Friday, March 30, 2007

"When are you going to tell your kinkfest adventures?"
That, dear readers will need to wait a bit longer. This week has been a blur of post event recovery, long days at the Abbey (Nerdy is on vacation this week so I'm, pulling double duty) , and preperations for a much looked forward to play date with a certain red head that fell into my ropes a year ago and I've been hungering for a second dance for nearly a year.

In the meantime, enjoy our second podcast, where Tambo and I talk about kids, kink and generic fruit loops.


Oh and one last thing, my sex horoscope (stolen from 2Rossi) reads:
LEO - The Lion in bed
Great talker. Sexy and passionate. Laid back. Knows how to have fun. Is really good at. Great kisser. Unpredictable. Outgoing. Down to earth. Addictive. Attractive. Loud. Loves being in long relationships. Talkative. Not one to mess with. Rare to find.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Calling all Ass Bandits!



You asked for it, so here it is. One of the infamous "Big Ass Hooks" with a smaller, less terrifying ball on the end. This ball is 1 inch diamiter (as opposed to the 2.5 inch monster on the other hooks. The smaller ball makes for eiser insertion and also allows for more freedom of movment , with less worry about internal poking and such.

As usuall, right now I am the ONLY place in the world where you can get these bad boys. The price, $150.00

UPDATE: WE NOW SELL THIS HOOK AND OTHERS LIKE IT OUR WEBSITE

Wednesday, March 28, 2007


After almost 4 years of failed attempts, dozens of recipies, countless requests and endless headaces... I think I did it. It still needs to dry a bit longer, but I think I did it.

Not coral, not dusty rose, not fuscia, but hello *fucking* kitty pink.

This is a shot was taken in my drying room. The rope still needs another day to dry and will lighten up about one more shade. So it *should* look about the same color as the bright pink ends you see in the shot (that are already dry)

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Back from Kinkfest
Got back late Monday afternoon and promptly fell the fuck down. Damn, what a weekend. We sold lots of rope, met tons of great people, played hard and had some cool adventures too.

Right now I am at the Abbey trying to get all the stock out of my poor car, it was loaded down so full that the only way Alex could ride with me was by tying him to the roof rack. Thankfully he likes that sort of thing. Normally we return from these shows much lighter than before, but for this event we a) brought a TON of stock and b) had new shirts and hoodies delivered to us at the event. Yes, I said hoodies. They are made of pure awesome, stay tuned for more on that.

This week will be a bit on the frantic side, Nerdy is on vacation, so if I owe you an e-mail, phone call or blowjob just be patient with me. This week we also have a new podcast in the works, one featuring my awesome wife Tambo.

So stay tuned for that as well.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Out the door for Kinkfest #4

Just about to dash out the door and head down to Portland for Kinkfest. I must confess that I’m a bit sad at this exact moment. See, Kinkfest was the very first leather con I ever vended at and Tambo has been with me at every one. Due to scheduling conflicts, Tambo will not be with me this weekend. While I always miss her when I travel alone, not having her with me this weekend will be extra tough. Sure, I have done larger shows solo and I will have help from both Matisse and Alex this weekend. See, in addition to being amazing road company and my partner of 20 years, she is also the source of many of my best ideas. We use this event as our test market, the drive home from Portland has historically been the, “so what did we learn?” conversation were we dissect everything we did. From booth design to product offerings to things the other vendors did that we liked, we dissect them all in order to improve our next show.

My constant sounding board, my paladin who keeps my moral compass centered and my best friend. Miss you.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

About that color of the month thing

So here is the deal, every month I really try to come up with something new and interesting to feature as our new color. Thing is, after the massive success of last month’s color I really wanted to do something that would just knock your socks clean off. I had this great idea that would use this new multi pass dye process that I’ve been working on for the past year, the plan was to do camouflage colored rope. I even had a wicked cool name for it, “Love is a Battlefield”

Truth of the matter is, I’m not sure if this color is really ready for prime time. See, I know it is a good color when I want to hoard all the rope for myself and replace my kit with it. I’m really not sure about this month’s offering. So I will offer it up to you for your opinion.

I’ll be off line while at Kinkfest this weekend, based on how you vote I will either release this color on Monday for sale or shelve this color. So what say you?


Tuesday, March 20, 2007

The first podcast is up!

I'm still flushing out some of the bugs and getting a feel for all the ins and outs of this new format. Enjoy!

Yes, I am still working out the iTunes syndication thing.
Yes, I also have a color of the month to post.

