It's so nice to be in the workshop in the spring, and we're really excited to open our doors for our Spring Studio Sale! We'll have lots of pans available and Patrick will demo throughout the day - if you're in the Seattle area, we hope you can stop by!
See you then,
Patrick & Caryn
We've been quietly getting things in order after a crazy end to last year. The power hammer is in much better shape now, and Patrick's been working on a bunch of new tooling. So production's off the ground and should be humming soon!
We'll have our first online 'Shop' posting of the year Wednesday, February 10th at 10am PST. Since our recent posts have sold out in minutes, we're posting a very large inventory with production and shipping times taking up to six months - it's a big one!
We'll also be working on inventory to sell locally at our studio Sunday, May 1st - so if you're local to Seattle, please Save the Date and stay tuned! We'll announce the details when we get closer to the date.
Thank you all for your support this last year, and all the years before that! We are so incredibly grateful, and we're excited to be getting back to it!
All our best,
Patrick & Caryn
While we're busy filling past orders, we're also planning a couple of upcoming events to celebrate the season...
You can find us at the Book Larder in Fremont next Saturday, November 28th, 11am - 2pm along side a small group of local businesses and authors for Small Business Saturday.
We'll also open up our studio the following Saturday, December 5th (changed to December 19th). Hope you can join us for some light refreshments and demos from 11:00am to 6:00pm.
Hope you're all enjoying the season and staying warm!
Cheers,
Patrick & Caryn
Some of you know us, and some of you are new to our business, so a little history or recap seemed in order...
It's been almost three years since the pan idea was born. It happened when Patrick came home with a pot rack for our apartment, and while hanging up the pans he came across an old crepe pan of mine. "This is just carbon steel...I can make this." became, what is now, our little hand-forged pan business.
Over the months the idea took on a life of it's own. We made the logo, the website, print materials... We hit the ground running in March of 2013 at the Ballard Farmer's Market. We had no idea what to expect, and the response was wonderful! We developed the product and the business little by little as only a couple of art majors could, with a lot of intention.
Forging and finishing the pans requires a lot of skilled craftsmanship, and it's an extremely labor intensive process. We don't make them one by one, and we can't make them by the thousands - we make very small batches of about 25 pans per week, while also managing the day-to-day operations of a small business.
Cook's Illustrated listed us as manufacturers, but it's probably easier to think of us as makers - a bit of a buzzword lately, and we don't really mind it. It's hard to describe what we do sometimes - even to ourselves. We're figuring it out as we go, but behind it all is a desire and commitment to make beautiful things that are more than the sum of their parts.
We've experienced a huge increase in demand since the article came out, and we're doing what we can within some tight limitations. Thank you all for bearing with us - it's been an amazing year, and it's been really wonderful to read everyone's emails and comments - they mean so much!
Our last online store posting for 2015 is Wednesday, October 7th - we'll post again in February 2016. We'll also have some pans available at our annual Holiday Open Studio in December - so if you're local, stay tuned!
Thank you!
Patrick & Caryn
Everything happened so fast yesterday - we sold out in record time...again!! All I can say is thank you, thank you, thank you!
If you haven't already heard, a review of our 13" Fry pan in Cook's Illustrated magazine has introduced us to about a million people who love to cook!
The bad news is, we're all sold out all the time. The good news is, it looks like we will be making pans for a very, very long time - thank you!
This last posting was huge! So we're working nonstop to get the pans made and orders out, as well as making a ton of parts for the next store update so that we can make it another big posting.
If you'd like to receive a store reminder, you can sign up here and we'll email you a heads up the day before we post.
And if you were on the store page yesterday, you saw how quickly everything sold out - most of the inventory was gone by 10:05am. It's still hard to believe! This hectic pace could continue through the holidays, so if you'd like to check back in the Spring, things should be much less frenzied by then.
For now, we will continue to make as many pans as we possibly can and post new updates to the online store every 2-3 weeks. We're also starting to get some help with production as well as the communication end of things, so we hope things will get a little easier.
Thank you all so much!
Patrick & Caryn
You might already know there's a review of our 13" Fry pan in the Sept/Oct issue of Cook's Illustrated...hooray! And they liked it...hooray! We're really blown away by the response - thank you!
And on to the 'uh oh'... We're a couple of artists/craftsmen making small batch pans, as well as handling all the day to day operations of a studio and small business. We're currently experiencing an extremely high volume of orders, phone calls and emails, which is why we're unable to process orders over the phone - the online store helps us streamline the ordering process immensely!
