Hey it’s a bank holiday.

Go get some…

By the time your average supermarket salad is on the shelf, it will have received
a cocktail of chemicals: A combination of four insecticide sprays, two fungicide
applications and two herbicide blasts, before it is rinsed in a chlorine wash that is
twenty times stronger than your local swimming pool. It’s then packaged in a modified
atmosphere, made up of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and oxygen to keep it ‘fresh’.

But you already knew that, right? Shop local.

link:
www.farmersmarkets.net
A list of farmers markets in the UK with no silly stuff in their salads.

We are all going home a little earlier than normal today.

So, the phones will be switched off as of 5 o’clock.

Nice day, shame to waste it.

Have a great weekend.

This month’s Archive T-shirt of the Month is ‘Train not Plane’.

Aah train travel. You can’t beat it.
The gentle rhythmn and the clickety clack.
You can gaze out of the window, or nod off.
You can converse with interesting drunk people,
or crack on with that important Powerpoint presentation.
Either way, just sit back and let the train take the strain.

And hope there are no ‘wrong kind of leaves’ on the track.

Available on Grape for men and Mid Blue for women.

Apparently Thom Yorke prefers the choo-choo too.
Here he is, wearing the Train Not Plane tee in the Radiohead promo for ‘Nude’ -

My work here is complete…

This week’s T-shirt of the week is ‘Like Bike’ by Chester Bigglesworth.

We like to bike.
It’s the thing that gave you freedom as a kid.
And the thing that gives you freedom as a grown-up.
It unravels your brain and resets you.
It’s the thing that no plane, train or car could kill off.
It can even distract you from Facebook every once in a while.

Available on White for men and women.

Go to a festival
www.efestivals.co.uk is a site that lists around 65 festivals that are happening this summer.

Watch a sunset
Rhossili on the Gower Peninsula has been voted one of the best places in the world to
watch the sun go down. www.enjoygower.com

Catch your own supper
There’s plenty to eat out there in the wilderness if you know what to look for and where
to look for it. www.wilderness-survival.net shows you what’s edible and what’s not.

Cook on a real campfire
www.bushcraftliving.com has plenty of useful information for making the most of the
outdoors, including articles that teach you skills like how to build a decent fire (even if
you’ve run out of matches).

Make your own ice lollies
When the ice cream man doesn’t come down your street, you gotta learn to make your
own. www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes

Sleep under the stars
Before you nod off, look up and see which constellations you can spot.
www.astronomytoday.com will show you what to look for.

Get some sand between your toes
www.goodbeachguide.co.uk is an online guide with a description, photo and map for
each of 1,200 beaches in the UK and Ireland.

Swim in the sea
Nothing like a dip in the ocean to cool down on a hot summer day. www.blueflag.org is
the eco-label awarded to over 3,200 of the safest and cleanest beaches and marinas in
36 countries across Europe, South Africa, Morocco, New Zealand, Canada and the Caribbean.

Go out on your bike all day and don’t come back until it gets dark
More daylight = more riding. Locate routes near you using online mapping or browse
the suggested rides at www.sustrans.org.uk

Pick some wild fruit and make a pie
Remember when you used to go fruit picking with mum? Now is the best time to go find
all those great British berries and make a delicious pie. www.edenfoods.com has
recipes for all the best summer desserts.

Thursday is your last chance to get a Chester Bigglesworth ’100% Wooly’ T-shirt of the Week.
(We’ll be taking it off  the website in the afternoon, to make way for a new one).

So the wooly headed amongst you better make your minds up whether to get one or not.

Then again, you’ll probably forget, because you’re busy thinking about something else…

But that’s why we love you.

Available on Purple for men & Banana for women

Do hop the barrier now and again.
Do push the limit.
Do see what’s over there and where that leads.
Do exercise your disobedience.
You never know what you might find.

Just mind that big cliff.

She saw my dad last week, for the first time in fifty or so years.

Funny that.

Paul’s Farewell Treats.

We got him a big jar of all his favourites – chocolate covered peanuts, jazzies and white mice.
Someone’s gonna be sick tonight.

Bye Paul.

:.(

The t-shirt was his idea.

This is what 3 million gallons of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico looks like.

More here

Anyone else been watching that BBC4 series ‘The Beauty of Maps’?

Really nerdy, but brilliant nonetheless.

Anyhow, I just found this crazy detailed hand drawn map of London.

It’s from a project called ‘The Island’ by artist Stephen Walter.

