Attention, construction services workers of Colorado: I want to give you money. All you have to do is call me back. My old decrepit studio is down, and I’m ready to get to building the new one. So over the past week I’ve called a surveyor (to help me find my property lines), two or three excavators (to help me dig my foundation trench), some concrete folk (to pour my foundation footer) and the only guy in the state who has my foundation forms in stock. I’ve gotten exactly one return call. After that, zip – my phone has not rung.

Maybe this happens everywhere, but in Boulder it seems like it’s a seller’s market – that there are so many ginormous construction projects going on that no one can be bothered by a tiny, low-budget building like mine. But instead of sitting on my work gloves all day, I took this past weekend to get some learnin’ done. The local U offers a series of building courses; this weekend, conveniently, was a three-day workshop in straw-bale building – half in-class lectures and discussion; half hands-on bale-stacking and plaster-scraping. I’ll give you the nitty-gritty details next week. For now, some scenes from the weekend…