"The Great Monk-kin?!"
Well I guess this is what I get for not showing up to the Abbey on Friday. Aside from a long overdue morning with my darling Matisse, yesterday was all about the Columbia City show. By all accounts, we rocked the house too, so thanks to everyone who came out. With any luck my film guy got some good shots and we can post something soon.

but I digress... I was telling you about those magnificently crazy fools who work for me. I left the minion alone yesterday and now most days I can count on them to not burn the Abbey down and generally kick a lot of rope based ass while I am out. Now maybe it was because it was a Friday afternoon, or maybe due to the delayed rope shipment we are waiting on (thanks for you patience folks, we are filling orders as fast as possible) whatever the reason, I guess they had some extra time on their hands becasue this morning when I walked in I found this note.

Dear Evil Boss,
We ran out of dry stock to finish and got to thinking, the "Monk Shrine" needed a holiday theme to it. Then we remembered that you had a spare body* and well... hope ya don't mind but you are now officially The Great Monk-kin
Love,
Da' Minion

Yes, that is a tiny pumpkin with glasses and a goatee. Remember the shrine they built to my bobble head doll when it first arrived this summer? Yeah, that one. They even got the crow's feet and my trademark, "just what the hell are you doing?" scowl down too. Now normally I would encourage such creative and original thinking, but my real concern here is what they will come up with for Valentine's Day.


*due to damage in shipping to the original bobble head's base, the company sent me a second body. Leaving me with an extra, albeit headless, version of.. well me

Every time I show someone my office for the first time I need to pause the conversation and wait for them to take it all in. See, with out fail they get sidetracked by all the odd and random things that I have collected over the course of my kink career. I think I should start sharing some of them with you via 12 seconds video. Some things will have historical value, others are just simply silly and random.

And so, with out further adieu. My favorite coffee cup, a gift from an old friend.


Radnom things in my office on 12seconds.tv

A snapshot of the Abbey on a rather drab and cold Wednesday morning. Our plants are just not happy about this as you can tell. Ever since I first moved into the industrial space we call home, I've always lusted to fill the space with green, growing things. (no, that thing growing in the bottom of my coffee cup does not count!). The juxtaposition of the barren, gritty warehouse with the vibrant explosion of green of plants really speaks to me. Life thriving in harsh environments, things not being what they seem, and all that.

It is my secret wish to grow a great stand of bamboo in drums someday.

My other (not so) secret wish is that when we grow out of this space and move into Abbey 2.0 I want an enclosed courtyard. I fell in love with the whole "secret garden" look when I was working as a missionary in Mexico City. Our next home will have one of these, and a private shower.

Of course in order to get there, I need to get back to filling these orders. We are so close to getting back on track and ahead of the game. Fresh stock is just days away and then we will be running at our usual breakneck speed once again.

Overheard while cutting rope:
Monk: *Yawn*
Coffee Bitch: So you had a bit too much of the rockstar weekend I take it?
Monk: Well on Friday night there were four slightly inebriated Asians in my living room playing rockband. Then on Saturday I assaulted a dear friend of mine with a dildo mounted sawzal.
CB: Did you just say a sawzal?
Monk: Yeah, as in reciprocating saw with a rather large fake cock mounted on the business end.
CB: Sounds dangerous.
Monk: Could be, but I was wearing eye protection. The big risk is cramping in the forearms from having to hold it for so long while it is jamming away. Those things can shake filling loose if you turn them up too high. However once I figured out how to brace it against my hip it was not too bad.
CB: Um, yeah right.... on that note I think I'll go make us more coffee!

While yes, this blog is mostly about me and the world I live in, you gotta give it up for my crew. The gang at the Abbey are just about the best bunch of employees a boss could hope for. I have a "we are all in this together" policy when it comes to my crew, so we are always working, together, to improve not only the product but also how we operate on a daily basis. On top of being very hard working and extremely creative in coming up with ways to make not only the product better, but also our daily life. They are also fantastically strange.




Maybe it was the coffee, or maybe it was our taste in music today,or maybe it is cuz they all just rock.


My crew, the Spork Avengers.

Random Friday Morning Notes While I Drink Coffee and Listen to the Trains Rumble By...