Go fullscreen and if you zoom in far enough I think you can just about see our Carnaby Street shop.

Amazing.
@petedavies23

My ‘design dad’ Nick Hand is coming down from Bristol today. I love having him around.
He brings knowledge and experience (and croissants).

I could probably write a top 100 things I’ve learned from working with him…
But, for now, here’s my top 10:

1. No coffee, no workee (same goes for cake).
2. Never rush. Take time to consider everything.
3. Just because you did something yesterday, doesn’t mean you should do it today.
4. You can do anything, even single-handedly.
5. A deadline is a deadline is a deadline.
6. But keep calm and carry on, no matter what.
7. And listen to nice music along the way.
8. You are neither superior or inferior to anyone else.
9. Be nice and nice things will happen to you.
10. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel, just spin it a bit.

howies wouldn’t be howies without him.

We’ve just uploaded some fruity new t-shirt colours for you..

All of our Spring designs in spangly new colourways.

Some blue, some red and even a bit of purple for the gents,
also a red, a blue and a delicious banana yellow for the ladies.

No fruit hats though sorry…

So feel free to tweet this, re-blog it, tell your friends, tell your brother’s mate’s cousin’s
buddy who collects 80′s bmx’s preferably.

It’s a 1985 Skyway Street Beat in the Green/Purple/White colourway
(as modelled below by the lovely Lydia).

An awesome bike, as ridden by Scottie Freeman and the late
great Neil Ruffell back in the mid 80’s. Original Dia-Compe brakes,
Skyway EZ bars, on Skyway Tuff 11 mags etc..

Looks like it was made yesterday. All built from original 80′s parts.

Now, I know this ain’t the Free-Ads, but If you want it, make me an
offer in the comment section below and I’ll get back to you.

You could be ‘cherry-pickin’ in no time.

R.I.P Neil Ruffell

We thought it would be cool if we in the Creative Department talked a little about the design of the
new catalogue (it should be on your doorstep anyday now).

It was a tough one, our first full catalogue without David’s input. But hopefully you won’t see any
difference in terms of the quality of writing, or see a sudden decline in our design sensibilities..!

It’s all about Cardigan’s twin town of Trevelin – a small town in the foothills of the Andes in
Patagonia and the Welsh colonies that settled there in the 1800s.

Last November four people from howies went out to Patagonia to follow in the footsteps of those settlers and find out more about Trevelin, while a group of us stayed here in Wales and learned more about our home town, Cardigan. From those stories we’ve made both a regular-sized catalogue and a larger newsprint version.

Nick Hand got back on board helping design this one with us aswell. He missed the last two Sweden Super Nice catalogues, as he was out on his Slowcoast bike ride. Was good to have his experienced mind and calming influence back in the building.

So, probably the first thing you’ll notice the regular-sized Twin Towns catalogue is that we’ve changed paper stock. We’ve gone from using an uncoated paper to a mix of both coated and gloss instead. We did this so that the colours would pop and you could see more detail in our products.

It really does make this one feel a bit special… more like a book. We love the look and feel of uncoated paper, but even with retouching we still found the flatshots did lose quite a bit of colour and detail. So it made sense to change.

The next thing you’ll notice is that great gatefold cover. It kicks the catalogue off with a nice soulful photo of Jack skating. The inside cover has a sweet panoramic shot of the Preseli mountains, then straight into the story.

You may also notice that we’ve switched typefaces, discarding trusty old Helvetica Neue in favour of Sentinel for the headlines – a hefty slab serif from font designers Hoefler & Frere-Jones. And for body copy we used Akkurat, which is easy on the eye and not too much of a giant leap from Helvetica… baby steps.

And finally, we introduced a new triangular colour key for our different trouser fits. This matches up with what our product design team have done on the waistbands of the products themselves, so now you can tell your loose from your regular a bit quicker.

Well like i said, a copy of the full catalogue or a copy of the newsprint version should be with you anyday now, hope you like it. Let us know what you think.

See you in court Spike

Got my seat booked.

Haven’t been this excited since Police Academy 4 ‘Citizens On Patrol’ came out.

Good old Mr Bowlegs the illustrator is down at our Carnaby Street shop
right now installing a new window display. It’s going to be a good ‘un.
(He’ll be doing the Bristol shop window tomorrow by the way).

I’ll give you a clue… it’s monster-related. But that’s it for now.

I’ll blog his progress throughout the day. Stay tuned to see the final piece.

Jack, Anna, James and Lydia are back from the photoshoot in Patagonia.

