Steve Jobs gave a commencement speech to graduated at Stanford in 2005. It is a very inspirational speech and his punch line of ‘Stay hungry, stay foolish’ goes hand in hand with Gary Halbert’s recommendation to ‘refuse to listen to reason.’

Well worth listening to…

These are ideas we strive to follow here at JustZen.com. When, for example, we design and sell our jackets we tackle the challenges staying foolish and don’t listen to reason. I mean, who wants to bring back the 60s and 70s? – We do – and we love it and we want everybody to know about our tie-dyes.

Gary Halbert, apparently THE copy-writer, has died, as reported in many publications and blogs like this one here. I had just started to read some of his material and viewed some little video clips, and when I get used to him he dies – strange!

He was a person that had no shame to break the rules and a quote by him I like a lot and might frame and put on the wall, is:

“Nothing is impossible for a person who refuses to listen to reason!”

And he is certainly right. Whenever there was some big change in my life there was a ‘letting go’ of all the customs and rules that we normally consider unchangable.

I know, this all has nothing to do with clothing and Tie-Dye – – – but I thought I share it anyways.

Currently it is probably hard to miss that there is an unusual thing going on in space. The ex-Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi (who is responsible for Word and Excel, I believe) bought himself a ticket to the International Space Station ISS on a Soyuz spacecraft and now enjoys a few days of weightlessness and great views of planet earth.

His website Charles in Space is a good source of information on what’s going on. One of the things happening there, which we might not have heard otherwise, is that one of the crew, Suni Williams, was running the Boston Marathon. OK, the logistics of that was a bit difficult – she could not just zip down to Boston, run the Marathon and be back in time for the next shift, so she ran on the treadmill up in space during the same time the Marathon was done on terra firma. She finished in four hours and twenty-four minutes.

But the most fascinating, and the reason this is reported here on this blog, is the fact that she was wearing a JustZen t-shirt during her accomplishment – believe it or not (the choice is all yours) – but here is the proof. In the background you can see the tunnel to the next compartment of the ISS and the harness Suni is wearing connects her to the floor with some bungee cords to simulate gravity.

Way to go, Suni, congratulations for your cool accomplishment and give us a buzz, we will be soooo glad to supply you with another few t-shirts, jackets, or henleys.

Last week we took a trip down the Baja California to Ensenda. It was a very interesting trip to observe how different life can be on the two sides of the border just a few miles apart.

We had gotten the tip to have lobster in Porto Nuevo just a few miles down from Rosarito and on the way back we did as we were told.

Apparently not too many tourista there at this time of the year so there was a whole bunch of ushers to get us into the various lobster establishments. Finally we succumbed to one, we parked the car and climbed up some stairs to a second floor outside kind of restaurant. Very nice, with view over the ocean and directly below us, just across the street, a flea market.

As we were enjoying our lobsters I suddenly notices something familiar – tie-dye!

It was the standard kind with colors so bright you have to squint, and once your eyes adapt you can see the standard spiral.

Then we saw another person with a shirt just like this and we got the idea that there must be a store around here selling those. This suspicion became near certainty when one after another at least six other people came by with shirts all similar. But the kicker was that one of these daring people even had tie-dye socks on!

We briefly thought how nice it would be if we could send these people to the JustZen web site and show them some different kind of tie-dye t-shirts – some that don’t make your eye-doctor rub his hands in anticipation of great riches.

But then we realized that we were on vacation and at JustZen.com there are no socks anyways – and so we went happily back to our lobsters.

Winter can be a rather depressive time. Maybe not out in California or Florida, but there are different areas of the world where you can’t really see the sky in weeks or month and that just depresses the mood we are in to some degree.

Now, should we just give in and take this as a given and succumb to those lower moods?

Obviously, as I am asking the question, and it is clearly a rhetoric question, I want you to say NO!

And you are right. We are the creator of our mood. Sometimes we get influenced by moody environments but we don’t have to do this. We are the creator of our mood, and if we are in total control it does not really matter what the environment tries to tell us – we have the mood we want.

But if we can influence the environment to some degree it will make selecting and creating the desired mood easier.

One way to effect the environment is naturally the cloths we wear.

I am sure that there are some people who will choose clothing that will not make them happy, and they will then wear outfits like this one here.

But for the most of us we will probably choose clothing that elevates out mood and makes us happy. And this is where clothing from JustZen.com comes in. Just look at this – doesn’t that look like a much more appealing mood?

You can get these strappy tanks right here.

This is with a grateful thank-you to all of you who acknowledged us for our work here at JustZen.com and telling us how much you love our mudmee tie-dyes.

Apparently you loved them so much that even though the winter is by far not over we ran out of the small hooded jackets in green and black base colors – – we never thought that was possible, but then, deep down we must have wanted it still.

But not to worry, we still have plenty of items from henley shirts, over tanks and t-shirts, and we are already in the process of producing a new batch.

As a little thank you for your support we would like to offer you all a 10% discount on all purchases during the next week. To claim this promotion please enter the code xxxxxxxx (sorry, expired – but there will be another sale!) into the promo field on checkout.

All of us here at JustZen.com wishing you a

Happy New Year!

This has been a very interesting year for JustZen.com.

We designed a whole new line of items. And we are so grateful for all of our customers who liked our tie dye items and now proudly wear them.

We had good sales before the holidays and during the last week before they are really ready we will do another big sale to get and hopefully meet our target that we have set for us.

So we will send out an email to all of our valued customers and offer one great discount for the last possible order before Christmas.

So look forward to our email announcing a sale for

1. Hooded Jackets
2. Henley Shirts
3. Lace Tanks
4. Strappy and Boy Tanks
5. T-Shirts

The reason for dyeing a fabric is obvious – more color = more attention – just as the feathers in the animal kingdom – and let’s be honest, we want to be beautiful and like to be noticed.

So, if we start with a white piece of clothing and then dip it into dyes, something more than just plain white will ensue. Now a single color will soon be just plain also, so historically we started to experiment with different colors and different ways to apply the dye to the fabric.

Tie-dying is the technique to fold or tie the finished garment and then submerse it into the dye. The parts of the garment that are tightly touching each other like in a knot, will not be exposed to the dye or only slightly so.

For example to create stripes we can fold the garment in pleats, and then apply the dye.

The big spiral on the chest that we usually associate with tie-dye is created by laying out the garment flat and then starting in the middle of the chest grabbing the fabric and starting to twist, in the process folding pleats in a circular pattern.

The mudmee style of tie-dye used in producing the hoodies, henleys and tanks of JustZen.com is very different and is pretty much native to parts of South-East Asia. Our artist Gigi, who creates our items, was allowed to study the techniques used in that area only after promising to kept this process and technique very secret. So, sorry to everybody who wants to know how we do it, she can’t tell you  🙁

Look at this – a brand-spanking new blog for all people who love unique tie-dye, people who want to go beyond the basic colorful spiral on the chest.

So, please welcome and if you like to participate, please feel free to become a contributor. Write to Merlin at the address “merlin.silk at gmail dot com” to get a contributors login.