Happy BLACK FRIDAY, everyone. I hope none of you got hurt in the mad rush early today. What gets me is that the stores and the manufacturing companies cause these problems to begin with. I can understand a company trying to flip a buck. That's why they do what they do. But when you hold out on selling an item because you want to fuel the feeding frenzy (ahem, Xbox-360) and then only put a miniscule number of the product out to each retailer, they've created an artificial market of weak supply and high demand so when those doors opened at Oh-dark-thirty this past Tuesday, only the people that had the ability and motivation to camp overnight outside of the store in the cold had even a snowballs chance of getting their greedy little fingers around one of these game consoles. Within hours, these things started showing up on Ebay at rediculously inflated prices and people were going frigging nuts trying to get one. The highest price I saw was in the $7000 range... All for a $400-ish game console that by next year will be as abundant as rain in the Pacific Northwest in the winter. In 18 months, the price should drop down to around $200. But they always say that a fool and his money are soon parted and that's why I wish I had braved the cold on Monday night so I could get a small slice of that pie. Yeah, if I could have, I probably would have waited in line over night and then immediately flipped it over on Ebay for a huge profit. Is it price gouging? Well, if you start the bidding at what you paid for it and through no prodding of your own, the price climbs through the ceiling... and through the ceiling of the room above where you sit right now, then it's ok. If people are STUPID enough to pay me $1000 or more for something that I paid $400 for the day before, then who am I to tell them no.
Well, enough about that. Last week, I got the opportunity to repair one of Nannette's spindles. The cherry shaft had snapped and the whorl (made from antique recovered floorboards) had a gouge in it that the original maker neglected to remove. I replaced the shaft with a polished oak shaft and I reconditioned the whorl. After giving it a nice bath with Woodbeams, it came out looking like this...




Pretty nice for using only a battery powered drill to spin it.
Well, until next time... Stay dry and enjoy the Holidays.
Ho, Ho, Ho...