These posts are always a day behind, so this one is about Saturday. Jen and I spent a lot of time in the leather shop today catching up on leather orders while relaxing at the same time. It was nice. Jen cranked out a bunch of gorgeous leather flasks (check her Facebook for those pics) and I got started on my biggest item yet: a set of motorcycle saddlebags for a client’s 50-year old British military bike. Believe it or not, the saddlebags were still original an had held up well, so the pressure is on. Mine have to last just as long, in all kinds of weather conditions.
Here are some photos of the originals:
And this pile of leather is the beginning of the replacements:
Yeah, I know. It doesn’t look like much. But the design layout took me a couple of hours and cutting, edging and gouging these pieces took several hours. Part of the problem was that we have very few pieces of leather this big. For durability I wanted to design the bag with as few pieces of leather as possible. The other thing slowing me down is that I want the new design to be close to the original and it’s the first time I’ve done any kind of bag. It was hard work but it’s fun and I got to spend time just hanging out and having fun with Jen while Declan played with friends.
I also spent quite a few hours working on a pretty massive Google form. I realized this year that computer repair is a pretty important part of what we do in Uganda. I’d like to see us do more of it, but we always seem to be overwhelmed with the work that we have. Part of the reason for this is that we spend a lot of time going back-and-forth with the client, getting information we didn’t get when they checked the machine in. For example, often forget to ask for pin codes on iPhone unlocks and password to laptops. So, the form is designed to get all that information upfront and also to capture information about the client so we can do better reporting (to you) about who we help. The form ended up being a pretty big undertaking spanning 10 pages with a bunch of logic forks. I have to say that after doing the form I’m pretty impressed with how far Google forms has come, it was fully capable and a huge leap from where it was a few years ago.
Pretty excited about this mundane little thing, because it’s really going to help us help charities more efficiently.
