Marlinspike Seamanship

A customer just emailed us a question which I thought would make a perfect blog post.

I know that scrimshaw is the term for carving whale bone, but I
can’t bring to mind the term for making practical and ornamental items with
rope or line.

This is my husbands reply:

There is no really good equivalent, but it was historically called
“marlinespike seamanship.”  Marline is a two strand small cord, usually hemp
that was tarred to prevent rotting.  It was used to open grommets on a sail,
provide grips and decorative hitching.  A Marlinespike is a curved metal
dull pointed stick used to open up rope for splicing, pressing open
grommets, and serve as a lever when ‘seizing’ or tightening knots.  So,
Marlinespike seamanship is the art of using the marlinespike to make
functional and decorative work out of cord and rope, but also implies the
inclusion of canvas.

So most people have a vague image of what decorative knotwork  might be. But what is a grommet? Here is a great picture we took at the Herreshoff Museum in Bristol RI.

This is a picture of a  sail, so this would be marlinespike seamanship. This is functional but it sure looks decorative to our modern eyes! I can tell you that the sail on our boat looks nothing like this.

Here is picture of functional knot work that also looks decorative on our sailboat. This is the tiller my husband made.  He whipped the outside and tied some turks heads for grip.

A marlinespike sailor with his tiller.

 

If you would like to see some more knot work please check out our website.

A Few Thoughts About Turk’s Head Knots

Tying Turk’s Heads knots (or more commonly known as sailor knots) is our bread and butter here at Mystic Knotwork. We literally tie thousands of them. This led me to look into the history of the Turk’s Head.

According to Clifford W. Ashley from the famous Ashley Book of Knots, “The name turk’s head first appears in Darcy Lever’s The Sheet Anchor (1808), but the knot is much older.” Leonardo da Vinci drew them in the 15th century.

A turk’s head knot is made of bights and leads.The bights are the length of the knot, or the scalloped edges that are formed as you follow the knot around. The more bights the bigger around the bracelet will be. The leads mark the width of the knot. Confused? I am too and I have made more than I can count!

There are many sites with directions on how to tie a turk’s head knot. Most of them show directions on how to tie the knot around a tube of some sort. We make our bracelets around our hand, which is harder to learn, but easier in the long run. We can make our bracelets anywhere and do! At the beach, on our boat, even when we are on vacation. Here are some good directions, especially the animated section on the bottom of the page.

Making bracelets on Block Island

It took me many confusing hours on the web trying to figure out how to make one. Then it took months to become really comfortable with tying, shrinking, enlarging, adding colored stripes and all the variations out there. If you are just learning don’t give up! It will take time, but if I can learn anyone can!

Sailing Adventure Part I

I had been reading Latitudes and Attitudes for a few years, I finally owned a sailboat, I was readyto go on an adventure! I wanted a story just like the ones I had been reading.

My husband wanted to go to Block Island for our first trip. I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to find it in the middle of the ocean! This was mistake number 1. Boy have I learned a lot since then. We decided on Point Judith where I had spent many happy vacations as a child. It was about 25 miles away, a good distance for our first trip we decided.

We checked the weather and the tides, made reservations at a marina, packed up bedding, the dogs, water, but no food. We decided we would eat at restaurants. This was mistake number 2.

With everything loaded we set sail. The sun was shining on the water, the breeze was blowing, maybe a little too much, but we would just get there faster, right? We were fine sailing in Fisher’s Island sound, but as soon as we got to the Watch Hill channel it turned nasty. The waves started coming over the side of the boat in all directions. We were heeled way over from the wind. We were drenched and uncomfortable. The dogs took cover down below.

I was ready to turn back, but my husband convinced me to to keep going. Eventually the waves died down a little as we headed down the Rhode Island coast. To my surprise we could see Block Island! In fact the wind was trying to push us in that direction. This was mistake number 3. We should have gone were the wind wanted to take us. Instead we pushed on to Point Judith.

We had to tack back in forth to head in the right direction which slowed us way down. The seas were about 5 feet. Every time a wave came I thought we would be swamped. Instead we just rode them up and down, as a result my husband got seasick. We finally stopped fighting the wind, dropped the sails and turned on the motor. We then discovered the our charts didn’t cover this section of the coast. What else could go wrong?

The calm waters of Fishers Island Sound

One Year Etsy Anniversary – What I Learned

A whole year has passed since I opened my Etsy shop. I started with about 20 items in my humble newbie shop. Now I hover around 200 and many exciting things have happened. My husband quit his job in April  and I decreased my hours in July to 20 ( just enough to keep our health insurance).

Etsy has been a success for me,  but I made mistakes and learned many things along the way. I would like to share what worked for me.

1) List something new every day! Keep yourself on the front page of search terms. It doesn’t even have to be something new. Re list expired or about to expire items. Also re list items that sold that you can make again.

2) Heart people! Spend your down time looking at others people’s shops and adding them to your favorites. Don’t forget to heart anyone back that heart’s you. Sometimes I get busy and get behind on this. I always notice an increase in sales when I start again.

3) Convos! This is an area where I fail the most. I sometimes get hundreds of convos a week (at least it feels like it). Answer everyone right away and have a system for keeping track of them. I have tried printing them out and putting them in a binder, and making a folder for my email. I still miss some.

