From the workshop, Sunday afternoon #2

I said I was simplifying.

And I did. Many products came off the website. I went through the sales data carefully, made some hard decisions, and felt better for it. Clarity was the word I used.

Then I looked at the offcuts...

There's a pile of material in every workshop that accumulates between production runs. Strips of oilskin too short for a tarp pocket. Wool remnants from blanket batches. Canvas oddments that don't belong to any current pattern. For a long time I'd move this pile from bench to bench, tidying without resolving.

Richard Sennett wrote that craftsmanship is "the desire to do a job well for its own sake." I'd add: and to waste nothing in the doing of it.

Through March, I began resolving that pile.

Nothing gets binned here. A strip of oilskin too short for a tarp becomes a drawstring bag. Wool batting that doesn't cut for a Mariner's Roll Mat gets pressed into a cushion. Ex-military cotton webbing that would otherwise have no second life becomes a lead. The mini blanket came from the same recycled Australian hosiery wool as the full Maatsuyker, just smaller, now made for a dog or a baby. A drawstring ditty sack, the term carried over from Royal Navy sailors who used them to stow personal kit.

These aren't contradictions of focus. They're the other thing focus produces: efficiency. Using what's there. Making something good from what would otherwise accumulate into a kind of noise, or worse, end up in the bin!

Simplifying and making aren't always in opposition. Sometimes the offcuts have the last word.

Made in Tasmania, since 2015.

Grateful, as always,

Nick