Kouture: Kat

(July 31, 2014)

I’m still not getting a totally consistent production line.  I printed a large Krazy Kat image, and after exposing it, it washed off fine.  Except at the end, where I washed a “w” off I wasn’t supposed to. So I cut a new one from packing tape and stuck it on. The result was fine: … Continue reading Kouture: Kat

Couture: Washing

(July 26, 2014)

I’ve been washing off the screens in the bath tub.  The paints are water-based and rinse off pretty easily, but it’s annoying having to wash off any spatters. So I’ve been looking for a big washing tub with an outlet that I could place directly over the outlet in the bath tub.  And I’ve been … Continue reading Couture: Washing

Couture: Bumpy

(July 26, 2014)

I wanted to screen-print onto the sleeves of a shirt.  It turns out that’s not trivial: When the fabric is bumpy (the seam down there), the screen doesn’t make contact properly with the fabric, which makes the print crappy. So I need something soft-ish under the shirt to ensure proper contact with the screen.  Something … Continue reading Couture: Bumpy

Couture: Upholstery

(July 26, 2014)

After printing, you can either reclaim the “silk” (i.e. monofilament nylon) by washing and scrubbing a lot, or you can just pop the silk off and staple a new silk onto the frame. I prefer the latter, because then I can save the silk for imaginary future use.  Yeah, like I’m ever going to reprint … Continue reading Couture: Upholstery

Couture: Mass

(July 25, 2014)

Today’s experiment was to wash the emulsion off the screen with cold water, but with higher pressure.  (But putting my thumb over the hose.  Hi-tech.) It worked very well.  I got no wash-off of the exposed areas, which has been a problem before, when I used luke-warm water.  The only problem is that water was … Continue reading Couture: Mass

Useful Consumer Review

(July 24, 2014)

When doing screen printing, the only timing sensitive thing is really the emulsion exposure time.  I keep forgetting, so I bought a physical timer to remind me. I wanted something really simple, but something that didn’t make a tick… tick… noise, so I got this Jacob Jensen thing. And the user interface is quite nice.  … Continue reading Useful Consumer Review

Wheel at the End of the Horizon

(July 23, 2014)

Couture: Colourful

(July 23, 2014)

I’m still not doing registered multi-prints, because that’s like hard and stuff, but there are other ways to do colour. Like: OK, that’s cheating.  But how about this? Of course, the problem with just squishing lots of colours down on the screen and squeegeeing is that you can’t do two strokes, so the colours get … Continue reading Couture: Colourful

Couture: Fans

(July 22, 2014)

For each screen, I’m trying to vary things to see whether I can get the turnover time down.  I’m kinda impatient. This time, I put a fan into the “dark room” toilet where I’m drying the emulsion.  The screens have to be dried horizontally to avoid the emulsion running, so I lifted it up a … Continue reading Couture: Fans

Couture: White

(July 21, 2014)

I’ve only printed onto black shirts so far.  And now I’m out, so I’m doing a white shirt. I’m using a new can of emulsion, and that clears up all the problems I was having with peeling. The main difference between printing on lighter fabrics (as opposed to black fabrics) is that you have to … Continue reading Couture: White

Couture: Yolö

(July 20, 2014)

Even though the screen printing is going swimmingly, I thought it might be fun to try a  transfer thingie again.  But this time in A3 instead of A4. I googled a bit, and a store strangely called yolö seemed like a likely supplier.  So I got a 25-pack of transfers, and printed out an image. … Continue reading Couture: Yolö

Couture: Colours

(July 19, 2014)

I don’t really have the set-up to do multi-coloured prints where things are in perfect register. But I thought that since this screen had clearly separated areas, then I could just mask stuff off, and print each thing separately (or “separately”) with different inks. The colours in the logo aren’t printed perfectly, because of the … Continue reading Couture: Colours

Couture: Expired

(July 19, 2014)

I’ve been having serious problems getting the emulsion to expose properly the last couple of days.  I’ve had four screens ruined — peeling and stuff.  I tried varying the drying period, the exposure length, and the heat of the water I use to wash the emulsion off with. Then I remembered the emulsion can saying … Continue reading Couture: Expired

3AM

(July 19, 2014)

Couture: Curing

(July 17, 2014)

I must be doing something wrong when curing (i.e. heat fixing).  Most of the shirts survive washing just fine, but two of them have dissolved. Hm…  it was the metallic and the “glow yellow”.  Perhaps they need more curing? Googling a bit more seems to suggest that curing water based inks with an iron is … Continue reading Couture: Curing

Couture: Errata

(July 16, 2014)

