My mate Tannith (also known as my evil twin) came over tonight with an idea for a hoodie inspired by her boyfriend’s love of the US version of “The Office”. Watch the video and you’ll understand. Exactly my sense of humour. She bought a blank nike hoodie that just has the red “NIKE” swoosh on the chest and we matched the colour and then stitched on “Just Do It – that’s what she said!” – came out pretty well! Now isn’t she the best girlfriend ever?
What is it with women and spiders? Arachnophobia is defined as an uncontrollable fear of spiders, one of the most unnecessary phobias as far as I can tell. I’ve even met men who are afraid of spiders which, in my opinion should only develop in a severe case of Anuptaphobia – Fear of staying single. Forever. You Pussy.
(Check thephobialist.com for a full and oh so ridiculous list of irrational fears, are there actually people like this?)
Anyway, my poor mother was the test subject for my latest bad thought process which went something like:
I’m bored because I’m not in Liverpool watching the match.
Someone needs to suffer for this.
“Maaaaaa?!”
Yes, she hit me with it and refused to have it in the room while she slept.
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Yay a delicious commercial project – I was approached by CreativeCakes (seriously look at their website, you will drool!) to customise their chef outfits with their tasty little logo. I’m hungry now… and have been thinking about the Little Britain sketch I used to love…”I love a bit of choclit cake!” watch it!
While in London I came across the Ladybird series of greeting cards by Simon Spencer (available on his website) which made me laugh so hard that people in the shop were staring at me and I came close to wetting myself. The last one is definitely the best! (My kind of humour). I really like the juxtaposition of image and text to put a modern twist on something old and well established that reflects how much society has changed.
Here is photographic evidence of the physical abuse I suffered over the course of my New Year’s holiday in London. I was viciously attacked by my own alleged friend Conor Hickey (former Rose of Tralee). When police finally apprehended and questioned the young Kerry man it became apparent that the reason for the assault was a lack of commitment on my part to keeping my blog up to date, all Hickey (23)…[stone]… had to say was “That’s what you get for not updating your website.”
Got an e-mail tonight from random music blogger who informed my of a site called Wordle which is fitting nicely in with my new interest in typography. (Yeah, I’m digging fonts, words and layout right now). Anyway, Wordle is a fun toy that automatically generates “word clouds” from whatever text you enter, then you can tweak fonts, colour, layout etc. Give it a try.
The past month has been extremely busy as I started teaching along side Rosemary Cullen and Emma Brennan on the night course in NCAD. So far the experience has been really fantastic, it’s very interesting to see the variety of approaches taken by all the students as they explore their ideas. I’m really looking forward to seeing how everything develops over the coming weeks.
Last Wednesday, Thursday & Friday I took part in the Higher Options Fair at the RDS with the Crafts Council of Ireland. We were there to talk with and advise students who are considering Art, Craft and Design as a possible career path. I also had my PR-620 on site so I was able to do some practical work with students as I talked to them about what it’s like getting by in the working world with a creative qualification.
Students got to design their own small embroidery using the software on my laptop and then watch as the PR-620 Digital Embroidery Machine realised their designs in stitch in just a few short minutes. Many students took advantage of the service to make small personalised gifts for their significant others…aww.
Irony is reading a conversation on Facebook about how Twitter is a waste of time. There are people out there with endless social network pages and no real friends.
I was amused when my mate Bobby was ‘taking the michael’ out of my for basically squiggling in my notebook. I spent a good part of the day idling around the house with him and Seeareh (that’s Ciara to you) basking in the classical atmosphere. The Wicklow mountains were just outside (we had all the windows closed of course) while Seeareh attempted to beat the Mac at a game of chess, Bobby lounged in the armchair reading a photography book (if it’s possible to read a book full of photos and I was squiggling. At an MA level of course. These aren’t your everyday primary school take a line for a walk squiggles… these are two years of post-graduate education squiggles.
I wanted to upload some images this weekend of a small multihead piece I have been working on but alas my camera is out of juice and I’ve spent the weekend searching for my charger to no avail. I must go to the shops later to sort myself out. With a lack of visuals for this post I figured I’d exploit another sense and offer some audio instead. This weekend I’m listing to alot of Florence:
My obsession with ravens continues, this time incorporating my interest in Gaeilge and some mythology linked to County Fingal (I live there). The grey hoodie features two Ravens, one called “Smaoineamh” and one called “Cuimhne”, which translates from the Gaeilge as “Thought” and “Memory” respectively.
Raven Hoodie
This is an interpretation of the story of the Viking God Odin, who had two ravens on his shoulders which would fly around the world and come back to land on his shoulder and whisper in his ears everything they had seen. I stitched “Smoaineamh” on the front right shoulder as we think forward and “Cuimhne” on the back left shoulder as we remember backwards. The pocket also features a neat little detail of 7 black stitches.
The hoodie is available to buy. Availbe in size medium only, the hoodie is Continental Clothing Stock which is high quality jersey with a great fit, click here for sizing information.
Price €60.00 (Including P&P) Click the link below to purchase
The creative textile types working on multihead PR-600 machines tend to produce a stockpile of “samples” as they tangibly test out their ideas to identify potential problems while making decisions about stitch textures, directions and colours. For example, my little “Fatass Muffin” (pictured in an earlier post) was stitched out several times before finally being incarnated on a rectangular piece of white felt and hung on my wall to remind me that I need to focus more on getting my body fat down (Later given to my mate Karim).
My question now is, what do I do with all the samples?
So I considered giving this a shot. I am going randomly “drop” a few samples behind me in public places to be discovered by others. In essence leaving my samples in random places is an (poor) attempt to take a by-product of the design process and turn it into (a crap semblance) public art. I wonder if the act itself is the reverse of Duchamp’s “readymades” that took (useful) found objects and turn them into (arguably useless) art, or is this entire notion born out of my reluctance to utterly discard something I have created and instead of throwing it in the bin I release it into the public domain for someone else to make the decison for me. If they pick it up, will the chuck it or cherish it? Either way, I am still left with the “finished” piece and no longer have the “trial-runs” cluttering up my (small) studio.
Sample left with business card attached on the train to the Docklands
I was recently contacted by a group called Noisewho asked me to design a few images for their supporters to download and print on t-shirts for their politically charged rallies of righteousness!
It was a fun design project because there were specific criteria to be met… for once I had to avoid taking the piss out of religion. I also wanted to strike a balance with imagery and text and colour, keeping everything singing the same note. Obviously some of the designs I came up with were not suitable for the political arena, Noise are a very respectable group and let’s face it… I’m a bit dodgy at the best of times. The group posted the suitable images hereon their site for people to download. (Below are all the ideas I had)
