OK, maybe there is a bit of exaggeration built-in.

But in reality, this beast was somewhere between 20 and 30 pounds and getting started breaking it open was not an easy task. But we finally got it cut in half and then we started, under the watchful eye of jackfruit-master Gigi to disect it and learn what is edible and what better to discard.

There is a lot of waste and this video gives you some idea on what work we had to do to get to the good part…

Click here to view the embedded video.

The yield of one half of the jackfruit looked like this:

One bowl of fruit

and something for either cooking in salt water or maybe – it’s worth a try – roasting…

A smaller bowl of jackfruit seeds - supposed to be nutty

With great appreciating for all of you who made our Wearable Art Tie-Dye such a big success, we are grateful that you gave us the opportunity to create something that we like to do and you like to have. We are specifically thankful that this also allows us to support our foster children in the developing world.

Thank you,
Merlin, Gigi and Zen

Tie-dye is, to some degree, synonymous with hippies. But what other characteristic is unavoidable connected with hippies? Long hair, of course!

And here we are at the musical ‘Hair’ – a musical icon for the hippie era. Your’s truly, growing up in the 70s certainly had the album  (on vinyl – remember those big 30cm black disks with grooves on them which stored the music?) as well as long hair to know what it was like.

And I even met and became friends with the guy who played the main role in the German stage production – so – I am connected!

Now, that we are running Thaidye.com, with a type of tie-dye we often call tie-dye 2.0, we connect with quite a few hippies of those days.

Last week we got an order from Pat for a hoodie and a shirt with the question if we can manage to get this out in time to be worn at a stage production of – - – HAIR!

Certainly we made that happen – we just had to, and Pat promised to send pictures. Pat reported that the show has been excellent and that pictures were coming – and – today – we got one – she and her granddaughter at the San Francisco state show of Hair.

Thanks, Pat!

And this picture also goes into our ‘customer gallery’ – in case you don’t know – once we have filled up a gallery with 50 images, we have a raffle for all those who are in that gallery.

UPDATE: Pat sent another picture from her phone…

We finally managed to get some new items ready and will start adding them to the web site. The first of those are hoodies – just in time for the colder weather that we even notice in Southern California.

I want to try something new with this email and show you a few actual new jackets – with direct links to the item on our site, in case you are interested.

I am aware of the problem and want to point that out – you know that each item I show is a one-of-a-kind. That means that it might not be there any more when somebody else came by earlier and put it into his or her shopping cart. But not to dispair, there are more to chose from, these few are just a sample to wet your appetite.

Without any further ado…

Red Hoodie in Size Medium

Purple Hoodie in Size Medium

Turquoise Hoodie in Size Large

If none of those fits the bill you can look at All Our Hoodies, and then select the size you need from the selection box right there at the top of the screen. Then click ‘Search’ and we will show you all the hoodies in your size we have available.

And that’s all for today – be mighty!

Oh, yes… just not to be misunderstood – hoodies are getting all the attention because we added new ones – but there are my more – and different – things to be discovered – just start at the top…

Unfortunately this ideal situation is often no met in the so-called real world. Artists often have to find those who appreciate what they create, and some have decided to become nomads to accomplish to do just that.

At Thaidye we have taken a two-pronged approach to show you what we have to offer: There is, one, the Thaidye website with the potential reach of the whole world, but also, two, to reach out and physically go out and meet people. Yours truly has mostly taken job number one, and Gigi has become the nomad to travel.

Once in a while this author is allowed to leave the keyboard and go out and see the world as well. This was the case when Mammoth Lake had its Festival of the Arts this just past labor day. It was decided that this long trip and the hotel was not to be wasted for only one person and one purpose, but that webmaster and junior staff would go as well and that the trip would be expanded a bit to see the sights.

The setting of the festival was in a beautiful wooded park and nomadic artists from all over the area congregated. These nomads are a not so very big group of special people and after a few years of traveling to diverse art festivals and shows, the faces you see become familiar, and friendships develop.

Setting up starts the big buzz, people are busy preparing for the show and putting their best foot forward – then the day or days of the actual fair with lots of talking, demonstrating and selling.

Once the last visitor to the show has left, the festival is over and a very unusual mix of feelings and emotions spreads throughout the grounds of the show. You can feel excitement of some who had a very good show, some with not so good mood who wished they had done better but overall there is a feeling of comradery and togetherness. Yet there is also a bit of a feeling of emptiness and loss, as it’s all done now and this shared experience is over.

Cars a brought in, replacing the crowd of visitors and all the pieces of art that did not find a new owner are packed up.