I remembered that I had a drying cabinet, so I plugged the holes in it (to avoid light leaking in), and suddenly my screen printing process is down to five hours. Man, that’s some good screen printing. The image is Errata Stigmata by Beto Hernandez, from that calendar previously discussed in previous editions of this … Continue reading Couture: Errata

Useful Consumer Review

(July 15, 2014)

I thought that getting an EyeFi card for my camera would make blogging easier.  I mean, just snap a picture, and then it’s transferred to your computer automatically?  Result! But the range of the wifi in the EyeFi card is pitiful. You have to leave the camera less than a couple of meters from the … Continue reading Useful Consumer Review

Couture: Glow

(July 15, 2014)

Funnily enough, all the ink boxes have the same printed instructions no matter what kind of ink is in the box.  And I have two kinds of ink: Regular and “SuperCover”.  And the latter apparently works better with a coarser silk (i.e., lower monofilament nylon thread count). This one is printed with the same thread … Continue reading Couture: Glow

Couture: Registering

(July 15, 2014)

I thought I’d experiment with printing two colours on top of each other, so I did the most technically difficult thing: Print a white under coat, and then a silver top coat, with the same silk.  And a pretty big print. I printed the white yesterday, and then the silver today.  It turns out that … Continue reading Couture: Registering

Couture: Wrestling

(July 14, 2014)

I vividly remembered there being lots of great imagery in the Love and Rockets calendars from the late 80s.  After just a few hours of looking through boxes, I finally found the 1990 calendar, which features this beauty: By Jamie Hernandez, and I think that’s probably Rene Titañon.  (I’ve been meaning to re-read all of … Continue reading Couture: Wrestling

4AD Yearly

(July 14, 2014)

After buying the 4AD biography half a year ago (or something), I’ve been planning to read it while listening to everything 4AD has released chronologically.  I mean, you have to. The only problem was that I didn’t have everything 4AD has released.  I pretty much had everything between 1984 and 1997, where I began to … Continue reading 4AD Yearly

Useful Consumer Review

(July 13, 2014)

Anything that’s wireless doesn’t work. But there’s degrees of not-working-ness.  I’ve had wireless keyboards that drops one in every five keystrokes even though the receiver is only a meter away, and I have keyboards that drop only one in twenty keystrokes over a range of ten meters. But the most problematic wireless gear is wifi.  … Continue reading Useful Consumer Review

White Hermitage

(July 12, 2014)

Couture: Silk

(July 12, 2014)

Today I’m going to attempt a real screen printing.  I’ve selected an image from Daltokyo by Gary Panter — the first drawring from the first strip. I’m printing on a black shirt, and the drawing is with black lines on a white background.  So I can’t really print the lines themselves, but I have to … Continue reading Couture: Silk

Wall of Vaughan

(July 12, 2014)

I still haven’t read the 4AD biography (any day now), but I was reminded about my plan from, like, 20 years ago to make a Vaughan Oliver wall.  That is, nail a lot of 4AD sleeves designed by Vaughan Oliver (and Chris Bigg (aka 23 Envelope/v23)) to a wall and behold the beauty. I didn’t … Continue reading Wall of Vaughan

My New Baking Blog

(July 9, 2014)

 

My Needs Manufactured

(July 9, 2014)

Look at this nice 7″ from Bluefaced People.

My New Baking Blog

(July 8, 2014)

Jazzz

(July 8, 2014)

I was out with a cold for a week, but when Kongsberg Jazz started was feeling well enough to binge on Sudafed and Mucinex (and other cold remedies also illegal in Norway) and went to Kongberg. A lovely time was had as always.  It’s the best jazz festival in Norway. Apropos of festivals, every year … Continue reading Jazzz

Query

(July 7, 2014)

I bought this cooking thermometer today. It says that it’s good for -50 to 150C.  But does that just mean that it can measure up to 150C, or it mean that the entire thermometer can withstand 150C? Inside an oven?  For hours? It feels awfully plastickey.  

Couture: Squeegee Success

(July 7, 2014)

I finally got the correct squeegee for screenprinting onto fabric: It has rounded edges instead of the square ones used when printing onto paper.  So I made yet another attempt with the screen I made weeks ago. Success!!! It takes a few attempts to get comfortable with the squeegee, but I did a few trial … Continue reading Couture: Squeegee Success

Useful Consumer Review

(July 6, 2014)

I bought an HP Officejet 7110 (which is an A3 inkjet printer) to print stuff for screenprinting and the like.  It prints out nicely onto normal paper, but whenever I tried printing onto any type of plastic (transparencies for screenprinting or vinyl for t-shirt transfers) it creates these annoying lighter horizontal lines: After trying all … Continue reading Useful Consumer Review