Despite the headline, I am not actually looking for more work. But something happened yesterday that meant I had to tell you all about my current freelance project:
I got sword in the mail!
Don’t worry, I asked for a blunt one. We all know I can’t be trusted with a sharp one…
Now, to understand why people are sending me weaponry in the mail, I need to tell you a little story about something that happened last summer.
As I wrote about recently, I’m a big fan of renaissance fairs. Last year, as I do every year, I went to the biggest one in Denmark, Horsens Medieval Festival, with a few friends. Obviously, considering the kind of people I hang out with, we all got ridiculously excited about a stall where they sold all kinds of swords and daggers. I’m not sure how long we spent there, but I think there was drool on half the swords by the time we forced ourselves to move on.
Especially a beautiful rapier caught the attention of myself and one of my friend. I was seriously considering buying it. But at the same time my inner Responsible Adult was trying to convince me not to spent so much money on something I did not need.
(The rest of me was very much convinced that I did need it.)
I decided to give myself some more thinking time and asked the stall owner if he had a store where he sold his swords outside of markets. While he did, unfortunately it was on the other side of the country. So instead I asked him if he had a website.
And that’s where the poor guy made a mistake.
Slightly embarrassed, he confirmed that he had a website, but that it wasn’t a very good one.
I didn’t even think before blurting out, “Give me a sword and I’ll make you a better one.”
Less than 2 months before this, I had made myself promise not to take on any more freelance projects for a while, but I was rather mesmerized by all the pretty blades. I hadn’t actually expected him to agree.
We discussed it a bit back and forth, and he told me to contact him after the fair.
But there’s still more to this story.
Obviously, I mentioned this episode jokingly on Facebook, but I honestly thought this guy was just humoring the crazy chick rambling about websites, and not really serious about the project. So in the end I decided not to contact him.
Fast forward about a month.
I get a PM on Facebook from an acquaintance I don’t even know all that well. She told me she had been contacted by Den Sorte Ridder (the company with the swords) and asked about the website project.
Obviously I was confused.
Turns out the guy from DSR had confused me with another brunette he had talked to during the fair and this woman had given him a business card. By some crazy coincidence, this woman was friends with me on Facebook, because we had met at a cosplay convention years ago, and she remembered seeing my post from a while ago about offering strangers to make websites for swords.
It’s a small world.
After the confusion was cleared up, I gave her my email address so she could pass it on to DSR.
I heard nothing for a few months, so I once again dismissed the project. But lo and behold, in the end I was contacted by the guy I had talked to at the fair. We started talking details and I offered to make him a website for a sword and a webshop if he threw in another one on top. Told him it would be nice to have a sword for each hand.
He was the one who asked if I didn’t want a third one to hang in my belt. Clearly this man understands the value of bribery.
By now I have agreed to include far more features than I planned to.
The planning phase took waaaay longer than it should have (this entire story began in August of last year) because of various delays, but a few weeks ago I put my foot down and got the go-ahead to start work.
Which brings us back to the cause of this post.
I asked for a third of my payment (in this case, 1 sword) upfront and the rest once the website is done. And this is why I now have the gorgeous rapier I was gushing over nearly a year ago.
The End.
