Declaration of Process.

I wrote an email a while back to those who ordered the I WANNA ROCK design, just to go into more detail about what they were in for. So many of them are new to these shores, and I wanted to make sure they knew that this is not a normal shirt store, that I’m not simply packing up a two color screen print that’s been sitting on a shelf into a mailer and labeling it. There’s something else going on here, and they deserve a little explanation into what that entails.

Only three weeks later and I’m two days away from starting shipping out what has been the largest batch of a batik design I’ve ever done (this one = the previous largest single batik design batch X 5) This is nothing less than miraculous in the history of this shirt site. I pushed myself a little harder, waxing half the shirts at a time, and made the dye baths to double their typical size in order to move quicker through their creation.

I have to say I am pleased. They are looking so good, too. I really really really hope everyone loves them.

“so I’ve ordered I WANNA ROCK from tinyrun, now what?”

Hello I WANNA ROCK orderers…!

You may be asking yourselves many questions, such as the subject of this email. Many of you are new to tinyrun, and didn’t suffer through the BACON days, part I or II, or missed out on the TOAST thread mishaps, or the LINCOLN dot madness. For those many of you that this is your first tinyrun order, you deserve a little further view into the process, especially for this batik shirt.

Right NOW I have all the blanks for this shirt, and today, while the sun is shining in a beautiful way, the trees are changing colors, and the wind is blowing hair romantically, I will be indoors with a pot of wax heated to 240ish degrees, applying that wax to these white shirts.

Then I will be doing a gray dye bath. That will be as far as many get today, as the baths are sorta small (4-6 shirts), and then they air dry. Then they need to be waxed again. Then dyed again. Air dried again. Washed. Then boiled. Then dry cleaned. Then fabric softened….

Batik is an involved process to say the least, of which I am no master. I will monitor the shirts at all stages of the process with my compulsive method of quality control, and will do the best I can, as fast as I can.

What all this means is that these shirts will probably not start shipping this coming week. Maybe the first small set that’s made it all the way through the process, but chances are the week following will be the one where these start to see flight in a major way.

This may not be what you are interested in. You may be thinking, this is BUNK, and I didn’t pay this kind of money to have to wait for my goods. If this is the case, please email me and I will refund your monies and wish you luck. If you haven’t seen your shirt for another three weeks and then you think, I’m TIRED of waiting and want out, let me know. If you receive your shirt and think, I waited this long for THIS? then let me know. I will refund your monies at any part of the process, all you have to do is let me know.

This is how tinyrun works. It’s far from perfect. But if you hold fast, at the end of this road you will have a shirt that has been through a loving and lengthy process to create something completely unique.

Much love and more soon,

Michael

What Calendar?.

The webcomics artists I admire have stocked their stores for the holidays. These people whom I deeply respect are ready. They’ve been planning. As far as I can tell, they’ve been planning for this moment since before the last holiday season. Many of them support themselves financially with these sales. They have for years. They have to plan.

So, perhaps all I lack is motivation built up over a period of time?

I remain unconvinced that this is an element that I lack. I remain unconvinced that this is the only possible element that I lack.

But now occurred to me that I planned poorly for the holiday item I thought I would have for the last holiday, Halloween. Of course, I think I came up with the idea for the shirt applique in September, when I bought these fabrics.

I am right now planning on having that prototype up by next September. Here’s hoping.

Photo Giveaway Winner.

The Deal: I was going to give away a I WANNA ROCK shirt to the person who sent me the bestest photo of themselves in a tinyrun shirt. This limited the amount of entries right out to the tried and true believers who’ve been around. Seemed fair at the time to throw a little extra at my longtimers.

Judging these was way harder than I thought it would be! Especially since photographing people in shirts is something I’ve struggled with since the first time I was seized with this madness. After much deliberation, little nuances pulled me back and forth, but I have to conclude that these are how the five entries fall into place.

3RD PLACE TIE

Dr. Cat / Corey

2ND PLACE TIE

@twinschick1

@JadeSnake

1ST PLACE WINNER

@xDiablis

So there we are! Someday I will get that whole gallery page together and these will find a nice home there, nestled for all time as proof that I do actually send shirts out to people, who occasionally wear them. Shortly I hope to announce the winner of the tweet half of the giveaway. And since entering one of the contests does not negate entries in the other, things are still open for those who didn’t win!

I’m digging this contest thing, perhaps I will try more later, hm. How does everybody else feel about it? What would make it better, easier, more fun?

Flood Show.

I’d have to dig liberally through my archived emails to find the fossilized beginnings, but at one point or another, Paul, of Paul and Storm, managed to dig up a jpg that I’d forgotten about. He was already high on the prospect that I was finally convinced to resurrect the much loved embroidered bacon design when he tweeted about this one. What he found actually wasn’t a tinyrun design, it was a batik of mine from what seems like another age. And he lurved it. Being a bit of a softie for people that likes my stuff, I said that I had no idea when, but eventually I would do that one as an official tinyrun.

Months passed, my daughter was born, time marched on. A Chicago show for Paul and Storm was announced, and it was thought that the long awaited design for them could be ready in time for it, and that an official hand off would be arranged. This was made all the more excellent by a annulled meeting opportunity to hand off the bacon shirts many months previous.

I was later than I intended in getting to the venue, arriving right before they opened. I would have to wait till the break to hand off my finished deliverables. So I kicked back and enjoyed Paul and Storm work the rather full room. The audience was like so much kitchen in a experienced chef’s hands, and they proceeded to bake us into a tasty multilayered cake, frosted with our blended geek sentience, sprinkled with irreverent glee and sweetened tunes. That doesn’t even make sense, but it’s what happened.