Monday, March 19, 2007


Please hold while we dash about getting ready for Kinkfest. Today is tripple booked and about 5 hours too short.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

The Podcast

My loft office is my refuge, my sanctuary. Once just a storage space, the small room that overlooks the production floor is a warm, comfortable space that is all mine. Sprawled out on the woolen carpet, Nerdy, Griffin and I embarked on our first ever pod cast recording. A note about the podcast, rather than attempt to be a “podcast about rope and rope bondage” (no, I’ll leave that to brother Gray. He does it far, far better than I ever could) we wanted to give our customers an insight into life and the inner workings of our home, The Abbey. A sort of behind the scenes sort of thing, coupled that with our inhuman love of all things breakfast related and you get the basis for a good show (I hope), “Breakfast at the Abbey” should be debuting later this week.

In an interesting, “You could not have scripted this if you tried” moment, mid recording our nice UPS man delivered our first shipment of a new exotic rope that we will be debuting at Kinkfest next week. All previous conversation stopped as we, on mic no less, eagerly cracked open the box and examined the new rope. Running it though hands, sniffing and doing test ties on our wrists the flow of the podcast went from silly stories about breakfast foods to the new rope.

I have no idea how well this translated to the recording, my audio tech will be delivering the completed recording later today, but for me it was a powerful reminder of why we work as hard as we do.

For us, even after all this time and success, all about the rope.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Random Abbey Photo Day

This is one of the walls in the office/stock room where we have posted all the hand written notes and cards that have been sent to us over the years. I keep the more, shall we say personal notes and photos, in my office.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

2 days to go and only 4 dye jobs left to complete and we will have made over 12,000 ft of rope in 7 days.

I have the best crew in the world.

Edit: So is it wrong of me to *really* want to do a "Spartan Warrior Training" scene and use "10,000 firsts in the air" from Disturbed as the soundtrack?

Monday, March 12, 2007

Random Scatter

OK, up to my eyeballs in pre-prep for this show in Portland, Kinkfest. While a smaller show, it is always one of my favorites. If I did not live in Seattle, Portland is in the top 5 places where I would choose to live. Due to the overwhelmingly coolness that is the Portland kink community, I always make a point to debut new products at this event.

So who is else going anyways?

Speaking of new stuff, exotic rope junkies I have something you are going to love. Stay tuned, as always blog readers will find out first.

In other new stuff news, you must have really liked that photo of the custom ass hook! My steel guy was flabbergasted when I told him that we had orders for 4 of them and a dozen requests for ones with a smaller ball. Expect a smaller, less intimidating version soon.

In fact he was so impressed by the response that he gave me free reign that if I had any toy ideas that I wanted to see made to have at it. Do I have some ideas? Oh man, I better find me some good test subjects too.

I just saw the proofs for the new 2007 shirts, they are beyond awesome. In fact they are actually made of pure awesome, woven right into the fibers I tell ya. In addition to shirts we have some other cool twistedmonk wear in the pipe as well.

Oh and I think we got the podcast issues worked out too. Expect some audio goodies from your friends at the Abbey next week.

Lastly, saw 300 this weekend. Actually I saw it twice. On Saturday with Tambo and again on Sunday with my leather kids, Nerdy & Alex. Part of the joys of poly is that you often see movies several times in the theater. Matisse and I have a date to see it this week too. My review? In a word, “Abtastic!” I give it four oiled bellybuttons.

Friday, March 09, 2007

A funny thing happened in the men’s room

Men have an odd social regimen when reliving themselves in a public restroom. I’m sure you have heard comedians tell the jokes before or read it elsewhere, but guys are pretty uptight when it comes to pissing around other guys. Yes, the stories you have heard are true. We NEVER talk to one another when using the stalls. Out of TP? Just suffer in silence pal and don’t even think about asking the guy next door, that is what you get for not checking first. Standing shoulder to shoulder at the urinals? You look forward; never make eye contact with the person next to you. Better yet, strategically position yourself such that you won’t have someone next to you.

Yes, men are strange. We know this and are ok with it.

Now a week or so back, after spending a sinfully good weekend together, Matisse and I took a trip to the local Russian spa to try and soak out some of the debauchery out of our system and generally enjoy the last few hours of our weekend alone. So there I am in the men’s locker room changing out of my street clothes. The place is pretty busy for a Sunday night so we are all jockeying about as move to get in or out of our respective lockers. As with restrooms, locker rooms adhere to an implied, yet universally held, “no talking, no eye contact and NO TOUCHING” policy amongst men. As I was changing these two guys, oh about my age maybe a bit younger, were in the final stages of getting dressed to leave. Thing was, one of them was blow drying and styling the other’s hair as he sort of hummed a tuneless song. Perhaps this was a new haircut, judging by the still harsh color of the highlights in the guys hair, or perhaps he just travels with his own personal hair stylist. Either way, there they were. As casual as could be, styling each other’s hair. I shrugged my shoulders and went on with my business. Perhaps it is a Russian thing, or maybe a gay thing or maybe a gay Russian thing. Who knows.

