Wonder Thunder

Beehives and Rooftop Gardens

2011-06-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

Recently, we went down the street to see our old friend Sean. Sean and I met long ago on a remote hilltop in the middle of nowhere, otherwise known as college. Back then, I gave Sean some tips about growing tomatoes, but he never believed me until some fancy Seattle urban farmer confirmed these tomato facts. It's ok though, we can still be friends.
These days, Sean is part of a group of people renovating a giant building here in Ballard. Only few artists and small businesses occupy the building at the moment, but there are plans for more studios, retail space, and a potential mini ramp (do it!).
We toured the building all the way from its giant windows with sweeping views of the mountains to the creepy serial killer basement.

Here we saw newly installed bees!

It was the first really warm day of the year when we visited and the beehive was in a frenzy. Some alarm was expressed about the size and fury of the swarm but no one was stung and no epinephrine was administered. We hear it might take another year to get a significant amount of honey. We'll be waiting....

After the bees, we climbed the sketchiest spiral staircase ever up to the rooftop. The rooftop garden is currently in the works.

The beds will be built with french drain components to allow watering from below the plants. Porous tubes in the bottom of each bed are filled with water, sand around the tubes wicks the water out, making it available to the roots of the plants.
The same system also allows any excess water to be siphoned out via a spout on the outside of the bed. Since a rooftop garden can't drain water like a normal garden, this will prevent the formation of a muddy bog during the rainy winter months.

We're excited to see the plants, and see the system working. But there is this issue of getting three...no, eight(!) yards of dirt up three stories of building. Get those pulleys and buckets!

Timber!

2011-06-10T10:04:00.000-07:00

We awoke yesterday to find our street view obscured by tree limbs. Had we been magically transported to a woodland cabin paradise?! No, no, a limb from our birch tree had slowly lowered itself down on to our roof in the middle of the night.

This spectacle drew passersby in cars to make X-treme! faces at me while pointing at the limb (doyouseethis!?thereisatreeonyourhouse!!!), a dog walker begged their dog not to go under the tree limbs, the dog disobeyed, the sad owner was forced to crawl under the branches with his plastic sack hand. Two neighbors celebrated the imminent demise of our tree, one for the extra light brought to her garden, the other relief from the residue the tree litters all over the sidewalk and cars. Our landlord praised the saving of our sewer lines from the insidious roots.
Seriously though, I'm disappointed that our tree didn't make it on the Ballard Blog with all its reporting of local raccoon, crow, and squirrel activity, this is a notable random act of nature. One day, ballard blog.....one.....day.......

Unfortunately, after an evaluation from a local tree service, they determined that the tree is unstable(psychologically) and should be cut down. If we leave it standing we run the risk of random limbs falling on cars/people/errant pets. The good news is that once the tree is gone, our landlord is letting us turn the entire parking strip into a garden space, possibly with a replacement tree.

But not these species because they are illegal to plant in your parking strip: big leaf maple, oregon maple, all cottonwoods, lombardy poplar.........and after we fill out the permit to plant a tree. Living in the city is weird sometimes.

We hear a sod cutter is "easy" to operate. Updates later.

New Website!!!

2011-06-10T08:54:00.000-07:00

Finally, yes! We have just launched our new website.
Please peruse at your leisure.

Pepperminty.

2011-06-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

Actual sun today! Been cutting and washing mint, letting it dry and wilt on a sheet in the shade. At the end of the day, the mint will be clean and ready to hang up and dehydrate.

There's so much growing, it's likely we could get a gallon of dried leaves by the end of the summer. Buying mint at the grocery store is not only a waste of money since this plant is pretty invasive, but fresh mint tea is so intense, it makes store bought tea taste like a limp wristed sally drink. Do the right thing! and get a mint plant.

In our yard we have peppermint and spearmint. If making anything medicinal, stick with peppermint. It has the most potent volatile oils. Spearmint is better just for nice tasting tea or summer drinks.

When brewing peppermint tea, always keep it covered as it steeps. Peppermint contains fragile volatile oils, you can see them in a sort of oily sheen on top of the tea. The volatile oils can be destroyed by boiling and more will escape your tea in the steam as it steeps. Covering your tea as it steeps, keeps most of those oils inside the pot, so more get in your stomach where they belong. For instance, if you're drinking some peppermint tea to ease your stomach after you ate too much food, you would want more volatile oils in the tea because it will be more effective in making you not want to vomit. Volatile oils are good, don't let them escape! Cover that teacup.

Flower Tree

2011-06-01T19:28:00.000-07:00

This is a commemorative post to our rhododendron, the flowers of which have begun to fade, wilt, and litter our yard. This was last week.
Glory be!

See you next May.

The Bee Leaf

2011-05-28T07:11:00.000-07:00

Meet lemon balm. Its greek name, melisso-phyllum (bee leaf), has led to this plant being referred to as "Melissa".
I don't call my plant by a human name. It's already taking over the rest of the plants, acknowledging it too much may give it some supernatural power, leading to a Frankenstein style reanimation nightmare, leaves suffocating me in my sleep, etc....

