Most of you know that my dog Zoe loves our store. She was trained there when she was a puppy -- it was a central location for the trainer and me to meet, and gave Zoe a chance to get used to being around people. So she is very comfortable there.I usually take her to...

I love doing shows -- any of you who have seen me at one probably already know that. And I enjoy visiting with people who come into our booth. On Saturdays, that "visit" is usually no more than "Hello, how are you?" and "Thanks for coming!" On Sundays, the...

Last weekend we made our yearly visit to Springfield, Massachusetts. This show is a big enough deal each year -- all of New England comes out -- that Susan Pickering Rothamel from USArtQuest and Tim Hammonds from Scor-It both asked us if we could arrange for demo...

I have to admit that I love it when people go out of their way to make my job easier. Connie Vogt did the Make It/Take It in our store on Wednesday, and she knew that I was scrambling to get everything done so I could load the truck and head out for the Springfield,...

Some of you will notice that it has been almost a week since I last rambled incoherently (of course, others have enjoyed the silence) . . .As soon as I finish this, I will go into New England Mode. This weekend is one of the biggest shows of the year -- we'll be at...

I'm sure a lot of you take classes at your local store. I never realized how much prep time goes into one until we started offering classes in our store and I noticed that the teachers are always there! So today I'm offering a look behind the scenes for those of you...

I think everyone has a snickerdoodle recipe. This one came from my wife, and she got it from the Betty Crocker Cookbook when she was little. I was always a chocolate chip cookie kid, so I had never had snickerdoodles (and I thought the name was silly) until we started...

This is the Make It/Take It card that Dawn Cutter led in our store last Wednesday. Dawn was very thorough -- gave me a detailed list with supply and assembly instructions. Now that you've seen where we're headed, this is how to get there. It's quick and easy and comes...

This is what remains of my favorite two-wheeler (some of you may know this contraption as a hand truck). It has a nice wide base and I have used it for nearly ten years when setting up and tearing down our booth. Only the tires have been replaced over the years -- it...

This was an idea suggested by a customer, who wanted to know what a day on the road in that big truck was like. So I started snapping pictures Thursday morning. Some of them turned out well, and some are truly awful (but as you'll see, I guess they're proof that I was...