Some of the artists are amazingly fast with their break-down and so the festival site clears out more and more. Some, with more elaborate displays, need a lot more time to pack up, disassembling displays and folding down canopies.

Gigi with all her many items from mudmee hoodies to hairbands is often one of the late completions but this time junior staff was there to help and here we see that the canopy is already packed up – one of the last items to get into the nomad’s wagon – while other artists are still packing.

Packing has become an art in itself, a honed skill over many festivals, to efficiently and effectively stow everything in a vehicle as small as possible. Here are the last items to fit into the last crevices of the wagon.

The next day was ‘reward’ day. Yosemite is less than an hour drive away from Mammoth Lakes and it was the destination. First was a stop at Mono Lake and then it was into the park – and a beautiful park it is.

But in the next picture you can see that Gigi just has to have a task – here she made sure that these two rocks remained separated. The author was not quite sure why that was important, but it was something that Gigi thought was necessary. Also notice that Gigi does not wear Mudmee Tie-dye all the time.

Before you may go back to your scheduled activities, one more visual impression from one of the most amazing lakes at Yosemite at over nine thousand feet elevation showing yours truly and the junior staff.

Since getting back from that trip we have been busy again and added plenty of new buddha bags to the web site – over 70 to be exact – so, if you have been waiting for the right one to come up on site – it’s time to take a look.

Gigi went onto her biggest trip ever and is – a the time of this writing – September 24 – in Idaho. Last week in Boise and this week at the Thousand Springs Festival of the Arts in Wendell. Her booth number is 18 – in case you are in that neck of the woods.

At Thaidye.com we are somewhere between these extremes, and we realized that we actually should not call this line of clothing just wearable art, but instead wearable, wearable art.

You see, wearable has two rather different meanings and both of those definitions apply to the JustZen line of clothing,

1. you can wear it, as in the opposite of hanging it on a wall, and
2. you can actually wear it without the danger of being arrested.

Just in time for the summer (OK, we are actually a bit late, but better late than never) we have come out with a new dress – a cute smock dress.

We thought about just showing you an example or two, but then we had a brilliant idea, why not just show them all?! We just photographed nearly 200 of them and so you might think that it might then take a bit too long, right?

NO! – Take a look…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Go to the Mudmee Smock Dress Page to find out more.

Thank you so much, Carole! I got a kick out of that. The resemblance is amazing, it’s like looking into a mirror – - if the sculptor only had done this after I started to get involved with mudmee tie dye!

I did not go to no parade, I did not have any BBQ, as a matter of fact, I had hardly anything to eat all day.

Why?

Because I was very productive and dug myself deep into Anime and Manga. By the way, Anime simply means ‘cartoon’ in Japanese, but here in the west we usually understand this term to represent this very specific kind of cartoon, many love.

I can’t say that I was a ‘fan’ of anime, but I always liked it as you can tell looking at an early attempt to create some…

OK, I admit, that’s real-life anime, not real anime.

But today I tried some real anime, even though with some twist.

Pretty cool, huh?

No blurbs about any insights and experiences from me today (whew!) but only some quick info what I have been doing.

I had mentioned on our Thaidye Facebook page a little while back that Gigi had been very busy taking more than 300 photos of new items. So, I had to get busy getting them all up on the web site.

And as there is also a brand new item, I had to create a new page for that ‘Empire Dress’ and tie it all together – so that it actually also works.

That is now all done!

First of all I want to show you our new Empire Dress…

Nice – huh?

Normally we would now make an Independence day sale – but I am not normal – - hey, I mean politically – - so I decided to make this a

“Introducing the Empire Dress Sale”

and it’s 35% off these new items of ours – yup – more than a third off!

How do you get it? – With one of our promo codes that you enter in the last field at the end of the shipping info when you check out.

So, put some Empire Dresses into the shopping card and enter

pri07135

into the promo field, and we take this right off the total. This code is good for  short time only, it will go away eventually.

Here once more the link to the new Empire Dresses.

Peace-Up and Cheers (and happy BBQing),
Merlin
Thaidye.com

PS: Nearly forgot – beside these dresses I also added Crinkle Shirts, Thermal Shirts, Henley Tanks, Classic Tanks, Wrap Dresses, Men’s T-shirts and Hoodies, Buddha Bags and a whole bunch of Crinkle Scarves.

PPS: Gigi is in Arizona this long weekend (Sat to Mon) – at the ‘Art in the Park’ in Flagstaff.

Good Morning – Good Day – Good Evening,