Lemon balm has a nice lemony flavor. You can eat a leaf while procrastinating from mowing the yard. It contains various volatile oils that help to calm your busy mind, reduce nightmares, calm nerves, reduce anxiety, soothe restless sleep, in general, the plant will keep you calm.

Tea is the easiest way to eat the plant. When making tea from fresh plants, always use double what you would use when making tea form dried plants. This is to compensate for the water content of the fresh leaf.
A standard cup of tea is made with 1 tsp dried plant matter per 1 cup of water. When making tea from fresh plants, use 2 tsp leaves per cup. These guidelines are general though, you can make it stronger or weaker if you like. p.s. lemon balm is great mixed with mint.

Recipe! Triple infused tincture of lemon balm.
Typically a tincture is made by combining plants and alcohol, then letting them sit for several weeks. The alcohol will slowly extract the constituents of the plant. After 6-8 weeks(or longer) the plant matter is strained off and you are left with a concentrated plant tincture that is taken by the dropper full.

In this recipe, freshly wilted lemon balm is combined with vodka.

1. Pick your lemon balm and let it wilt for a day. This allows some of the water to get out of the leaves. It's good to use plant matter with less water since it can water down your final product as well as potentially allowing room for bacteria to grow. Here's our drying setup, some old veggie bag drawstring nailed to the wall and binder clips stolen form Sasha's poster show stuff. so fancy.

2. Once the leaves are wilted, fill a jar about 1/2 full of lemon balm. Pour the vodka over the plant, up to the neck of the jar.

3. Put a lid on it, keep the jar in a cool place, labeled with the date and ingredients, and shake it whenever you remember to.

4. After four weeks, the plant matter is strained out. Then, a fresh batch of lemon balm is added. Infuse for four more weeks. Strain. Add a third and final batch of lemon balm, then infuse for a final four weeks. Strain. Label it and store in a cool, dark place.

Your triple infused lemon balm tincture is done! Time to get stressed so you can try it out!

The alcohol preserves the properties of the plant indefinitely. The four weeks between each batch gives your lemon balm plant plenty of time to regrow before you harvest again. (p.s. this is the same method used to make homemade infused vodka(or whatever drink you fancy) for your backyard bartender dreams. It doesn't have to sit for four weeks, just until the strength of flavor is achieved.)

This tincture is sure to soothe any type of meltdown.
See you in four weeks, lemon balm vodka!

Loom Prep

2011-05-25T09:29:00.000-07:00

So the homemade warp winder did it's job and I measured out a 10" wide warp. Here it is half wound on to the loom. Everything went pretty smoothly, only one broken thread which coincidentally was on the very edge. That means no time consuming fixing of the warp!

Got the threads wound, tied them on the the front apron, and started in with some junky red yarn to space the warp threads out evenly.

This is the easiest time to check for threading errors, since you can weave a simple pattern and see where there are discrepancies. I had two threads going through the wrong heddles, but it was easy enough to fix. Just as long as there are no more broken threads....
Now I'm pretty much ready to start weaving....something. We'll see where this goes.

The Anti Vampire Remedy

2011-05-20T19:16:00.000-07:00

These garlic cloves are from Stephanie (our favorite person in general and former intern at Hogsback Farm!)...she gave them to us I'm sure with the idea that we'd be responsible garlic owners and put them in the ground in the fall so they'd be ready to grow at the first sings of spring.
But we never got around to it.
And we ate some.
And then I found the leftovers sprouting on the shelf in the mudroom.
So into the ground! Books tell me the results could be questionable....

*update! the garlic is growing tall, well just have to wait it out to see if decent edible bulbs form by the fall...

Shop Fancy at Metropolitan Market!

2011-05-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

We're super proud to let you know that Wonder Thunder goods are now available at Metropolitan Market! Be on the lookout if you are in the Seattle area! This place is awesome. If you ever need a quick lunch, their ready made soups and sandwiches are the best. If you need, you know, just groceries, they have those too. It's hard not to get stuck in their flower/garden area right at the front doors. With all the amazing plants and flower arrangement visions that overtake your brains you may never make it inside to our WonderT stuff. Try hard! Get there! And feel free to straighten our towels and fluff our bags if they seem in disarray. We will give you a shiny new Sacajawea dollar.

Warping Board Adventures

2011-05-16T18:06:00.000-07:00

Next up on the loom safari is the warping board!
A warping board is what is used to measure your warp out for the loom. Usually looks something like this...

This seemed simple enough to make and in the spirit of saving monies, I set off to Value Village, to find potential supplies. Miraculously, I came across this contraption, a collapsible wooden rack for $1.99. It's quickly transformed into a promising warping board.

First, pry all the tacks from one entire side of the rack and remove the slats.

After you remove the tacks, the pegs will be wobbly and need to be secured.
Flip it over and hammer a small nail, I used these white panel board nails, into the back of each peg. Besides, anchoring the pegs, the rack won't be collapsible anymore.

That's basically it. I cleaned off the dust and touched up some rough spots with sandpaper so they won't snag the threads. Might cut off some of the interior pegs in the future, they might be in the way of high speed warping. Measures 155", plenty of space to start out with!

