Lisa Sorrell, cowboy boot maker

I sewed the side seam on this pair of boots this morning and turned them right-side-out. This afternoon I got them on the last and put in the toe boxes. Paige graduates this evening, I have a lot to do, and I really wanted to fling myself to the floor and throw a temper tantrum instead of putting in toe boxes. I am proud to say that the tantrum was unthrown and the toe boxes are in.

Morgan is hard at work making leather strops for me. I provide each student with a strop to use in an inlay/overlay class and when the class is over they beg to keep them. I promised my last class I’d start selling leather strops and green polishing compound to go with them.

Here we have a visual illustration of the importance of stitching. By the way, it takes me about an hour and a half to stitch each panel and there are four of them.

These tops are really complicated and time-consuming to stitch. In their honor I’ve developed a new shop motto for myself: Stop Whining and Do It.

Sometimes I miscalculate when I’m cutting out dozens of small pieces. This poor little flower is the extra, unneeded one.

It’s taken me a while to get all of the pieces cut and skived for this pair of boot tops. Putting them all together was complicated too, but stitching should be the easy part.

I figured out how to test fuses with my voltage meter, changed fuses on my air conditioning unit outside, and it came on! Today is the first day I’ve turned on the air and whenever it won’t come on I’m always convinced it’s broken forever. I went from dejected to very happy in the space of a few minutes.

This morning I did some of the less exciting tasks of owning a business. I cleaned off my desk, paid bills, and balanced my checkbook. I’d forgotten to enter a couple of deposits so there was actually more money in my checking account than I thought. It was an auspicious start to my day!