A few notes about the online store:
We had over 350 people on the website placing orders when the weekly post went live, and we sold out of a large batch of pans very quickly - it was unbelievable! So we will be introducing a backorder option of 100 - 13" fry pans with a processing time of 12 weeks next Wednesday on top of our weekly post.
Also, a note about the shopping cart and why an item in your cart might not be there when you check out: our website is a Squarespace template and the shopping cart is how they set it up - below is an excerpt from the Squarespace Commerce FAQ page regarding the issue:
When will a product be removed from inventory?
A product's stock level will reduce when a customer checks out. This means that if you have one product left in stock but two customers added it to their carts, the product will be sold to whoever completes checkout first.
So just know that you'll want to check out quickly!
We're working through a backlog of phone calls and emails, but we're also making pans and processing a ton of orders - so it may take us some time to get back to you, but we will, and thank you so much for bearing with us!
Sincerely,
Patrick & Caryn
Looking forward to another Renegade Craft Fair! Hope you can stop by if you're in the neighborhood! Click here for all the details.
It's a road trip plus a bit of a vacation for us, so we'll be out of town the last 3 weeks of July - see you back in Ballard Sunday, August 2nd.
If you'd like to get in an order before we go, the last day to place an online order is Wednesday, July 8th.
Thank you all so much - we're at the halfway point of an amazing year and we're so very grateful for all of your support. Hope you're enjoying a wonderful summer!
Cheers,
Patrick & Caryn
My nephew had a school assignment - write about something you're passionate about...couldn't have been more proud that he chose blacksmithing! For the project, he made an iron & brass pie server, incorporating some simple forging techniques: hammering, twisting, lay-out, and riveting - go team!
Wanted to share his project and invite you by the studio - we'll have Open Studio Hours, Sundays 1-4pm starting this weekend - hope to see you!
We'll be at the Ballard Farmer's Market for Mother's Day this Sunday, May 10th! If you haven't been to the market lately, it's definitely worth a trip - buckets of beautiful flowers, spring produce, music and much more! We're finishing up some salt bowl sets and steel blackboards this week to bring along with us, and we'll post some to the online store as well.
This will be our last weekend at the market for a while, but starting in June, we're switching our Open Studio hours to Sundays, 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Hope to see you there or here - or both!
Cheers,
Blu Skillet
Hello,
We've got pans, and we'll be at the Ballard Farmer's Market this Sunday! We're also getting pans ready for the next two online store updates! The first is this Tuesday, March 10th at 10:00am PST. The 2nd will be Wednesday, March 25th at 10:00am PST.
We're starting to make headway on production, and we've set aside some inventory so we can get back into the market - looking forward to enjoying some spring weather Sunday and picking up some goodies too - hope to see you there!
And while we've been making pans for short term, we've also been working on even more handles and pan parts for future pans - so production is rolling, and we'll be posting batches of pans to the online store every couple of weeks!
Thanks so much, and happy spring!
Blu Skillet
The salt bowl sets were the last of the IOUs shipped out today - hammered away on them while we made the pans, and they're lovely! I never get tired of seeing them go through the heat treatment which gives them their rich color. When I'm done hammering and peening, they're polished until they look like a brand new penny. We gently heat them until they achieve this magenta color before applying the linseed/beeswax mix - then they drop back down to a really rich, deep copper color. I love seeing it happen - the picture doesn't do it justice, but you can see the transformation.
Point is, that's the last of it and we're finally ready to post an online store update!
Our next store update will be:
Sunday, February 22nd - 10:00am Pacific Standard Time
It will take up to two weeks to ship out the packages. We're increasing shipping times in general, because as we're packing up the pans, we'll be making more pans for the next store posting, which we will try to do every couple of weeks.
We're also setting aside a percentage of pans to sell locally. Inventory is spotty, so if there's a particular size/shape you're looking for, please contact us and we'll let you know if we have it in stock or when we'll have it available.
Thank you all for your patience, kindness and interest, we're incredibly grateful for it!
Cheers,
Patrick & Caryn
Sorry to be so mysterious about our goings on at the shop of late, we've just been so busy making the holiday IOU pans promised in December - the good news is, we're almost done!
We were completely wiped out of parts over the holidays, so we had to start from scratch after the new year. All the handles had to get hammered out and the pans had to be sunk and shaped - this took quite a bit of time. But some of the pans are now finished and getting packed up for shipment this week, some are back from the sandblaster and waiting to be blued, and the rest are getting riveted and will be finished in another week.
So if you're waiting for a holiday IOU pan, hang in there with us just a bit longer - you'll be receiving an email shipping confirmation in the next week or two! Thank you so much for being patient with us, we have just over 100 orders to process, which is quite lot a lot of orders for us to get through!
