piecepack trophy cloth -- your help requested

[Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe@...>]

piecepackers--

Marty and I offered a trophy cloth as part of the Ludic Synergy
contest awards.  It was to be machine-embroidered with the four
standard piecepack suits and to be signed in fabric paint by the
winner of each contest, then passed along.

I am sorry to say that we don't have a trophy cloth yet.  I did some
research with a local award manufacturer that does computer
embroidery, and it would cost somewhere around $300-350 to make an
embroidered trophy cloth.

This is far more than Marty and I anticipated.  We were expecting a
cost more around $100.  Marty and I have both been unemployed for
months, and we just don't have $300 at our disposal.  At the same
time, we don't want to lame out, so we've talked over a few options:

1. We could ask for donations from the community to raise the money.
   Obviously, Marty and I would contribute something as well.

2. We could choose some other method of creating the cloth, such as
   painting the icons onto the cloth instead of computer-embroidering
   them.  (This is something Marty could probably do.  She just
   finished hand-painting a custom Castle Croquetnole board -- see
   <http://www.ludism.org/scwiki/Castle_20Croquetnole> for photos.)

3. We could do something similar to the trophy cloth (passed from hand
   to hand, with each winner's name on it, etc.) but in another
   medium.  Example: a plaque.

Those are the options we came up with.  Do any of them sound good to
people in the piecepack community, and do you have any other ideas?

I wrote about this problem recently to Michael Schoessow, judge of the
current contest.  He seemed to like option #1, community donations.

> I didn't realize that James had not done the trophy cloth himself. I
> can certainly appreciate that you don't wish to spend $300 to get
> the cloth embroidered. I will contribute $100 if two or more other
> people can be found to donate the remainder. If that doesn't work,
> the painting option sounds interesting but I don't have a good feel
> for how that would work. Would this be kind of like a hand-painted
> silk-screen application? If so, that sounds not so bad because silk
> screens can look nice and are durable. If this is the route chosen,
> it may be worthwhile to look into what kind of ink is used for silk
> screening. The third option you mention is a little less attractive
> to me than the first two because the contest rules, which are posted
> in quite a few spots, specifically mention a cloth. On the other
> hand a lot of people might like a plaque more than a cloth, although
> it seems more natural somehow to pass a cloth than to pass a plaque.

So the best option so far seems to be community donations.  Mike can
donate $100, and Marty and I can donate _something_ (we don't know how
much yet).  Can the community get together and donate a substantial
portion of the remainder?

Yours hopefully,

Ron H-E

-- 
         Ron Hale-Evans ... rwhe@... & rwhe@...
           Center for Ludic Synergy, Seattle Cosmic Game Night, 
Kennexions Glass Bead Game &  Positive Revolution FAQ: http://www.ludism.org/
Home page & Hexagram-8 I Ching Mailing List: http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/