Kilted MacBitseach
Kilted MacBitseach
Endings are easy. Beginning are the tough part.
Here's how I fell into kiltmaking:
I was a woodturner and working part-time in a lumber yard/hardware store. I was searching for a Celtic Christmas card and stumbled onto a casual kiltmaker's site. (No names.) It was $40.00 USD and I ordered one. By the time it crossed the border with all the duties and brokerage fees, it cost me $110.00 Canadian and the pleats disappeared the first time I washed it.
I'd had a taste of what it felt like to be kilted; the freedom, the comfort, the way women looked at me.
"I'll make a better kilt!"
In my desire to be kilted, I was undaunted by the magnitude of the task.
I learned how to use the sewing machine enough to sew fairly straight and with info found on-line, put together a pretty good first attempt.
Feeling pretty happy with my kilt, I wore it to work at the hardware store. I took a lot of heat in the first few days from the staff and the building contractors. I usually give as good as I get and it wasn't all that bad. Some of the worst of the building contractors later told me that they admired my courage.
I sold the first Bear Kilt in the first week I wore my kilt to a customer in the hardware store.
Then I was asked by The Vancouver Sun if they could do a story about my kiltmaking company and the growing trend of men in kilts.
The story ran across Canada and an order flooded in the next day ... for two kilts ... from England. Over the next two weeks I got quite a few orders, mostly from Canada, but a couple from the USA.
So, I decided to learn to sew better and see what would happen if I gave kiltmaking a shot.
In a three month period, I simultaneously learned to sew, make kilts, design kilts, learned the basics of HTML, and started to learn about home based businesses.
Two years later and I'm still at it; I'm training two kiltmakers, I have a store in Gastown, and a waiting list for my kilts as long as a summer's day in Yellowknife. I've shipped kilts to Tazmania, Switzerland, Norway, England, and all over North America.
But the best part is still wearing a kilt! And that's what this blog is about.
I'm going to write about interesting things that happen to me that wouldn't have happened had I not been kilted. If I have an uneventful day, I've got two years of stories ready to be penned.
That's a good beginning.
Endings are easy. Beginning are the tough part.
Here's how I fell into kiltmaking:
I was a woodturner and working part-time in a lumber yard/hardware store. I was searching for a Celtic Christmas card and stumbled onto a casual kiltmaker's site. (No names.) It was $40.00 USD and I ordered one. By the time it crossed the border with all the duties and brokerage fees, it cost me $110.00 Canadian and the pleats disappeared the first time I washed it.
I'd had a taste of what it felt like to be kilted; the freedom, the comfort, the way women looked at me.
"I'll make a better kilt!"
In my desire to be kilted, I was undaunted by the magnitude of the task.
I learned how to use the sewing machine enough to sew fairly straight and with info found on-line, put together a pretty good first attempt.
Feeling pretty happy with my kilt, I wore it to work at the hardware store. I took a lot of heat in the first few days from the staff and the building contractors. I usually give as good as I get and it wasn't all that bad. Some of the worst of the building contractors later told me that they admired my courage.
I sold the first Bear Kilt in the first week I wore my kilt to a customer in the hardware store.
Then I was asked by The Vancouver Sun if they could do a story about my kiltmaking company and the growing trend of men in kilts.
The story ran across Canada and an order flooded in the next day ... for two kilts ... from England. Over the next two weeks I got quite a few orders, mostly from Canada, but a couple from the USA.
So, I decided to learn to sew better and see what would happen if I gave kiltmaking a shot.
In a three month period, I simultaneously learned to sew, make kilts, design kilts, learned the basics of HTML, and started to learn about home based businesses.
Two years later and I'm still at it; I'm training two kiltmakers, I have a store in Gastown, and a waiting list for my kilts as long as a summer's day in Yellowknife. I've shipped kilts to Tazmania, Switzerland, Norway, England, and all over North America.
But the best part is still wearing a kilt! And that's what this blog is about.
I'm going to write about interesting things that happen to me that wouldn't have happened had I not been kilted. If I have an uneventful day, I've got two years of stories ready to be penned.
That's a good beginning.