Random Thoughts

My New Horticultural Blog

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

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

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

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.

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!

There’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.

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

I 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.

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

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

Oh. I should have looked up.

Hm… 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:

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

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

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

Couture: Ink Twice

For my second attempt, I tried using less ink, but that made it necessary to squeegee over the silk several times before I pressed it onto the fabric to give it a last squeeg.

And that obviously pushed too much ink through the screen, so things filled in too much.

So: More ink, and just a single pass.

The Sony NWZ-W273 Walkman Isn’t Very Well Made

I bought a new Walkman the other week. I was quite impressed, and I remained impressed until I started to use them.

After wearing them for half an hour, the volume in the right speaker dropped down to almost nothing. It kinda varies, but it’s very very low.

I binged, and apparently this happens a lot. The recommended solution is to either get Sony to give you a new device, or to reset the device, so I did the latter.

And then it wouldn’t start up at all. It gave four “lower” beeps, and then one “high” beep, and then it switched itself off. I think that “high” beep is the “error beep”.

After fiddling around with it for a bit, I thought that perhaps it would help if I removed the songs from it, and I did. It would now boot and play stuff.

But the right speaker is still dead.

Geez, Sony.

Couture: Dye Once

Even though the screen wasn’t exposed well, I thought I could make an attempt to print something, just to see how that goes.

I put a backing board into the shirt to have firm to print onto. And then I put the shirt onto a frame to raise it from the floor, because I’m printing the screen from the wrong side, since I exposed the wrong side. Genius.

The ink is a lot firmer than I thought it would be. It just a glob of … stuff. I start wiping the squeegee all over the screen anyway.

Disaster. I pressed the paint through unevenly, and I think the backing board (in addition) wasn’t solid enough, so they kinda fade away.

Oh, well. Time to wash the screen and the squeegee. The paint is water soluble, fortunately, so that’s easy enough.

I think I’ll give this screen one more try, but squeegee things just once with a more even coat and see how that goes. But I think I have to make a new screen to get better results.