Now that we are finishing and the place is about to open its doors, I get a little dizzy when I think about all the time and effort that we have dedicated to this project. It was a year ago when my partner and I decided to change sides. We closed our cocktail bar in a terrible context for nightlife and we bet on a ‘daytime’ business, a shop of artisan and gourmet products… with a cocktail bar.

Despite the fact that the pandemic affected us a lot, let’s say that it was the finishing touch of a project that we already had in hand. Maybe we wouldn’t have closed the shop if it hadn’t been for the virus, but ‘thanks’ to it we are completely focused on our new company. And now we are closing the last details, among which is the reception of the material from our nuanced cord distributor. It will be a great detail for the handles of our bags.

And it is that from our previous experience we know how important attention to detail is if you want to be successful with a project of these characteristics. We know that we have a gap in the market, but to consolidate it, attention to detail is essential. That our customers take their products home in a designer bag is not trivial: in the end, a bag is the image that our customers are going to walk around the city and that is why it is so important that it has a good design.

And boy, did it cost us because we had to discard several designs before reaching the final one. Finally we had to go to a reliable nuanced cord distributor to find the key with this material that we wanted in a very specific color and feel. And it is that up to that point we take care of our new project with care.

We trust that the worst of the crisis is over and our gourmet store is a success. The truth is that we cannot avoid the nerves of the next opening, although we know that many of our old clients are looking forward to coming to see what we surprise them with this time.

A couple of friends are starting a business of wooden things, such as toys or boxes for wine bottles. Toys take time if you want to make them well and they are still learning the working methods and that is why it takes them too long to do things. But for example the wine boxes are quite simple to make but to get the handles they had to contact a manufacturer of elastic for handles – CELASTIC, which took them a while to find. When they made the first one and they put the handles on, they didn’t like how they looked and that is why they had to look to this manufacturer to supply them with the right material to make the boxes look as good as possible.

The workshop they have is in the basement of the house of her parents who had it unused, since her parents are already quite old and have a fairly large house that they have not had time to finish. Because the basement does not have a firm floor to walk on, the floor is full of bricks placed in the shape of a floor, but a firm concrete floor would have to be made so that they could place the tables and use the tools without danger. do harm. Because there are quite a few cutting machines that they can’t use since they don’t have a rigid place to put them. We have been devising a few things to improve the basement floor, but since the house is not ours, we are a bit shy about telling her father how she has to do to make the floor look good. The biggest problem is that you have to fill a lot of space and we do not have the necessary materials to fill so much height. The other day we were watching a video of a boy who was doing what they need, which is to first fill in large stones and gravel the thickest and then make a concrete slab so that the floor is as they need.

It was a very strange Christmas for the majority, many without being able to see their families, but trying to put our grain of sand in a critical situation at the health level. But, even if the initial feeling of Christmas was a little melancholy, most of us try to enjoy that holiday in the best possible way, even if it was doing different things than in previous years.

In our neighborhood, for example, firecrackers and ‘domestic’ fireworks, to call them that, became fashionable. We spent a good part of Christmas listening to firecrackers and watching fireworks out the window. We even participated in this sonorous Christmas with a few firecrackers.

It so happens that one of our neighbors is Chinese. You already know the love they have in that country for welcoming their year with firecrackers. He was the one who helped us get into this ‘little world’. He indicated us which was the best pyrotechnic wick maker from his experience. And the man has enough … So he made us some homemade firecrackers including the wicks we had bought. The firecrackers hook. It seems silly, but once you drop one, you want to drop another. And so on. Let them tell it to the Valencians.

What we had a little more respect for was the fireworks. Fireworks that are very famous are held at festivals in my city. I love this kind of party. I am not fond of fairs and riots, but I have been fascinated by fireworks since I was little. So when one day they surprised us by setting off some fireworks next to our house on Christmas Eve afternoon, I even got a little excited: and we all deserve a little hope in a time like the one we have to live.

So we remembered the maker of Pyrotechnic Wick and joined the party with our homemade firecrackers made with the advice of a Chinese expert. And, for a moment, we all feel like children celebrating a unique Christmas.

This year back to school will be something different for everyone. Children will have to get used to the new rules. Masks, little physical contact or saluting with the elbows are some of them. But there are also others that they will have to respect and that will not be so simple: not sharing any type of material.

No more lending a pen to a colleague because yours has been lost or exchanging a wallet by mistake. Now you have to be very aware of everything personal of each one and it can be difficult for a child who still cannot read and who does not identify his name well in his things. Children buy their equipment in the same stores and it is not uncommon for a class to have several identical cases, purses or even coats.

If until now only children’s clothes were personalized in the back to school, now everything has to be personalized and a very original way of doing it is using colored cords. You have to buy cords of at least three different shades and make a long braid with them. Hang one of these braids from your class supplies – from your purse, from your pencil case, or even glue these cords onto your paintings so they’re quickly identifiable.

With her clothes, you must do the same. Hang a braid of this material from each label of each garment. This, regardless of whether it is correctly marked with the name. Thus, the child will identify her material and her clothes with a single glance and there will be no possibility of making a mistake and taking that of any other classmate. By braiding three different shades, the chances of error are even lower and it will be a unique and very personal symbol of the child.

This will prevent you from wearing a partner’s jacket or coat. Or that it appears with changed materials. This will not only allow a greater control of the child’s things, it will also facilitate that there are no contagions between them, not only those due to the coronavirus, but also colds and flu, which tend to spread in the classes very quickly because the most little ones tend to have a lot of contact with each other and, until now, it was common for the material to be common to all of them.