It's been unseasonably cool over the last few weeks: so far, June temperatures are running 5 degrees F. lower than average, which is a LOT climatologically speaking. My tomatoes, peppers and squash are severely retarded! That is, they've pretty much been just sitting there passively and not making nearly the normal amount of growth for this time of year. Too bad, since one of the main reasons for securing that full-sun community garden plot was in order to grow warm-weather veggies to better advantage. Oh well, it's bound to warm up eventually. Time to get back to the blog, too-- report on current flute goings-on soon. I'm not sure whether it's due to economic conditions or whatnot, but for the past two months the flute biz has been mighty slow. Normally I don't have to do much in order to draw sufficient sales to pay the bills, since enough people stumble into this site and eventually figure out how to order a flute at just about the right pace to keep me as busy as I want to be. At this rate I'll have to do some actual, proactive marketing soon! C'mon people: there are quite a few very nice flutes just sitting around here! Let's get with the program and order a flute! (Unfortunately, a major casualty of the studio downsizing is that I don't have a dedicated photography area and haven't figured out how to replace that yet.) Back to the Complex now-- catch y'all again tomorrow or the next day. --r.
Posted by Romy
03:42 PM PST
June 4, 2008
Yup, still here in the land of the living, tho you wouldn't have known over the last week or two. Not only has the studio downsizing project obliterated most other time-spending options over that stretch, we've also lost 'net access at the Swamp Shack, so I can't write from home on evenings after each day's dust has settled somewhat. Should emerge from the worst of the woods in another day or three; I may even be organized enough to do some actual flutework by the end of this week. 'Nother update soon... very soon by recent standards. --rb
Posted by Romy
02:29 PM PST |
