My New Horticulture Blog

The seeds I planted a couple of weeks ago are growing pretty well. Probably because I’ve almost never forgotten to water them. It’s an achievement!

But it’s very windy on my balcony, so I thought it might make sense to shield the plants a bit from the incessant wind. I bought some plexiglas (i.e. plastic) sheets, drilled some holes in them (with a wood drill bit — I was afraid the plexiglas might shatter (it’s quite brittle), but it worked fine), and tied them up with some fishing line:

IMG_5498Looks almost invisible, eh? But they’ll probably grow gross as time passes. We’ll see.

Anyway, I think this is the reason for the windiness:

IMG_5499I’m on the edge of a hill, sort of, so even if there’s the slightest air movement in the hollow down there, I get a blast of wind.

Or something.

Couture: Transparent

While waiting for the screen printing equipment to arrive, I’ve been experimenting a bit more with Inkodye.  Because of reasons.

Here’s an extreme close-up of a shirt exposed with a “normal” over-head projector (OHP) transparency:

IMG_5487The white area with pebbled red spots is supposed to be totally white, but because the OHP transparency is so “pebbly”, there’s tons of tiny white holes where it’s supposed to be totally black.  And the result is pretty bad.

But then I got “digital negative” transparencies.  These are for sale only in photo speciality stores, and are more expensive.  But the result is a lot better:

IMG_5488No pebbling, so no orange spots where it’s supposed to be totally white.  I did screw up the print, anyway, because the shirt bunched up a bit.

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One of these days I’m going to make an Inkodye shirt that looks almost usable.  Although how usable a white t-shirt is…

 

My New Horticultural Blog

I decided that I should grow my own food, so I planted some radishes and peas and carrots and stuff.

IMG_5479 IMG_5477 IMG_5476

I need to start thinning out in a couple of days…

In other horticultural news, everything’s coming up roses:

IMG_5482 IMG_5481

After the previous post, a kind reader identified the bugs as aphids, and I went out and got some aphid-killing poisonous poison that I sprayed onto the roses.  All the bugs disappeared within a couple of days, and then the roses started flowering.

IMG_5486
Poison: It Kills

I moved the veggies to the other balcony, though.  I mean, like, poison.

Couture: Inkodye Too

I couldn’t make sense of my problems with screen printing the shirts.  Either too much ink or way too little ink.  So I watched a couple of youtube howtos.

I’ve been using the wrong type of squeegee!

IMG_5464There’s one with hard-ish edges for printing onto paper, and there’s one with rounded edges for printing onto fabric, and I was sold the wrong kind.  I’ve now ordered the right kind.

Until that arrives, I can’t experiment further with screen printing, so I thought I’d give Inkodye another whirl, just for fun.

IMG_5458IMG_5460I rolled the dye over the shirt, and gaffaed a transparency to it.

IMG_5463I gaffaed a second on top of the first.  I’m not sure that’s necessary, but because the printer prints out kinda gray-ish blacks on transparencies, I thought it might make sense.

IMG_5462Out on to the balcony for 20 minutes for some sunshine.

OOPS!  The sun went away.  HOW DID THAT HAPPEN!?

IMG_5467Oh.  I should have looked up.

IMG_5468Hm…  but the dye almost looks finished…  Just an area around the shoulders that looks under.  I’ll just have to leave it out there until those turn, too.  Which might take an hour unless the cloud cover thins out.

If it starts raining it’s a wash.

Tee hee.

Uhm…   the whiteness around the shoulders turned out to be condensation and not too little expo…  expo…  sun. I think I’ve over-exposed the ink:

IMG_5469Or the transparency is bad.  Or both.  Well, into the wash and see what comes out…

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That’s a very foamy detergent the Inkodye came with…  Or perhaps I used too much.  Anyway:

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Way over-exposed, and it appears that the gaffa lets light though?  Hm.  Well, the next one should be perfect, right?