• The new color of the month is almost dry, watch for it on Monday. What is it? Here is a hint, think.... Absinthe.
• It is FINALLY warm enough to start taking passengers on Boris with out me worrying that they will get frostbite sitting in the sidecar.
  
• Speaking of warm enough, one of the Minion have convinced me to build a planter box under the massive windows that run the length of the Abbey. I've always loved having green, living things in the shop. Offsets the gray industrial feel of the place, now can we grow tomatoes here? Stay tuned to find out.
• While I was not raised catholic and have spent less than 10 minutes total in a catholic church, nun themed erotica is oddly appealing as of late. Hmm....
• Pondering doing an "ask Monk" video blog and would love to have folks submit video questions, ala the presidential debates. Still not sure the mechanics on how to pull that off, but start warming up your cameras.

OK, the Minion are starting to wander in, time to get the rope making machine re-started and fill these orders.... right after we have some coffee.

My dad used to have this saying, “I used to complain about having no shoes till I met the man with no feet”

It is a pretty common site around the Abbey, small clusters of caravans parked in the shelter of the elevated highway that surrounds our building. Refugees from “Bush’s America”, men too beaten down with world worn lines on their faces, and the occasional family. About every 6 months it usually starts with a single trailer, then over time a few more will arrive. Aside from the occasional stranger in the hallways we seem to get along pretty well, a “We are all trying to survive so you don’t mess with us and we won’t mess with you” sort of policy I guess. Inevitably the small cluster will grow into quite an assortment of vehicles, tents and in the most recent cycle an open air workshop where folks were recycling crap steel all makes for some pretty colorful neighbors. At that point Seattle’s finest will intercede and force them all to move along and find a new, temporary refuge to call home.

Thing is, some of these rigs barley made it here under their own power and moving, even a few blocks down the road to the next open spot under the highway, is a dicey option. Last night, some poor soul in a desperate attempt to get his home moved tried to get the engine started by injecting either into the carburetor (a time honored hillbilly trick that I have resorted to in more desperate days myself) and well here you can see the results.



While the capitalist in me says, "better him than me" and the Darwinian in me says, "No shit Sherlock, what did you think was gonna happen" the human in me can't help but say, "What right do I have to complain about my tough week?"

It is has got to be hard enough being an economic nomad, the sum contents of your worldly worth stuffed into a aging RV. Then to have said RV reduced to a burnt out shell in a matter of minutes…


Today I was going to write about how busy I am, about how even with out gearing up for a show I'm still buried, complaining about the delays in getting stock and why the hell folks can't seem to say thank you... fuck that. My life is pretty damned fantastic, faults and all.

It just may be a lunatic you are looking for

It takes a unique kind of crazy to want to work for me, a delicate mix of artisan and outlaw, if you will. My crew at the Abbey are each a bit crazy in their own fantastic way. Case in point, yesterday afternoon as we made our way through the massive pile of hemp that needed to become orders that day, Coffee Bitch (our resident barista) made with our afternoon caffeine fix.

Normally I, being the boss and all that, get the first cup poured. However this was not the case. No, first cup went to my shop manager, Lam the Wonder Dyke.
I jokingly shoot Lam one of my trademark scowls and she responds with a laugh, “Oh CB is just kissing my ass cuz she does not want to whip the rest of that natural today”
“But first cup? Damn, that’s like using her tongue.” I fire back
At this point my other crew member, the one we have all dubbed “The Prettiest Ghetto Pony” (or PGP for short), pipes up from where he was working quietly on sample kits and out of the blue delivers, in the most innocent of voices:

“You mean she was tongue punching you in the brown star?”

Lam and I stop dead in our tracks, turn to look at each other to just make sure we both just heard what we thought we heard.
Monk, “That was the most ..”
Lam “… fucked up…”
Monk “…wrong and yet so ..”
In unison, “BRILLIANT!”


PGP just smiles, shrugs his shoulders and goes back to work while the rest of us stare, jaws agape.

Yep, these would be my peoples.

Just taking a break in between dye jobs on a Saturday afternoon at the Abbey and thought I should snap a shot of my sidecar rig, Boris. Pictured here with his older, feistier, sibling my BMW, Natasha. She is way over due to get started and have the carbon blown out of her carbs so here they both are in the loading docks.