(they’ve been shooting the spring 2010 catalogue).

They brought back a hard drive with over 20,000 photos on it…

And some sachets of sugar. Uh thanks?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Alas, it’s goodbye to little Claire Margetts today.

She is leaving us to go off and help out on a polar expedition.

Claire has had a busy year arranging the Do Lectures and stuff.

But no matter how much pressure was on, that smile never faded.

And anyone who went to Do this year will tell you what a top girl she is.
(She’s a mean race car driver too apparently).

We wish her well. She will be missed.

Wrap up warm dear.

It must be French Sailor Outfit Friday.

More ‘dress-a-likey’ tribes here:
http://www.exactitudes.com

I went to Westdale Press yesterday to sign off our catalogue.

Looks super nice…

Should be on your doormat early November.

And so boo-hoo I’m even going to say goodbye to my old BMX.

It’s a 1985 Skyway Street Beat in the Green/Purple/White

colourway (as modelled below by the lovely Lydia).

An awesome bike, as ridden by Scottie Freeman and the late

great Neil Ruffell back in the mid 80′s. Original Dia-Compe breaks,

Skyway EZ bars etc.. Looks like it was made yesterday.

Now, I know this ain’t the Free-Ads, but If you want it, make me an
offer in the comment section below and I’ll get back to you.

You could be ‘cherry-pickin’ in no time.

R.I.P Neil Ruffell

We have the ‘award-winning’ Toby here doing work experience for a few weeks.

He just won a shiny pencil from the D&AD Student Awards. 

Bit of a clever clogs then eh.
Coming in here with your smart ideas, showing off, making me look bad.

Yeah, I’ve got some ‘work’ for him to ‘experience’ don’t worry…
Stuff like pencil sharpening, folder arranging, a bit of dusting perhaps.

You know, real work.

Knock before entering…
 
 

skateboarding on the weekend. Well, quite a major tumble actually.

He’s broken his ankle. Oof.

He’s having surgery tomorrow, plates and pins and all that kind of thing.

Get well soon lad.

We used this super nice Falu Rödfärg paint to bring a flavour of Sweden to 
Bristol and London. But you’ll have to go down and take a look if you want 
to see what we did… I’m saying nothing.

Beautiful paint, great story. I really want to paint my shed with it now.

Have a look in our Autumn catalogue to read the full ‘Paint It Green’ story 
by Jon Matthews or click here to read it online.

Then perhaps click here if your shed needs a lick.

Geoff McFetridge is over from L.A. to speak at the Do Lectures and do
a few drawing workshops. He stayed at our house the other night.

At one point he got his laptop out and starts working on the end credits
for Where The Wild Things Are on our kitchen table. I was geeking out.

Click here to read a bit more on Spike Jonze’s blog about Geoff’s work on the movie . 

Paul and me are taking him surfing on the weekend . Praying for waves.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some new school

Click here to view the embedded video.

and some plain amazing (with extra drums)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This week’s T-shirt of the Week is ‘Super Nice’. Designed by Chester Bigglesworth, to mark the release of our Sweden Super Nice autumn catalogue.

The words come from the three Swedes who showed us around their wonderful country: Peter, Fredrik, and Sebastian. It was a phrase they used a lot. Instead of something being really good, it was “super nice”.

Kind of rolls off the tongue doesn’t it.
(Chester’s percentage of the proceeds will go to the Do Lectures fund).

Available in Pine for men and Purple for women 
 

10 things I can’t do without at the moment:

1. Bike rides with friends.

2. Bike rides on my own.

3. ‘Wolves’ by Phosphorescent. Can’t get to sleep without it.

4. Charlie Brooker, in The Guardian, on Twitter, on YHBW and Screenwipe. Grumpier than me.

5. Fig rolls, bananas and peanut butter. Biking fuel.

6. My guitar (my housemates might object).

7. Weekends.

8. Warm, light evenings and cold beer in the beer garden.

9. Bon Iver – still an everyday play after all this time.

10. Crailtap.com – the skateboarding equivalent of Perez. 

10 things I can do without at the moment:

1. The terrible road surfaces around here. I long to ride smooth tarmac.

2. Motorists who don’t know how to drive around cyclists.

3. The illness I can feel coming on.

4. The stack of laundry I can’t be bothered to do.

5. Fear that the Green Man Festival will sell out before I get tickets.

6. Constant rain.

7. Computers.

8. Cold beer in the beer garden.

9. Car trouble.

10. Did I mention the constant rain?