4/12/07I

'm breathing hard from doing kids' shirts at such a breakneck pace. I've noticed that things sell better when I have a LOT of them, so am trying to have piles. (For me, a "pile" would be a dozen of one design.) I anticipate that the plum blossoms will be popular, so I have about 20 of those. Each one takes about an hour of actual work time, plus three rounds through the washing machine and dryer.

I am wanting to do more of the red Oni shirts...to my dismay, the second round of 8 shirts that I dyed came out fuchsia rather than red. A very lovely fuchsia, but so pink that my son and consultant, Andrew, age 13, assures me that no boy would be caught dead in it, no matter how evil looking the Oni.
So it’s back to the dye sink with the offending pink shirts and some gold dye, to try to tilt the color back toward scarlet.

The Oni, a Japanese Evil Spirit
The Oni design comes from a Japanese family crest. At one time the oni simply represented an evil spirit - for which reason I hesitated before putting it on kids shirts  -- but now has an additional meaning of fending off evil spirits. Anyway, judging from the pleasure kids take in wearing skulls and other ghoulish motifs on their clothing, I thought boys would probably enjoy wearing the Oni - the more evil looking the better.