While working late at the Abbey last night on the next video blog I took a break and wandered out into the loading docks to find this. A random blown glass heart hung on one of the walls.

A sneak peek into the daily operations of The Abbey

In my ongoing attempt to share the world that is TwistedMonk.Com with you, I give you this. A sneak peek into the day to day grind that is making and selling bondage rope. First off, to operate at this level and maintain the highest possible quality, I and my core production team meet regularly to discuss production goals and review past performance.


Now whenever you assemble a team of highly motivated, dedicated workers you sometimes have disagreements as to what need to happen next. TwistedMonk is not immune to this problem. The thing to remember is that all parties are striving to make a better product, but have different ideas on just how best to do it. When that happens, rather than let disagreements simmer and create tension, it takes an executive mandate on the part of management to dictate the proper course of action.

Or just a really wicked suplex.

Warm!

So here we are on this, the last day of the year. The Abbey is silent as I write this, save the hiss of the over heater. The crews have today and tomorrow off so they can ring in the new year with a vengeance. Me? Only a few items on todays to do list and then I too will shift gears into celebration mode as well. I made a promise to some very good customers that they would have their rope in time for a party tonight and I am not about to let them down. Now I know I go on and on about how awesome my customers are, about how much I love hearing from them and seeing the joy on their faces when they use my rope. Most kink vendors would kill to get a look at my customer database, let alone have customers who so eagerly and freely thank them for the work they do. What can I say, I'm a damn lucky guy.

Then there are the rare breed of customers who go above and beyond, becoming more than just a good, faithful customer and go out of their way to show how much they care. I feel like I need to come up with some new classification for these folks, "good customer" seems so inadequate and "Super, awesome customer/ninja" seems a bit too silly, even for me. Their generosity goes way beyond just the value of the rope they buy. The title of "Patron" seems to gel with me when I think of them, folks who generously give of their time, homes and creativity.

With the bitter cold season in full swing, and lord how I have bitched about it here.. sorry, a few of these "patrons" have given me some wonderful gifts to help battle the cold. A reader, whom you may recall shared her sweet, beautiful body with me (and about 2 thousand lusty onlookers) at Folsom a few years back, sent one of these to the Abbey last week. Talk about a cool toy, pop this guy in the microwave and 3 minutes later you have warm hands (or warm whatever you place against it). Right now it is sitting against my lower back as I type this. I fear I may have to hide this from the rest of the crew, save they do not start a riot over it when they all return to work next Wednesday.

Now there is no worry about sharing the other item. Check these out, hand knit wool socks. How fucking cool is that? I have a serious weak spot for hand made things so these are just about the coolest thing in the world. Perhaps part of the charm was in the process. Katie, the sweetheart who made them for me first had to fit them to my feet. One chilly fall afternoon she came, knelt at my feet and gently removed my well worn lug boots and eased the half finished socks onto my feet. Touching and making tiny adjustments to her pattern as she stroked the soft wool against my sore feet was... well it was damn near orgasmic to be truthful. She is going to get extra points in Pervert's Heaven for this one, I assure you.



The finished product? Bliss, pure and simple.

Funny, here at the end of the year I am reminded of just how lucky I have been. So many of you have shared so much of yourselves with me, in stories, in gifts and in the biggest gift of all, you told others about us and spread the word about this quirky guy from Seattle and his little rope company. Sure I grumble about the cold or about having too much work to do, but at the end of the day?

I'm one damn lucky sob.

Overheard at the Abbey on a cold Saturday

“Say Monk, how late are we planning on working today?” Asked one of my newer minions as she made me my first (of many) cups of coffee for the day. (Yes, I have an employee who in addition to her regular tasks at the Abbey, she is also charged with being my personal barista)
”Um, probably 3 or so? I need to be downtown at Nordstrom’s by 4”
“Nordstrom’s!?” She responds with a confused look.
“Yeah, need to pick up some new threads for the New Years Eve party… you look surprised”
Blink, blink, “I, I just have only seen you dressed…” her eyes run the length of my dye stained BDU pants and lug sole boots.
“like an army/navy surplus store exploded on me?”
“Well yeah”
“I clean up well, I assure you.”

Ok, so the “Georgetown dockworker chic has a certain iconic appeal, but I really need to round out my wardrobe to include garments other than those seen in a Tom of Finland drawing.

