CreativeVortex; the Blog

I’ve always loved the feel and look of the Tartan series of men’s shirts made by Pendleton but unfortunately they seem to have eliminated many of the nice shirts that they used to make over the years.  One of my favorite of the Pendleton shirts was a re-creation of the CPO Jacket (a uniform item allowed to Chief Petty officers in the US Navy) which I considered a staple.  the Online Tartan Designer ( http://www.tartanweb.org/designer/designer.php ) is a great program I ran across that allows one to design an Tartan of their own.  Since I weave I played with the various weave structures in the Tartan designer.  The Designer operates in sett units which on a loom refers to the individual warp threads and since Tartans are balanced weaves the warp threads in epi (ends per inch) are the same as the weft threads (usually given as picks per inch). I had a lot of fun with this program and I am sure you will also if you enjoy Tartans as I do, check it out.

Below is a screen shot of the Tartan Designer as it appears on my computer.

The Tartan Designer is part of the program on http://www.tartanweb.org and includes “Highland Laddie” an interactive clan dress program in which one can see how various items of dress are implemented in the Scottish Clan tradition with a 3-D view of a Higlander.  If you enjoy traditional crafts this is a fun program and the Tartan Designer is a useful tool. Enjoy!

Best regards,

Charles

Yes it is a beautiful morning, sunny, nice cool breeze coming in off the ocean.  The grass is cut, flowers are in bloom, the vegetable garden is planted and now I can get back to work.  I have a new industrial porject; a Beer Tower.  The beer tower is for dispensing beer from a pressurized keg system with the kegs in a remote locaiton.  This presents a number of interesting challenges and as a multi-material type of project it should be very interesting.  The tower is ceramic iwth a brass section for the beer faucets. Stand by  as this develops and I post some in-process pictures. In the mean-time it is still a beautiful day.

Mornng at Fern Creek Farms

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