I love my job. I get to create pretty purses that make ladies go ohhhh and ahhhh. I get to hear the ohhhhs and ahhhhs because I sell my bags at art fairs. I get to visit all the friends I’ve made living and attending art fairs all around Ohio and neighboring states. I get lots of free time to take road trips with my grandson to see this remarkable country. And in between the art fairs and the road trips, I get to hang out on my farm with my dogs, horses, chickens, sheep, etc. and watch my garden grow.
I still have my original peddler’s license!
I started working with leather while a mediocre student at Ohio State in the early 70s. The old hippie hand-tooled purses and belts could be made with minimal tools in a very small space, and that was a whole lot more fun than working at the Burger Boy. After a year or two of peddling from a cart on High Street, I opened a shop, soon determined that having a shop was too much like having a job, closed the shop, and started selling at art fairs. Been at it ever since. The only downside is that I’ve traded for so much art over the years that I’ve run out of places to put it.
Note to self: Put together a blog to show and, hopefully, sell all the excess art—and maybe even a horse.
The name “Last Chance” comes from a small town in Colorado where I was briefly stranded while out seeing the world with my dog back in the mid 70s. At the time it had a population of maybe a dozen dusty souls—a number that had surged to 23 by the year 2000. The grandson and I are planning a road trip out West for next spring. We’ll need to stop in and see how they’re doing.