Things to do today... bottom to the boys at the industrial supply store.

One of the machines I use at the Abbey is busted. A specialized pump that we use to move scalding hot dye water about. So today I need to pack up the busted unit and take it over to the huge industrial supply company and see how much it will cost me to get it fixed. Since there really is no other model for just what we do, the tools and machines are all custom, one of a kind creations that we have developed over the years. Things that evolved from us going, "this sucks what if we did it this way... " and viola a rudimentary machine was born. That machine would then undergo countless upgrades and modifications along the way until now I find myself having to write down instructions for others on how to use it.

While I can spin a socket wrench with the best, I never was one for classes like metal shop and tend to glaze over when folks start going on about gear ratios and the hydrostatic pressure differential. Thankfully there is a huge company nearby that supply all sorts of gears and motors and such to heavy industry. You know, the kinda place where all the other customers wear shirts with their names embroidered on them and have more things hanging off their belts than batman. I can walk in, plunk down the broken motor and smile while they figure out the tough stuff. When they ask me, "What is your application?" I smile and give them the most generic answer possible. Thankfully they seem just fine with "textiles" and can go from there.

Of course this place is awesome for finding parts for fucking machines as well. In fact today I'll also be there picking up a replacement drive belt for Matisse's infamous machine. Seems one of my favorite MILFs wants to take it for a ride at an upcoming party. Again, when they ask me about the nature of the application, I'll smile and say, "Its for a motorized art installation."

Of course this tactic doesn't always work. I've spotted some very cool pipe fittings in a photo and want to obtain some. Said photo was from fuckingmachines.com and I'm not about to plunk down a print out of said image and say, "So pay no mind to the chick getting impaled by the modified bread maker, what I'm really interested in are these pipes she is restrained to, whats that? No, sir I don't know why she has that in her ass, about these connectors..."

Nope, just not cool.

As for the fucking machine, well I guess I will just have to test said machine, you know to make sure it works properly...hmm Matisse and I do have a date tonight... hmm I wonder whatever shall I do about that.

God help me... The minion are listening to "The Muppet Family Christmas Featuring John Denver" and I have already used my "Change the music or you are fired" veto for the day...

Thank the gods for good whiskey.

I like to think of them as “Boxes of Potential Orgasms”



Of the many hats one wears when running their own company, “Director of New Product Development” is by far one of my favorite. I’m always tinkering with ideas, wondering just what sorts of devious delights you, my wonderful customers, will snatch up and make a permanent fixture in your toy bags. From the colors and kinds of rope we sell to what you might want to tie to, tie with or store your rope in. My brain is always taking notes. Sometimes we have different ideas as to just what makes a good toy, nosehook anyone? Sometimes, when I’m firing on all cylinders, I come through and bring you a winner… ball end ass hook anyone? Well it looks like this year’s Holiday Gift Box is soon to join the ranks of “winner”. At just over 2 weeks since launch, we have sold over 25% of our initial order with more new orders coming in every day. At just $99.99 this one looks to sell out soon.



Ya wanna know what makes my twisted little heart even happier? You guys figured out that you can put lots of other stuff in these boxes too. I designed the boxes so you could stash those how to books along with your rope, away from prying eyes if need be, and what happen? You guys sent me requests like, “Can you add Bondage for Sex and some panties to that box too?” Hells, yeah!.


In fact, for one special customer we went as far as to stuff over THREE HUNDRED feet of rope and still had room to sneak in a pair of panties. Luckily those boyshorts are pretty tiny, good thing we don’t sell boxer shorts or else this would have been a disaster.

The things I do for my customers

I get all sorts of special requests from my customers. Sometimes they are tiny things, can I tweak the end whipping just a bit, other times they are pretty involved and will cost the customer more than a few extra dollars, for instance dying and re-twisting some Bavarian 4 strand in a red/black mix. Excellent customer service is the key to long term success, so I do my best to accommodate these special requests whenever possible.

Recently I got a very unique request from a customer who wanted a pair of our new boyshorts. In addition to the usual order info she wrote at the bottom of the order form, “And um, if you could maybe step on the panties with those sexy boots, that'd be a nice treat.”

Ah, the things I do for my customers.

