I have a design for a micro solar cell, but that will wait until I get the stylus sorted out for my tablet.   The Gorge Elk regatta was this weekend.   I've been designing the regatta shirt since 1998 but this year, the workload in the shop was just too crazy to allow my brain to get creative.  Aside from the creativity, it also takes about a day to create the computer files for a shirt design, and then you're looking at around $1000 in blank t-shirts plus silkscreening costs.  It's a bit of a gamble and last year, the sales were terrible for the shirts.   Not that I think last year's shirt was the best design, but it wasn't the worst either.     So, this year I decided that I needed to step back and think about whether cotton t's are the best regatta memento.   I think they still work for Junior regattas, but most senior rowers already have drawers packed with rowing t's.   Regardless of how cool a design is, do they really need another t-shirt?   I'll be looking at the logistics of doing a technical shirt for future regattas.  

Anyway, here are my favourite designs that I've done for Gorge/Elk weekend.
1998 - with assistance from Adrian McFarlane and Mike Grace

2002



















2005

 2006

 2007

2008

Energy Crisiseseses

Every time I drive my car, I think, "I can't believe a liquid fuel has the energy to move this entire vehicle, all the stuff I have in the back (clean runners, reams of paper, a box of zippers I really need to give away - does anyone want $1500 in zippers?, pokemon cards, lego fragments, child boosters, Lee Valley catalogues and Applied Arts magazine, two coffee cups, pens, Tim Hortons recycling, and my spare bad-hair-day headsweats cap) and shove it up the Malahat Highway at .... um.. exactly 80km/hr, the posted limit.    How can there be that much kinetic energy in a little spritz of fuel ignited by a spark plug?   

Then I think about the noise of the wind  outside the car, the buzz of tires on road, how much my car shakes when a transport trucks whips by the other way and I think that despite the incredible output of energy from petroleum, we must be wasting incredible amounts of it!     I'm setting aside concerns about pollution and just thinking - what would it be like to suck every possible ounce of kinetic and potential energy out of a tank of gas?   

I already have some ideas.  Will post soon.   Got to get back to UBC unisuits right now.

Today's idea.

I was thinking today that I wish I could blog all my ideas for clothing designs and other products but to be honest, I have a certain level of paranoia about that.   Since I can't compete with larger companies when it comes to overall volume, my advantage really lies in quality control and originality (when possible).   So I was thinking maybe I would just post some of the other ideas that occur to me while I'm working away in my workshop.

As I looked at an order with a requested delivery date of yesterday, I was thinking about the Large Hadron Collider and FTL (faster than light) particles and then about all interesting ideas about time travel that came up a couple times every season in just about every Star Trek series (even though Voyager ended with a total time paradox, it was a good enough storyline not to really matter) and then I was thinking about how to restructure my website to accomodate pre-order deliveries.   So, if you receive a package from Row West marked with a Chronoton radiation warning label and accompanied by a shipping charge that exceeds the actual value of your order, please immediately go to rowwest.com and place an order identical to what you received in the box and choose "yesterday" for delivery deadline.   Should you make an error in your order, you may cause a tear in reality and your credit card will charged accordingly. 

First week of October

Busy day.   Got the kids off to school,  finished printing 42 shirts, posted product lineups for 2 new teams, and made, photographed and posted 2 variants of a new Dye Sublimation design that I've come up with.   Check out the Technical Shirts section of the site to see them.   Watching Terra Nova and working on more team order shirts tonight.   

Spoke to someone from Lolly Performance (soon to be Aptoella Rugby Apparel) yesterday.   Here's a cool company - gear for Women's Rugby designed and made by National Team rugby athletes.   Looking forward to talking shop with the owner/designer, Barbara.