Merry Christmas!
REVERB STORE NOW AGAIN OPEN for a limited time, 'til Sunday night.
What's New and Happening?
Big picture is... Canada's Posties are (mostly) back to work, but there are rebel factions ignoring the government order. Apparently some union peeps actually welded the doors of a mail warehouse shut in BC... attempting to shut down delivery. I'm told many workers are cranky AF.
But basically the nut of it all, and how it affects you and me is... the past month of work stoppage basically destroyed the height of the Christmas retail season for up to 800,000 smaller online businesses. Particularly hardest hit are those situated in more remote/rural areas like myself.
As of this afternoon, mail is flowing out of my village, and I've processed orders and provided tracking numbers for almost a dozen orders since Tuesday. Canada Post says all guarantees of delivery are out the window at this time, as the system is rather backed-up. It is my hope most goods I have shipped off to the USA to arrive (fingers crossed), first week of 2025. Inside Canada, hopefully before the New Year.
After a month of this madness,
I'm not destroyed. My bench has been busy with custom and also a nice amount of new work now in the store - you should go see! I'm HIGH KEY grateful to up to more than a half-dozen Well-Hung Warriors, who just went ahead and ordered custom work during the strike anyway, not being a hot hurry for speedy arrivals.
"It's a guitar strap," noted one, "NOT a kidney." LOL!
Longer term Ramifications
Another big deal happening over the past month is something I do see suddenly when listing new stuff. Without getting specifically into recent geo-political happenings, talk with regards to borders and trade between Canada and the USA has resulted a rather steep drop in value of the Canadian loonie against the US dollar.
Because I list my goods in CAD, this means the relative price of my work for USA brothers & sisters has dropped significantly,
as if everything in my Reverb store is now suddenly available at a discount. Decent!
I have NOT yet gone in to readjust prices my over 120 listings, I've got better things to do this time of year LOL! So in effect you may look at this as a time-limited sale, which I normally don't do. Please understand the suddenly-lower prices are not reflective of the work I continue to put into each strap, materials or any of that.
I'm still building the best sling I know how, every day.
Fact of the matter is, if this dollar difference sustains over time, it absolutely inflates my costs for leather, thread, padding, various other strap-making supplies, food, time, my general life etc., so, coming up in 2025, (probably sooner for new listings and custom work) I'll be forced to re-balance prices. FOR NOW, and probably for first two weeks of 2024, I'm not touching 'em. I do now yet know how any proposed tariffs may affect me, if they will at all. My understanding is this is much more about big trainloads of steel, lumber, oil, or tanker loads of milk, maple syrup and hockey sticks and back bacon than it is about individual small person-to-person dealings.
I will be traveling over the holidays, so SUNDAY NIGHT I will again close my Reverb store, and hit the nog harder than I should. Also need to do a Costco run and pick up some new other supplies in the city. It's my plan to be back in the shop to re-open the store probably around Dec. 28th.
Anyhoo that's where I'm at. Lets look at some recent work now, because that's likely more why you're here and interested in this thread!
The last strap I made this week, sent yesterday was a completely new design build.
About ten years ago, I picked up a rather expensive 3 yards of Sari ribbon trip, to craft a guitar strap for myself, which I did (a rather crude one, admittedly my skills were not so developed at that time). I saw this crazy hand-beaded, hand-embroidered ribbon, and had to have it. It's been on a strap I made my main acoustic guitar, and has been camping at least once a year for the past decade, and as delicate as it looks, it has held up quite well
I also used up the second yard to make a strap for a former colleague and treasured friend, just because it's so damn cool
It was a regular 2.5" embroidered ribbon, but some dedicated artist LOADED it up with additional glass seed-beads, what looks like tiny shells, a whole bunch of metallic copper wire stitching, and extremely detailed types of chain-stitching, I'm guessing almost all done by hand. Gotta be at least a hundred hours worth of extra work. It's just plain magnificent.
Tony in BC picked up a groovy shell pink strat, with mint pg. I pitched this final yard remaining of material to him as kind of special, and he went all in. To protect the beadwork better than how I made my own strap, I devised a way to wrap some buttery dark tan garment leather up around the edges and fold it over to frame the ribbon. it's one of those things that is just incomprehensible to me a human could make.
The edges ended up seeming kind of thick, was worried my machine might not sew through it, the padding I normally put in my straps, AND the lining, but it my old Consew chewed through like a champ, and punched 'er down nice.
The resulting strap sits probably in the top three of 2025, and easily in my top ten of Well-Hung victories all time.
It's called "Far Out" and it really kinda is. Should be a great pairing
Once again, my heartfelt thanks to all you strapolics watching out there, the Well-Hung Reverb store is once again
open after a month-long closure, but will remain so only until Sunday night, before a Christmas break.
Go check out the fun new listings
>> RIGHT HERE <<
