Maybe that was all I needed.

We see below something that appeared on Qwantz/Dinosaur Comics this morning:

Merry Christmas to me.

It was expensive to line up six strips of bacon like that, and they won’t even be up for that long, Ryan isn’t posting a new strip today…but it was so worth it. Sometimes I have to just see it.

(add: it’s also the last bacon day. it’s kindof a celebration.)

Faster Slower Faster.

(We see here pictured some of the ‘everything is going to be fine’ orders in progress. The picture is current but they’ve already left this stage and and approaching being finished tonight. They will ship before the week ends come what may.)

Two months and a matter of days. That’s it. Happy two-month anniversary, Tiny Run …feels like it’s been months and months, not month and month.

I think one of the factors that colors my perception of it is that I’m trying to plan designs weeks and months in advance, and produce the previous closed designs at the same time.

It’s like time travel without the paradox. At least not yet. I’ll get working on that, too.

Many new ideas for the months to come, new approaches to the same cottony surface. In two months flat my ideas of what is acceptable and what isn’t have shifted dramatically. I really want things to be different, unknown, unforeseen. And I mean so different I want it to scare you. I want it to be crazy.

I’d say it’s coming along, and me with it…

(Remember all: email list subscribers get special one-chance offers, previews and occasional deals, so you should sign up. If you’re into that sortof thing.)

Hedging bacon.

I’m not sure when the idea to embroider a single strip of unexplained bacon on a shirt struck me. I can’t recall the exact moment when I decided to use glow in the dark thread for the fat portions.

I do remember deciding that things had evolved from when I started Tiny Run just a short time ago, and that I was apparently a gambling man. Every design that goes up is a bit of a gamble on my part. I’ve already paid the artist a non-return advance on royalties for the sale of their design, and no matter how many orders I’ve sold, I have to place an order for the design’s production. The more colors of ink in the design, the larger the minimum order. Placing bets like this every two weeks here at the beginning is more farm than I have to bet.

So even though I had a batik design of mine debut not so long ago, I’ve put another of my own designs up for a run. I had to hedge bets a little, as the design that follows this is a whallop. I love it dearly, can’t wait to wear mine, but it’s the biggest color combination that has been attempted here as of yet.

I thought I might give alternating artists’ designs time to breathe by placing a design of my own in between, whose earnings would go completely back into the machine that spawned them. I alternated to embroidery, and then at some unknown point, the bacon idea hit. It was too beautiful to pass up. I spent several nights working on the art, the digitizing, the thread color, performing test runs of the embroidery to get it to look this good.

If you step away from it a bit, the texture is perfect. It looks like a strip of bacon on your shirt.

BACON as you like it.

[update 2/13/2009] NOTE: Only a few days left on the SECOND SERVING of this fine bacon design. Get on it.

[update 1/19/2009] NOTE: The final bacon design is alot tighter and a serious level of quality, as embroidered by professionals. PHOTOS TO COME! Follow me on twitter for possible re-release opportunity!

“BACON as you like it”
(embroidered with glow in the dark fat)
Michael Cianfrani
design run of
04/12/08 through 4/25/08

“BACON as you like it” is a direct embroidery on the shirt, with glow in the dark fat. It’s not a patch, iron on, or an appliqué, but is embroidered right there, in its bacon glory. Special covering will protect the inside stitches, and also provide protection if your skin is sensitive. The photographs above represent different lighting conditions of the same embroidery, so that you might see the depth of brilliance. Photographs do it no justice, it truely is a thing of beauty. Final design will appear higher on the chest of the shirt than the photograph, see the color mockups.

Shirt color options were to imply level of bacon ‘doneness’.

Something I didn’t expect.

I don’t go to Target looking for something new, possibly daring, or even interesting. I usually just get cat litter.

But at my last visit I found this interesting pairing. A tshirt that came with a game. That’s different.

And it seems the game has relevance to the shirt, or perhaps the shirt is relevant to the game? That’s different, at least at the point of origin. There’s plenty a shirt that relates to a video game, check ebay if you think the world is lacking. But for them both to begin at the same place, and packaged together with the game attached to shirt, instead of the shirt bundled with a Platinum version of the game…interesting.

EXCITING.

I got the tiny run of Hilesh Patel’s ‘true star’ shirts via UPS today. Oh, yes. They ship tomorrow!

Looking at them makes me swell with a bit of pride (so many!) while at the same time makes me miss production a little. After hours of setup, work and cleanup, to be left with every surface you see covered with freshly printed shirts…it’s just a thing of beauty. But really, I’m excited about this since it’s the final step of the first design run that I started (what feels like ages ago) in February. Some people have been waiting a long, long time for their threads. I hope they love it as much as I do.

And while I’m excited to get mine on and pack everyone else’s, I can’t help thinking, “next! Next!”

I don’t want to get off the roller coaster and stand in line again, I just want to ride and ride and ride and ride.

Motivation and Secrets.

There has been some unrest expressed to me about designs being missed, and this was to be expected. Many have not even come across Tiny Run yet, and once our stockpile of past designs grows to what I expect to be a swirling vortex of shirt goodness, this chagrin at the inability to order at will from that mass may be expected to increase. People are just not used to this way of doing things.

This alone would be reason for me to do just about anything, but here, other motivations pull further rank.

But I want to help. To assist people in their acclimation to Tiny Run’s modus, I have made available an email list. I understand that this posses some issue for people that already feel the marketer’s glare on every motion they make. But I tell you, I think you will find my emails both timely and brief, and this is the best way to ensure you miss nothing further, that nothing escapes from your glare.

SECRET: I’ll make today a super-secret day too. If you sign up for emails today, the confirmation page you arrive at after you follow the link in the email you receive will contain shopping cart buttons to purchase Dave Reed’s design for $1 off! Hot Dog!