After they finished cooking, I met Paul by the merch table and was taken to the inner corridors of the most lucky. In the green room I then met Storm and Jonathan Coulton. Hands were shook. I proceeded to hand over the shirts to P&S, who changed right off to wear them during the TMBG Flood set. I caught sight of the song list for the set, and I had thought from tweets seen that they were doing only a few songs from Flood, but saw that their intent was to do them all. I think it was Storm who said, “we’re a little out of our comfort zone on instruments…”

They were all professionals, this is what they do, but they were doing something that they had precious little practice time for, material they didn’t write, and had not performed in front of a full venue as of yet. Wow. I soaked in that feeling. It wasn’t nervousness, but there was definite palpable energy. This was going to be awesome. I had a feeling that I might soak up too much, or throw something off, so I excused myself and let them do whatever “final huddle” they needed to do. Retreating back downstairs I found a new seat next to a kid who looked like he had brought his Chemistry textbook. He was doing chem homework inbetween sets of a concert? Awesome.

Then came the Flood. The whole damn thing. One song to the next, no banter, boom boom boom. I not going to say much more about it, other than that the videos you might have seen only contain about 15% of how amazing it was. I’m not going to be able to capture much more with just words. And I could see my shirts from there! Ok, barely, but still!

Then straight into the Coulton set. The chem student exclaimed “YES!” with every song introduction. I had thought at this point I had reached saturation for the evening. How could it get better? How many times can you conceivable go back up to the buffet? The set and encores ended, and the lights came up, and I got to see the crowd. Ah, dorks.

I headed backstage to congratulate the dudes, and try to express the gratitude I had about the awesomeness. And to tell them about the chem student. I hoped to try to give them as much information from ‘the floor’ as possible, to try to fill out what everyone not in the green room experienced.

They embarked down to the floor themselves afterward and met a few lingering fans. This part was a great treat for me as well, to see them interact this way, from the safe distance of having a backstage pass of my own. And it also occurred to me at this point to take more pictures.

Then the last fans left, and the stars were left to striking their business of the evening, and gathering their goods to move on. After trying to help a little bit I took my leave, and said over my shoulder as I went, “you gave a singular gift to everyone tonight.”

And the more I think about it, I was right. They gave a gift to their fans by playing the show for starters, and for doing Flood second. They gave me a gift by allowing me to come in and talk to them, feel the energy right before it happened, have them wear and pimp my work, and to see them interact with their fans. They gave a gift to themselves by stepping out of that comfort zone, giving themselves permission to do this, doing something that they weren’t entirely comfortable with, and charging the front line of battle waving their cutlass from horseback.

That doesn’t even make sense, but it’s what happened.

Shirt Giveaway Insanity.

So, I’ve decided to do some giveaway promotions regarding the coveted and pricey I WANNA ROCK shirt design. Please find the details herein! Both promotional winners will be announced on Friday 10/23, just before the end of the design run, so everyone who does not win will have a few moments to check their bank account and maybe check the under the couch cushions and make a purchase.

Giveaway #1

Email me a photograph of someone, yourself or someone you know, modeling any tinyrun shirt. I’d love to use these in a gallery on the site, so please know that submission includes consent of use, of either you or your photography subject. I solely will judge these photographs to determine the best use of composition, lighting, and overall sexiness? Ok, don’t get too sexy.

Giveaway #2

Tweet about the shirt! This is dirt simple. Tweet a clickable link to the tinyrun site, plus a ‘@tinyrun’ and there you go. The rest of the content is up to you, positive or negative or nonsense. But you know, positive is nicer? I’ll collect these on 10/23 and pick one at random.

Boom.

They’re in the Pipes, They’re Everywhere.

May I persuade you to peruse these photographs of things that are in the pipe, of which I assure you are only a fraction of things production-pipe encased? These few things I have made, am making, am piping if you will, I present for your pleasure.

This embroidery of Lincoln (I just can’t get away from him…) is actually complete. Notice the rather expensive frame. He will be auctioned off at this year’s MookieJam fundraiser. Facts: the outlining thread is actually glow thread (can’t stop using that either), the auction is this coming Monday the 5th of October, and I will be at the auction accepting bids by proxy for this item via twitter.

As we move further away from completion and up the damn pipe metaphor I started and just. can’t. let. go of, we find this interesting, quilted something. I can’t get into detail on it as of yet, but man…it’s going to be fairly awesome. I have a growing and festering sensation that tells me in uncertain pre-Atlantean language that my three readers will love it.

And further away from completion, this box of very tiny cut fabric squares. Seriously. These are all 1.5 inches square. I got this idea that I would make some pixel quilts, and unlike every 32 bit quilt I’ve seen with 2 inch fail squares, I was gonna go all 1 inch rock. FTW, and shit. You can see how well that is going.

And in other news, hey, there might be a shirt design posted tomorrow?

Studio, Studio, Store?.

I dreamt about this space this morning.

Now, granted, in my dream it was even bigger, but I’m willing to settle. Did you look at the picture? Look again. It’s awesome. SO much space, that I’m using occasional capitals. WAIT, there’s more.

You may notice the glare of glass in the photograph. This would be the large panes of glass that make up the front of this space, as this space is a store front. YES. This could double time as both a studio and I could have a STORE. ME. This is about the most riDICulous thing I can think of.

Let me share a few facts about this before I start salivating. Again.

First, to have a store you generally, but not as a rule, want to have things to sell on a fairly consistent, if not constant, basis.

Second, after contacting the management company for the building, I would need to sell roughly 100 or so shirts a month with a wide profit margin, and do so consistently for a two year lease. Three shirts a day. I have a difficult time thinking of how I would find time to make 100 shirts, much less find people gracious enough to purchase them. Not strengths of mine, as of yet.

We all have places to go, and I to, intend to go places. Somewhere. Maybe not this place, but somewhere. Stay tuned.