This months give away is a Funky Fish valued at $35.00!

Just fill out the form at the top of the page to be in the draw.

Now our eager team of customer pleasers here at Windwerks have to field some thorny questions from the public at times. We take all enquiries seriously…up to a point. There was a guy named Bruce who used to phone us every Monday at 4 pm and ask incredibly detailed, intimate even, questions about our windsocks. It started out quite innocuous the first few times…”How long is your 1.5 mt spinning windsock?” Okay, maybe the guy couldn’t read. The customer is always right and all that, so we dutifully answered, “Well..1.5mts.” And that seemed enough to satisfy him. The questions grew in intensity each week until we were actually starting to get stumped and more than a little annoyed by them. Like who really knew how wide the bottom fin was on our large fish sock? Exasperated and a little miffed, I think I answered , “About as long as my middle finger.” The questions just got stumpier and stumpier until one day we struck on the brilliant idea to give Bruce the telephone number of a shop in his area who sold our products and sent him on his merry way to torment the life out of someone else. Worked for us!

So I guess I am trying to say that we are mostly up to fielding difficult questions about our products and the, “How do I get rid of mold on my windsock”, question just keeps coming around like a bad smell. So here is the definitive answer for all those wonderful customers who live in the humid zones of this wide, brown and sometimes damp land and love their windsocks like the family pet. Soak your moldy windsock overnight in a strong solution of one of the many powdered nappy sanitizers on the market. If you choose an oxygen based product it will work as well as the bleach based products and is better for the environment.

The best option is not to wait until it looks like it has leprosy before you toss it in the soaking bucket–by then the mold has penetrated the fabric fibres and it a lot harder to shift. Just keep an eye on it periodically and give it a little spruce up with the soaker when needed and you will get a lot more life and enjoyment out of your most colourful addition to the family.

Oh and if any of you have extra time on your hands and are good at tricky questions just pop me your phone number and next time Bruce rings I’ll tell him, in no uncertain terms, where to go to get the answer.

Cheers,

Kim

December 2010

So how did somebody like me end up in the wind business – making kites and windsocks for the past 18 years? Well, way back when, my husband Pete and I had three young boys whose main goal in life appeared to be simply to run around in wide open spaces. Kite flying came naturally with the territory of all those boys so we gained an interest first and not long after our business, Windwerks, was born. Test flying our many kite prototypes and growing collection of “flying things” became a family pastime and I had to go along for the windy ride or lose out on being part of their magical world of flight.
And it was magical. There is something transforming about holding a kite string in your hand and mastering the art of keeping the dancing, spiraling, ever earthbound sprite at the end of the line aloft. In that moment you are a joyful five year old again and few things on this planet can take you to that place as quickly as a kite.

For several years we made some pretty fun kites but when good quality cheap kites began flowing out of China we cast around for a closely linked alternative and came up with windsocks, a whole new world of colour and movement with the added bonus of not having to stand around in a howling gale pretending it was fun. We have watched many Aussie kite makers fall by the wayside in the ensuing years, so we know we made a timely choice.
To this day we keep one beautiful little kite in our repertoire just to keep our hand in but we produce thousands of windsocks every year – from garden varieties to commercial airport socks – and are the leading windsock manufacturer in Australia.

Sometimes as I spot a windsock spinning in the breeze outside my window it is satisfying to realize we have designed our colourful business to suit our lifestyle and it works well. I love the fact that we make beautiful products that can be enjoyed from the comfort of a cozy house without a windswept beach in sight. Our business might be all about blowin’ in the wind but you don’t have to get a single hair ruffled on your head to appreciate a fabulous windsock when you see one.
Cheers,
Kim

November 2010