If you have a partnership make someone in charge of answering any questions. My husband and I work together and decided he should answer emails and convos as he is home everyday. At first we were each thinking the other was answering and things were getting missed.

4)Advertising! We have tried some different advertising venues and here is what worked for us.

Etsy showcases- Low cost but hard to find one with open spots. The few  that I was able to get into worked well.

Facebook- Posting new items for sale on Facebook has generated quite a few sales. You can also have your Etsy shop right on your profile. You can also create a fan page.

Twitter- My husband and I both have twitter accounts and tweet new items. This has also generated quite a few sales. If you don’t have a twitter account I highly recommend you get one.

Blogs and Contests- We both have blogs but don’t do a whole lot with them. We have had success with being mentioned on other peoples blogs and contests.

Print Advertising- We did some advertising in magazines and this has worked very well for us. The majority of our income is wholesale and we picked up quite a few new customers this way.

4) Pictures – Ok, this is my weak spot. Everywhere I look I see articles and blogs about taking good pictures. I hate taking pictures but I am slowly trying to learn how to do it right. I think good pictures can make a shop. I also think if you sell something that you wear you should have a picture of it on someone. It gives a sense of scale.

5) Descriptions – A good description is essential! If you sell many variations of the same item it is difficult to change the description for every item. At the very least have measurements and good details about what you are trying to sell.

This is just a few of the things I learned. There are many good blog posts about how to be successful on Etsy. When you have time read some. Everyone has something that may make you stop and think. Also check out the Etsy forums. There is so much good information there it is mind boggling.

Sails or Sales

This has been a tough summer. Our business took off  much quicker than we expected. While the money was nice, we had no free time for fun summer activities.  We tried to walk the dog once a week, went out to eat a few times, and motored down the river a few times. We never raised the sails.

We learned that growing a business is a lot of hard hard hard work. Customers have to come first, even before sleep. Our poor sailboat has sat unused at her brand new dock. Our business is mostly seasonal, so we will have to do our sailing in the winter. Since we live in Connecticut, that may not be too fun.

This is my hand on the tiller of our sailboat. This picture was taken for our website, so the boat never actually left the dock. At least we can work in beautiful spots like this!

Twenty-foot-itis

Our dock before it was rebuilt

If you know anything about boating you have heard the term two-foot-itis. This is when you are constantly wanting to upgrade to a slightly bigger boat. My husband and I have twenty-foot-itis. When we want something or have an idea, we always go big and jump in with both feet.

Last summer we bought an old dock that was originally part of a dockaminium, but is now a privately owned piece of property in the middle of a marina. We had it pulled as it was listing sideways when we bought it, and had a new one built.  New docks are not cheap, as we learned, but we are assured this dock will last the rest of our lives.

The only real problem with this  dock is it is 45 feet long, and our sailboat is 26 feet long, hence the twenty-foot-itis. So the search is on, and it is much harder than I would have imagined. Do we want power or sail? If sail, do we want a monohull or a multihull? Do we want to write a check for our new boat or add debt to our previously debt free life? This is a buyers market, so the salesmen keep saying. There are so many boats for sale right now it is mind boggling. I am having nightmares about beams and drafts, roller furling, teak (do we want to fool with brightwork?) cabins, heads, the list goes on.

In addition to buying a much larger boat, we decided to try to make a go at making our knotwork business full time. My husband gave his two week notice yesterday. A very bold move in this economy. I figure this is another form of twenty-foot-itis. Why go small? Jump in with both feet and faith in your heart.

http://www.mysticknotwork.com

Smooth Sailing?

It was a perfect early fall day, warm and sunny with a light breeze. We had owned our sailboat for three or four weeks at this point. Today we were going to sail, now that we felt comfortable making our way to the channel and docking. We loaded up our lunch, the dogs, and even our teenage daughter decided to come along. Life was good.

We successfully motored down the channel. I sat on the bow of boat waving at everyone we passed. We went by Abbots, a restaurant on the water were part of the attraction is watching the boats go by. It felt really cool to be the person on the boat instead of at the restaurant. We finally got out into open water and prepared to set sail.

My husband climbed forward to raise the sails as I attempted to steer the  boat into the wind. At this time we didn’t have a windex, so I was really guessing. We also hadn’t led out lines forward yet, so climbing forward was necessary. I don’t remember what my husband raised first, the mainsail or the jib, but as soon as he raised it the boat tipped over sideways. I screamed and screamed and screamed. I really thought we were all going to die. The boat was going to flip over and we were all going to drown.

I saw my husband sitting on the cabin top laughing, but it didn’t register. I also saw my daughter down below lying on the quarter berth with a book looking at me disdainfully like teenagers often do. How can they both be so unconcerned? Didn’t they have any self-preservation?

My husband lowered the sails and tried to calm me down. This is what sailboats do , he explained. It will not flip over. I was unconvinced but allowed him to raise just the mainsail. We heeled a little but not like before. We started moving along pretty fast, at least it felt fast. The waves slapped the hull making a pleasant noise. The sun shone down, warming me back up. Maybe this wasn’t so bad.

We sailed around in circles for an hour or two, then headed back in. When we got off the boat I was still shaking a little. I wasn’t sure buying a sailboat was the right move. Four years later we still own our boat, and I still get nervous when the boat heels. This fear is something I am working on, and I am determined to conquer it. Does anyone have a catamaran for sale?