Virginia Beach, VA
February 2008

The Cotton Saga Continues...

Hosted by Jennie Z

Next: Many Meetings

The next day started off with taking Hailey to school and Jennie going to work. She said she could not carry us into the car separately because she already had so much to take along. “Just hop into my handbag,” she said. What? That’s what ladies do with their little dogs! No way.

“Look, either let me carry you in the bag or you’ll have to stay at home today.” She said.

Ok, it wasn’t so bad after all—rather comfortable really.. I didn’t care for the pink stripes, but what can you do? Tiki and I read some Witchblade comics as we sat through rush hour traffic.

I noticed a small digital camera tucked in the bag as we arrived. I very carefully hid it behind my sign and decided I would turn the tables on Jennie by photographing her also...hehehe. She didn't care for that at first.

When we finally got to the office we found that we were going to learn some more about the importance of cotton, as our host works at a shop that prints t-shirts!

Just about everyone wears t-shirts, but this doesn’t make t-shirts as important as nice cotton undies, by far. I had never thought about all the steps that go on behind the scenes for printed tshirts so we asked for the grand tour.

This is Jennie’s desk, and one of the screens shows a design that she was working on that day, for a surf shop in New Jersey. What nice colors! She is an excellent artist!

After the artists do their work, they print out the designs and have them put onto these weird screens. This is Jonny. He puts the shirts on the machine and pushes ink through the screens onto the shirts, just like a stencil. Tiki got a little dizzy watching the screens and shirts spin around so we went back into the office.

We found this rack of awesome, little shirts! Tiki pulled this one out and asked if he could take it along as a souvenir (he said it matches his eyes) but unfortunately they are only for samples.

We did notice some printed undies but I am too embarrassed to reveal the pictures of Tiki Jr. and I trying them on when no one was looking. We are happy to report that all those little poky things are removed from the cotton before it is a shirt and more importantly undies. Ouch..

We explored the stacks of printed samples to see some of the kinds of designs they do! Jennie told us she was particularly proud of this one because of all the time she put into the detail. She told us that lots of stores carry their shirt designs, from Bar Harbor, Maine all the way down to Aruba, but they don’t actually sell the t-shirts directly from their shop.

Here is the shot I took at about lunch time. Odd that the hat thing wasn't showing when I took the shot. Perhaps this camera reads minds...hmmmm.

Needless to say we went to Taco Bell for lunch.

As the day went on it was apparent that Jennie’s mind was not completely on her work—nor on her house guests. As it turns out we arrived just in time to see the premiere of the new Lost episode. I didn’t really get it, but I was told that I needed to watch the previous 38 episodes before this one would make sense. Seems an appropriate name for this show cause we really were...lost.

Well, maybe Tiki and I can acquire a portable DVD player so that we have something to do as we’re traveling in-between cities, but otherwise we don’t have time for television!

(Photos: Jennie Z./ Dialogue: Jennie Z.& Tony V.)