When we lost our jobs last year, there was a lot of discussion about what we wanted to do with this sudden gift of time. Things were not easy for sure, but while we were dealing with the difficulties in the world plus our own situation, we knew we needed to sublimate some of this energy.
If you have been following our story thus far, you’ll know that we reached out to a friend of ours in the Diamond District and lucked into some tools and an amazing bench for a very reasonable price. We promptly set everything up in our attic and got to work and it was a tough start. We’ve had some amazing resources made available to us with Youtube, At the Bench, and the Instagram jeweler community that we made friends with. But it still took time for us to get hang of things like soldering and making bezels. We really felt like we were making progress and were excited to keep leveling up.
Then the mice came.
Bastard.
Our current home is over 100 years old and as a result, we’ve always had to deal with the fun foibles and idiosyncrasies that come with it. But this was worse than what we could have imagined and it affected our productivity, but more importantly, it affected our mental health. So we needed to call in reinforcements to help us.
Enter Jay, the nicest person you’ll ever meet and the best rat guy in New York City. We’d hired him in the past and he was super efficient and effective, staving off any further houseguests for something like three years. We bonded with him over a shared enthusiasm of 3D printing (ok, that was mostly Ian) and a love of learning. Overall, we were happy to make a new friend, though in fairness, we did let communication slip a bit more than we should have. But we were desperate and also happy to get to see our friend again, so we called him up.
Similarly friendly and efficient, he got to work for us and we caught him up on all that we’re doing. To say that he was surprised and excited for us when we showed him our jewelry set up is an understatement. I was actually taken aback when he dove right into what we were doing, telling us he used to make jewelry himself years ago. What followed is a series of events we never could have anticipated.
Essentially, he told us that he was planning to reopen his office space and turn part of it into a workshop. He’s the type of person who wished had someone look out for him when he was starting out and now wishes to be that person for someone else. We happened to be the lucky people who caught his eye. We’re still settling in and setting up, but now we have our own workshop space with plenty of room to spread out and get creative with.
The reason I share this, besides the fact that it’s why we’ve had to slow down a bit until we could get settled, is to show how crazy one’s story can become. How we can plan every detail and still get offered a curve ball every now and then. Sometimes it can strike you out and sometimes you can knock it out of the park! (That’s all I got for baseball metaphors, sorry.) We have a lot of people to be grateful to. People who have done so very much for us. We are proud to be a part of their story and filled with gratitude to have them be a part of ours.
We’re excited to figure out this space we’re in and see what we can churn out in the coming months! Stay tuned!