This would have been a passing thing, save for afterwards when we left the spa in search of food. Stopping in at one of our favorite Capitol Hill haunts, a all night diner that has what could best be called “a colorful clientele”. Stopping off in the men’s room after dinner I’m minding my own business at the urinal. Now I think I’m alone until I hear this croaking voice from behind me. “can you untie this for me?”
Turning my head I see no one.
“huh?” I ask to the empty room
“You, with the boots. Who sent you?”
I quickly realize that the voice is coming from inside the locked stall behind me.
“excuse me?” I say a bit louder and in a more cautious tone.
“WHO SENT YOU!” boomed the voice from behind the particle board wall.
I should mention that Capitol Hill still has a pretty serious drug and vagrant problem and the voice in the stall was probably pissed off at me for interrupting his makeshift shooting gallery.


I should also mention that I really had to pee and when men start the flow… stopping it is really not an option.
While I was not worried about an altercation with the unknown person in the booth, to quote the movie Brick. “You sure you want some of this? I’ve got all 5 of my senses and full nights sleep.” I was not too partial to an altercation mid stream, as it were.

Thankfully the room remained awkwardly quiet for what had to have been the longest piss of my life. I thought for sure that my kidneys had chosen that precise moment to implode.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

An interesting follow up to yesterday’s ass hook post.

I got a fair number of personal e-mails about the custom hook I posted yesterday. Now I am far too much the gentleman to talk about the more, um shall we say, accommodating responses I received. However I did get one that merits further discussion here.

“Monk,

I read about your hook dilemma and just have to ask. If you are the badass top that you claim to be. Why give them any choice at all?

D”

First and foremost there would be the whole matter of consent? Boundaries are there for a reason. Pushing them is one thing, safely exploring the edges of the taboo can lead to a re-evaluation of said boundaries. Dismissing them and ignoring them all together? That does not make you a “bad ass top”, rather that makes you an unsafe fucktard who, once word gets out, (It will, trust me) you won’t be able to get a blow up doll to bottom to you.

The other, simple. It is way more fun, and oh so much hotter when they ask me nicely to do bad, terrible things to them. Oh and when they say thank you after said evil things have been done?

Oh that is just nine shades of hot in my book.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Recently the nice perverts over at bondageblog.com marveled at a new steel ass hook they saw. Here is the link, so not work safe btw. Now whenever they write about ass hooks, I get an e-mail from someone looking for one. See, I guess I’m the only guy outside of porn who has written about owning one.

Wanna know the cool bit, I actually own one of these hooks.

The guy who makes most of the wicked steel toys you see on sites like hogtied and such is a friend of mine. He is always coming by the shop to show off new toys and such. My toy bag has many of his prototypes and a few one of a kind items. (I've also helped design a custom one for the infamous Nina Hartley as well.) It is only natural that I have one of these hooks with the rounded balls in that collection. Let me tell ya, the photo does not do it justice. The super smooth, shiny ball on this bad boy is just larger than a golf ball and the entire thing has a +5 intimidation factor.

When I gleefully showed my new toy to my wife, Tambo, she laughed and said, “This is why we are poly. Have fun with that, somewhere else.”
Undaunted, I showed it to my other partner, Matisse, who responded, “This is why you have a submissive… have fun with that, somewhere else.”
So I show it to my boy, Alex. His response was to burst into hysterical laughter, “Unless you intend to beat me to death with it first, I’d going to have to call red on that one Daddy. Have fun with that, somewhere else”

Seems a shame to let this devious delight collect dust… good thing I’m poly.

[update] Here is a shot of the hook for those of you who wanted to guage the scale. Resting on the ball is a U.S. Quarter, behind it is a new $100 bill. For those who asked. The "standard" hook sells for $95.00 and this custom hook goes for $150.00 -M
[/update]

UPDATE: WE NOW SELL THIS HOOK AND OTHERS LIKE IT OUR WEBSITE

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

As if I needed another reason to think my wife is amazing…

She would willingly go to see this movie with me. Yes, I have a fetish for strange, art house cinema and Tambo, being the good/ giving/ and game partner that she is, fully encourages this. We trade off as to who gets to pick the movie we go see each week. Last week she drug me, grudgingly, to see Ghost Rider. Much to my chagrin I really enjoyed it. We both laughed so hard at it (at all the wrong places mind you) that we could hardly stand up straight afterwards.
Besides, it had a flaming motorcycle that could ride up walls.

