Nermo

I made sausage, egg and cheese sliders on homemade biscuits with TSB this sunday.  Those towers were almost too tall to eat. I had her sample my marmalade with vanilla yogurt and got the nod of approval.

Here’s what I’ve been up to now that I am ready to teach at noon:

1. Picking out a weekend rental in wine country. I like Le Petite Olivet because it’s on a vineyard, but Mark West Retreat for the architecture.

2.Listening to DIEHARD, my muse Liz’s new band. I wish they had more than 3 songs up.  Catch them Tuesday 3/31 at Union Hall in Brooklyn.

3.Warming up for the opening night party at YBCA for the Nick Cave (not of the Bad Seeds) exhibition.

4. Working on some recipes for homemade bitters that I hope to make some time soon.

5. Playing with how to structure the new dresser that I am designing so that it is Ikea-easy to assemble, sturdy and visually perplexing.

I’ll recap BaconCamp soon, but for now, I need to follow up on the silkscreening.

I had a blast, printing about 20 BaconCamp t-shirts and then, upon refilling my ink bottle, the screens locked up and wouldn’t print.  I had to send away another 20+ unsatisfied baconistas, promising to print more in the coming weeks.

Making a Bacon T-Shirt for the Mad Meat Genius

If you want to order one, they will be $10-12 and all proceeds will still go to the American Heart Association.  Once I am done giving midterms today, I’ll figure out how to make this happen. In the meantime, just email me and I will reply to everyone with ordering details once I have them. Click here to order.

My sign photographed by Ekai

I also want to credit Pete Hottelet for the fantastic Bacon Camp logo that we printed on one side of the shirts.

Another satified bacon t-shirt customer by kveton

Here are the tutorials I’ve been skimming of late:

Craft

Handmade Detroit give us the Yudu How-To, which is poised to be the successor to Gocco. I need one.

Photojojo‘s 12 awesome photography business card ideas remind me that I have a few new sets of cards to make.

Craftynest‘s bamboo veneer flowers + Ikea Lack tables runs through a simple process yielding snazzy results.  I have other projects where I intend to use a similar application.

Urban Threads showed me how to make do manly embroidery.  The stencil bleaching part of the tutorial is most useful, and I think the little “punk” patch is a mis-matched design element.

My favorite Instructable that I am sure I will never get to:  The Paracord Bracelet.  Will someone please just make one for me?

Tech

Piclist is teaching me to be an engineer, because I didn’t listen to my father as much as I should have in my youth.

The Make Blog is giving me ideas for how to make my own photobooth and giving me the rundown on jigs, clamps and helping hands.

DealNews will tell you how to make spare cash online.

Plants

Apartment Therapy SF is greening my thumbs with articles on Fun with 4-Inch Succulents and  How to Care for an Orchid.

Food and Drink

The Kitchn has been telling me How (and Why!) to Preseason my Meat and How to Make Pasta, as well as planning ahead with how to make golden chocolate Easter eggs.

Jaime Oliver explains something he calls gingerbread.

The SF Chronicle offers a piece on do-it-yourself cocktail ingredients.

Eddie Ross teaches us how to set the table.

Late Edit:  Bacon on one side (as below), and on the other, the Official Bacon Camp San Francisco logo that was just sent to me.

Not everyone can visualize the inner workings of my mind, so here are some variations to peruse.

a. horizontal, white, full back

b. diagonal, white, full

c. horizontal , white, full

d. diagonal, white, partial

e. silver, horizontal, full... OK, the chrome effect sucks, so just imagine the images above in silver.

I thought I mentioned this in more detail, but apparently not.  BaconCamp San Francisco is next Saturday (3/21/9).

People keep asking me what BaconCamp is and the best I can offer is that it is an afternoon devoted to the celebration of bacon.  There will be bacon-based food, presentations, demonstrations, vendors and even a bacon poetry slam.

My plan was to silkscreen the image above in white ink on a red t-shirt. Having toyed with the idea, my question for y’all is if I should print in white or silver and if the bacon should be horizontal as you see it, or diagonal, like a sash  (vertical looks like a bacon tie).  Opinions?

I just raided Macy’s for a couple dress shirts to use as canvases for new silkscreen projects.

Maybe I will wear them, or maybe I will just sell them on Etsy.

Click any image to enlarge.

The first is a mustard yellow Hilfiger western-style with opalescent snaps . I want to go totally counter-western with the design and solicited suggestions on Twitter.  I was told to go with a ninja, geisha, kiwi, elephants, monkeys, giraffes, lions, aliens, rocket ships, and bacon .  I was also asked to lend someone a hot glue gun, cordless drill and a staple gun.

I like the ninja and the geisha, for taking my anti-western concept to heart, and I am considering something in the style of a Japanese woodblock print.  Looking musically as well as hemispherically, I’m thinking punk.  Maybe the anarchy circle-A in a western font and a gash held together by gold safety pins.  A co-worker reinforced the outer-space concept so I’m considering a Cosmonaut theme as well.

The second is a standard white Calvin Klein dress shirt, except for a strip of checkered embroidery that runs the length of the shirt to the right of the buttons.  I haven’t put any thought into this piece other than wanting to incorporate the embroidery.

So, what themes, images or other ideas do you suggest I print onto these two?

The latest challenge I have given my high school arts students at YBCA is to

“design a dynamic, one-color silkscreen print using only text to create the image.”

This assignment was actually first inspired by this Skull T-Shirt, but the Ork Poster of SF is probably a better example.

I place the roots of text art in the neo-impressionism of Seurat, who’s pointillist paintings could be viewed as the forerunner of ascii art.  If  Sunday Afternoon can be composed of daubs of paint, why not daubs of text?

The assignment serves several purposes:

1. Revisiting and emphasizing the Elements of Art
2. Exploring their first significant, individual silkscreen project
3. Create large, bold images for Orson, one of the top restaurants in San Francisco, who graciously provided the opportunity to have the work of our class projected on the restaurant’s digital wall.

If you want to take a look at the assignment sheet I gave the students, which includes several more examples of text art, click this link for a PDF version of the handout.

Sorry folks, but upgrading to WordPress 2.7 was more involved than I expected, and I have work to do, so it will be a little while before I restore my photos and layout.  Happy March.

UPDATE (3/6):  Images are back up, and I’ll get to the visual elements of the theme eventually.