And while I blue the last of the IOU pans, Patrick will be starting on new inventory, so it shouldn't be too long before there's a new store update!
Thanks all,
Patrick & Caryn
We'll be at the Ballard Farmer's Market Sunday, December 21st, from 10am to 3pm. We have as many pans as we could make, and we'll have the IOU gifts too - hope to see you there!
This will be our last day for 2014 - we're off to enjoy a couple of weeks of some much needed R&R. We'll get back to it January 5th, and get those IOU orders out just as quick as we can!
Thank you all so much for everything, it's been an amazing couple of months. We're so very grateful for the orders, the kind words, and all the well wishes!
Thanks again, and have a wonderful holiday!
Patrick & Caryn
Tomorrow! Saturday, December 13th - 11:00am to 6:00pm ~ Hope you can join us for the Ballard Metal Arts Holiday Open Studio!
We've got some guest artists, and the rest of the folks in the building will have their doors open too. Patrick will doing some blacksmithing demos, and you can enter to win a 9" Fry Pan! We'll have a limited number of pans and the IOUs available as well. It's the same night as the Ballard Artwalk, so a great day to be in Ballard!
Happy holidays,
Blu Skillet
Special for the holidays! An IOU gift package to give as a placeholder until we can make the pan(s). It's not the actual pan, but it's a lovely little thing to open up on Christmas morning and have as a keepsake until the pan arrives.
Each order comes with a magnet and a gift card, saying we're forging a (blank) - whatever your order is, and that it'll be ready as soon as possible.
Orders will be processed over the next 3 months, and will be shipped or available for pick up in 4 - 12 weeks. If you want to pick your order up at the studio, just type 'pickup' into the promo code and the shipping charges will be waived.
We're still busy making pans, but it's getting down to the wire - we'll continue to keep you posted!
Happy holidays,
Blu Skillet Ironware
A couple of back to back store updates this time! We'll post new inventory to the online store:
We're also working on a little IOU gift package in case we're not able to make enough pans for the holidays - we'll let you know more about that option just as soon as we can!
Thank you,
Blu Skillet
We're updating the online store this Saturday, November 29th at 9:00am PST!
I had promised a midweek store posting, but I completely forgot about Thanksgiving! So Saturday it is, and we'll try again next week for a weekday post!
Also, we're hoping to make enough pans this season, but if not, we'll make gift certificates available as we get closer to Christmas - we'll keep you posted!
Thank you so much, and have a wonderful thanksgiving!
We'll be updating the online store tomorrow morning - Saturday, November 22nd at 9am PST (west coast time)!
Thanks for hanging in there with us this week! Still getting the last of the orders out and prepping new inventory for tomorrow. We're also working on yet another batch of pans for the next update - we're shooting for midweek...we'll keep you posted!
You may have already seen the write-up about us in the Wall Street Journal that came out last Saturday! Our sales have exploded, and we're working hard to make more pans for the holidays! We were also the feature article in Bellevue Club's Reflections Magazine - so nice to see our pans on the cover! Thank you all so much!
If you haven't seen the online store lately, there are a LOT of Sold Out signs! We're very busy filling orders, answering emails and returning phone calls - but of course we're also very busy with the pan making, so thank you for being patient! Patrick's already dropped off a batch of pans to the sandblaster, and we're hoping to finish another batch by the end of the week!
We'll post an update to the online store at the end of the week, and then as much as we can over the next several weeks. So, if you'd like to be notified of shop updates and you're not already signed up - you can sign up for our mailing list here.
Thank you,
Patrick & Caryn
It's high time we let you in on some of the goings on at the shop!
SAVE THE DATE: Saturday, December 13th - 11:00am to 6:00pm ~ Hope you can join us for the Ballard Metal Arts Open Studio & Holiday Sale! Folks in our building will open their doors, and we'll have guest vendors too. Patrick will be doing blacksmithing demos throughout the day, so stop by, warm up by a hot forge and shop for handmade goods by local artists and makers - you can also enter to win a 9" Fry Pan! It's the same night as the Ballard Artwalk, so a great day to visit the neighborhood!
EXTENDED HOURS: Starting this weekend, our doors will be open Saturdays & *Sundays, 12:00pm to 3:00pm! *We may be at the Ballard Farmer's Market on Sundays, and if so, we'll post a banner note on the website.
SALT BOWLS: We just finished up the last of the back orders for salt bowls, and now we're back to production as usual. The next batch of three will be ready this weekend, and we'll make more available as we go.
Hope you're all enjoying a wonderful fall season, and hope to see you at the market or studio soon!
Cheers,
Blu Skillet