This week, my pick was Tears of the Black Tiger. A one sentence description would go something like this,” This movie is what happens when you grow up gay in Thailand watching US westerns from the 1950’s that were translated by committe all the while doing acid and sitting too close to a TV with a busted tint adjuster”

Normally after seeing art house films I feel slightly smug and better than the usual multi-plex going rabble, but after this I needed to take some asprin, lay down in the dark and wait for the contact high to wear off.

In other news, we have a tiny bit of the limited edition lifeline rope left over. Specifically there are (4) 10ft lengths and (1) 15ft piece left. If you want some, call the abbey today and talk to Nerdy. Of course you need to wait till AFTER 9am PST. Nerdy and I have a breakfast date today at our favorite dive, thank you. (Oh and for those who truly want TMI, I usually go for the huevos rancheros)

Monday, March 05, 2007

Random Stupid Monk Fact # 412
When driving, if I am expecting a call, I will wedge my phone (normally set to it’s highest ring tone volume AND Vibrate mode) between my crotch and the seat. I figure that no matter how loud I have the stereo turned up, I can’t miss that.

Random Stupid Monk Fact #413
When I do drink alcohol it is usually whiskey, a double served neat.

Random Stupid Monk Fact #414
I’m currently addicted to Vietnamese Pho noodle soup. This might have something to do with the fact that I’ve had a sore throat for going on a week straight.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

My Day Off

Readers of this blog will know that me and leasure time are not on the best of terms. In fact I usually have to refer to it in the more formal, “Mr. Leisure” when addressing it in social situations. Being the owner of a successful bondage company means that you are always working. On average I spend 6 days a week in my shop and when not there I’m usually on my laptop doing something work related. She is a harsh mistress, my Abigail, but I gladly devote all my time to her.

That said I have been trying to set aside one day of the week just for me. I try, I’m not always successful mind you, to take Fridays off from the shop and devote them to less industrious pursuits. Due to the recent madness that the rest of you called February (we called it the month of insane sales) I fell out of my Friday habit, however March started off on the right foot. Curious how the Monk spends his day off?

Wake up.. not sure what the time is. The room that Matisse and I share is a warm, dark cave like place where it is always bedtime. Stumble out, grab some caffeine, and check my laptop. Assured by Nerdy that the shop will function just fine with out me for one day, I close up my laptop and return to our bed, and the warm, naked woman in it.

Sometime around 1pm regain consciousness.

Kiss a still groggy lover goodbye and dash into the day. I made a promise to help a friend of Alex’s with a photo shoot. Simple enough, they wanted shots of the kid’s new haircut for the stylist’s portfolio and some other press. What was supposed to be a simple rope harness turned into an impromptu, all afternoon bondage photo shoot…in a swank Cap Hill salon no less.

Drop the only slightly rope stoned Alex off at his place so he can get ready for his date to violate a delightfully, sweet girl and head downtown.

Meeting Tambo for dinner at one of our favorite spots and then home for an early to bed (but not to sleep, dear reader) evening.

This day off thing might just catch on. Of course Saturday will find me back at the Abbey working on the new color of the month, ratcheting up for Kinkfest and re-visiting the age-old question getting a certain color just right.

Friday, March 02, 2007

Some damned creative, and vicious, Spam

I get lots and lots of unwanted email. Spam is an unwelcome fact of life for those of us who use e-mail. Most of the garbage that comes my way I don’t see thanks to a pretty decent hosting company and an aggressive filtering system on my mail client. However some do get through. This one I just had to share. Rather than take the usual tactic of misspelling the names of drugs or imbedding inline images of the false stocks they want to pass off, this one played on some of our oldest human fears. Read it for yourself.

Hi, I hate to be the one to mention this, but people continue to
talk about your weight issue and it just disgusts me. Whether you
know it by now, people are always chattering about each other at
work but you come up more than enough. I wasn't the happiest or
best-fit up until a year ago or so but that did change. Thanks to
my dam brother-in-law(of all people). Anyhow, it was for the best.

What I am saying is that you need to do something different and
maybe you can make the same difference I did. Try this stuff I used.
I took it on the idea it's just more junk but it worked great. I
see more positive reviews on it nowadays and makes me feel even
better. So, I am encouraging a change, not only in the chatter
around here but in you personally.
-Anonymous for now
Using an anonymous email website to send this btw;)
When it helps/works just send a memo out with the name "Angel" in it.
Then you can take me out to lunch to thank you. Talk to you sooner
than later I hope;)

Website---.com


Evil, no? If I were still working in a cubicle farm in corporate America I might have taken a second or two to question the validity of the e-mail. I for one have actually contemplated sending a co-worker an anonymous e-mail to ask them to start bathing more regularly. This is not so far out of the realm of possibility and it plays so well on our unspoken fears… are they talking about me?