Well I supposed the first thing to do would be to make sure my boots were properly prepared for the task. Now the Abbey can get pretty dusty, but just to make sure I take a good long stroll around the place. Removing the clothing in question from its sealed packaging, eliciting an annoyed and bewildered look from the minion who just spent the last 3 hours neatly folding and sealing said garments into individual plastic bags, I lay out some fresh wrapping paper. Can’t let the panties pick up any un-intended dirt from the floors,. I proceed to place my trusty size 11, steel toed, waffle stomper clad foot down on the shorts. I figure placing it so the toe was just shy of where the mound of her crotch would be was a good location. If she were wearing them, I’d probably rest my foot there and press my toe into her and enjoy her response.



Neatly re-packaged and sealed up, they make their way to, what I hope will be, a very happy customer.

The Quest of the Green Apron

The world looks mighty different at 3 am, especially when you are standing on the roof of a warehouse half naked. Well I wasn’t, naked that is, but any of the drivers who happened to be traveling the sparsely populated overpass that surrounds the Abbey would have been treated to the sight of a fiery redhead cooling her well beaten breasts in the night air. Rubbing them gently in the cool night air and making little faces of happy dismay at the state of her once perfect milk white skin, now ablaze with red rope stripes and all manner of Technicolor bruises, she says to me.
“Quite a life you have made for yourself here, Monk”
“Eh, sure beats working at Starbucks and wearing one of those green aprons”, I laugh back.
“You always make that joke. Maybe you should get one of those aprons for yourself?”
“What, like add part time barista to my already long list of job titles? No thanks”
“No, just the apron. The one you use in your shop is disgusting!”

She had me there, my tried and true dye job apron, having taken the abuse of 4 years of slashing kettles, has long since lost any claim to even be considered “fabric”. In fact it lacks its ability to bend in half and now sits propped up in a corner like the loneliest piece of modern denim art ever conceived.

She has a great point, I always make the joke that if it were not for all you wonderful customers I’d probably be pulling double shots somewhere and that the world is a much better place for it. Come on, can you see me trying to up-sell you on a caramel macchiato? Now that, dear readers, is a scary mental image.

However, me in one of those killer green aprons (complete with logo) cooking up bondage rope is just too cool for words.

And so I put it to you, anyone out there happen to have one of these gems laying about that they wish to donate to a very good cause? I’ll go so far as to up the ante even. Every summer I make the joke about it being so hot that I’ll soon be working in nothing but an apron and boots. Every time I do, you always ask for photos.

Whoever scores me the apron gets the photo. Deal?


In other Abbey related requests. I’d kill for a set of old school lockers. Not a whole wall of them, just like 4 full size or 6 half size ones so that the crew can store their gear and such. I don’t want to spend a ton on this one so any used / salvage leads would be welcome.

Make me laugh, win a prize


As I have written before, my shop (aka the Abbey) is nested amongst the industrial wastelands of south Seattle. Surrounded by train tracks and steel mills we are always prone to random acts of public art. While most tagging and graffiti is saved for the train cars that lumber past the big windows of the shop, recently the bridge supports that border us have become targets for a decal artist. Life size images of wildlife stuck to the dingy grey pillars makes for a pretty surreal drive into work some days.

This one graces the supports just outside our doors.


I just begs for a caption, doesn’t it? So here goes. If you think you have a funny enough one, leave it in the comments and I’ll reward the one I like best with some TwistedMonk.Com schwag.

Deal?

Reader Porn!
Sophia, a wicked darling of a girl, just sent along a little something to help “inspire” me during my recovery period. In her own words: “I spent almost three hours whipping rope ends on Tuesday. I now have enough rope to suspend someone. (Borrowing rope will only do when you are at the very beginning stages of learning.)
I can't help but wonder if working for Monk would be anything like this?”



And folks wonder why her name is on the short list of folks I’m planning on doing something terrible to as soon as I get out of this damned sling?

Now while I do also happen to have a cage in my office that has housed many a naked girl, but never a naked girl whipping the ends of rope. Hmm, perhaps I should re-think my production strategy in this arena. Lord knows that we always seem to be behind in the whipping department. I wonder what OSHA would have to say about this? As long as she was wearing protective footwear I think we may be ok.

In all seriousness, if you like the shot you may want to check out more photography by Sophia’s Daddy, . He has a show coming up in Seattle soon.