Until we get things swinging in the “normal” again, I’ll aim to do more frequent updates. These build upon previous communications, so if you missed one, I encourage you to start at the beginning of the saga here.
Here’s the latest on all things in the life and times of running our small family business.
THANK YOU
I hope I’m not overdoing it with the repeat thanks, but for real – Thank you again for being SO EXTRAORDINARILY PATIENT with us.
I’m blown away by the show of kindness and support from YOU, our incredible customers and community. As a small shop that feels like we’re running on fumes, I can’t express enough how much this means to us.
CURRENT ORDERS
If you’re still waiting on an order placed in Dec or Jan, we received another batch of prints from our shop neighbor on Friday night (Feb 9). All the pieces were cut at our shop on Sat, and things are moving into the sew/pack/ship stage now.
Shout out to Ken and Wilson, and shop neighbor Jeff. Things would not be moving without your persistence and care.
Like last week, things should start hitting USPS by Wednesday.
Please note that sometimes there are misprints or pieces that get damaged in the print run, and we don’t always know until we see that it didn’t ship. Then, it’s queued for print in the subsequent run.
This is a downside of printing and sublimating with our shop neighbor, we have to fit in his busy schedule. That said, without him, we’d be shut down completely. We are so grateful we can keep going despite the challenges with our machines after the move.
Given the circumstances with our machines, my hope is to communicate what I know when I know, and keep doing the best we can with everything else.
We are still accepting gift certificate redemptions through PTC.
We are not changing the “30-days-to-ship” notice at this time (this includes gift certificate redemptions through PTC and all Sam Barsky orders.)
We have not turned regular ordering back on at PTC yet.
WHEN WILL YOUR MACHINES BE WORKING AGAIN
Status is still TBD.
The Monti tech (Steve, the grandson of our previous Monti tech) was able to come out and meet Ken at the shop despite the rain, snow, and mud situation we had on the day he was scheduled.
So grateful he didn’t let the weather stop him!
(Keep scrolling; there’s more! This isn’t a big white space; it’s snow!)
We need to order a step-down converter and some other parts to replace inside the heat press. Once the parts are in, we’ll get on Steve’s schedule for another visit to fix.
Some parts take forever to order/have delivered.
Steve is based in CA, so this is not always a super simple thing to schedule.
Dependencies with TBD timelines keep us guessing, but not giving up.
Once the heat press is fixed up, we’ll turn focus to our large format printer.
Good news:
The laser cutter we bought early last year is up and running. This means that between Ken and Wilson, we’re able to handle everything after the print and sublimation process (cutting, sewing, packing, shipping) in-house.
DESERT HOMESTEAD UPDATES
HAVE YOU MOVED IN YET?
Nope. Still slowly plugging away about 1-2 days per week on things we need to do to move. If you’ve followed since the beginning, you’ll remember how much “Stuff” there was. And, even though we closed on the place in August of 2023, the previous owners didn’t move out until October, and they were only able to take with them about 1/100th of their massive collection.
It’s been one step at a time for us, and our steps are spaced out pretty far.
We mostly spend Saturdays working out there.
If we’re lucky, we get to add a Friday and/or a Sunday. If we’re extra lucky, another weekday becomes randomly available.
That, in combination with everything moving at a different life pace out in Pahrump, we’re hoping to get the place fully "move-in ready” by this Summer. Maybe we will set a “one year from the date we closed” as our target! (Oh, how I hope its sooner!)
THE WEATHER
It’s different than Las Vegas, in a very welcome way. The temperature is about 10 degrees cooler. It rains more! There’s mud. Sometimes, there’s snow. After destroying a pair of sneakers and my favorite biker boots, I decided to get some waterproof/all-terrain footwear for our weekend visits. I’m way too excited about these.
Ken grew up in New Hampshire and lived in Chicago. He’s no stranger to snow.
I grew up in Lincoln County (Panaca, NV), rural life and snow are also not foreign to me.
But, when you’ve lived in cities like San Francisco, Chicago, and the 'burbs of Las Vegas across the last 20 years, it’s easy to forget what rural life is like.
We’re excited about it! The pace and environment, the freedom and space. The mud and dirt and wind. The ability to run our online business 30 steps from home because of homestead zoning.
These are all welcome elements of a future life for us.
QUESTION FOR YOU
I’ve been bundling shop and desert homestead updates into single posts.
Should I keep doing this? Or should these be separate posts?
Thank you so much for being here. For reading, supporting, commenting, and sharing.
All the things!
Without a community like you, it’d be a really isolated world.
♥️ Jaimee
Co-founder, Picture This Clothing
Helper, Sam Barsky’s T-shirt Store
Partner to Ken Finney in business and in life
Mom to two amazing daughters and a smattering of rescue pets
Maker of doodles over dried coffee spills on TikTok & Instagram