Posters, Music, and Dice

2011-05-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

This past Friday the 13th, Fremont opened it's troll arms to welcome 112 Printworks, a screen-printing studio with gallery space and (soon to come) handmade goods and other niceties.
They were nice enough to have Sasha as their opening night artist.

Sasha and Andrew(co-owner of 112) lookin tough.

Inside was crowded with poster revelers, so people spilled outside and soon dice games dominated the sidewalks! Sasha bet his golden Sacajawea dollar, lost it, but won it back by the end.

The crowd was jostled about by the sounds of BOAT!

Later we saw this, which is exactly what it looks like........people taking shots from a ski. Totally unrelated to 112's opening but still a spectacle of note.

The opening was super packed, the space looked awesome, good luck to 112 Printworks!

Heddle Threader Sojourn.

2011-05-06T19:11:00.000-07:00

On the quest for weaving tools!

Pedaled this...

to here.....

to get a heddle threader....

stopped off here on the way home.

Unfortunately, the weaving works was out of everything else on the list...so....onward!

Urban Craft Uprising

2011-05-06T14:42:00.000-07:00

We just found out we were accepted to the Urban Craft Uprising summer show!
This is the first ear for us at the summer show, though maybe you've seen us at the annual holiday sales.
Always a good time!
Go ahead and mark your calendars!
July 9-10th, 2011!

Face Masks.

2011-05-06T14:21:00.000-07:00

Turns out we're actually creating gallery quality art here with these cat portraits!

Culture POP

2011-05-06T13:03:00.000-07:00

This attractive looking blog, Culture Pop, featured our veggie bags! Have a look around.....

Looms, flowers, and buses.

2011-05-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

This weekend was the end of the coldest April ever recorded in Washington history. And though it's back to pouring rain and cold blustery winds today.....yesterday was 24 hours of perfection.
We took the occasion to trek to Whidbey Island.

A loom was procured!

We feasted on spam and leper pickles.

Saw some epic views of tulips and daffodils.

And best of all, I added two pictures to my collection titled "Sad pictures of happy things for use in advertisements on mass transit".

Mass transit ads seem to serve to make you feel bummed out while you ride to work.
Maybe one day these photos will help to illustrate the unseen contaminants of tap water, last minute tax help, or perhaps even teenage abstinence....

Kompost Bunke!

2011-04-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

Ikea does make all my dreams come true! Take a look at out new compost container fence, Kompost Bunke.

These solid pine boards will keep your rotting scraps contained!

Though this classily designed dirt fence doesn't guard against foraging raccoons that are scarily intelligent and aggressive.... at least you will fit in with the rest of the Scandinavians.

This is exactly where I'll be storing my lutefisk, the unfortunate hominy of fish.

Really though, these boards are from our old Wonder Thunder display circa 2009. This display became dangerously wobbly, sending mini toasts flying through the air....
We're looking for new, lightweight, easy to assemble, yet unique display ideas if you happen to have any.....!

Measurable Amounts

2011-04-10T18:19:00.000-07:00

We've updated the bags a little, just a small change, but it could save you come pennies!
The weight of each bag is printed right on the outside, in the top left corner.
Now, the weight can be easily deducted right at the checkout counter. So don't worry about filling one of our sacks full of organic free range shade grown bpa cfc ddt free bulk foods, you won't be paying extra for even a fraction of an ounce.

So far this update is only available on sizes Large, Medium, and Small (also known as Set of 3 veggie bags!) in green, red, and blue. We're working on the rest!

Nettle Hunter

2011-04-09T12:51:00.001-07:00

One of many things great about spring, is the free food popping up in the park.

Discovery Park in Seattle, a 500 acre wonderland, has a forest floor carpeted by stinging nettles. You will get stung cutting them, but once you get home and throw them in a boiling pot of water, you have a harmless wilted green ready to succumb to your demands.

Highly recommended: Nettle Paneer.
Get fancy and make your own paneer as well. It's easy. Really.

Besides nettles, Discovery Park has lots of other junk, such as.....

Packs of abandoned pet rabbits to chase!

Starfish to poke with a stick!

And blackberries to eat and stain your skin and teeth.

Bring a pie crust.

2011-04-04T17:51:00.000-07:00

Blog!

It's been so long! Where have you been? It doesn't matter, I'm just glad you're back.

Have you seen this?....

I like this one, by Marisa Winkler.

But i would also add "bathtub" to the list.

Write a Letter that lasts forever!

2010-09-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

Perfect and unique gift for moms, dads, grandparents, and favorite teachers!

Have your kids write a letter or draw a picture on the notebook paper towel with the provided fabric marker.

Create a one of kind gift!

Towel is still completely usable and washable for the kitchen.

The marker draws in a thick, kid friendly 3 mm line. Dries instantly. No ironing needed. Weather-proof. Non-toxic. Machine washable. Can be dry cleaned.

Single towels are available in our shop if you need. The fabric markers are great quality and will draw on multiple towels or future projects!

20"x27" organic cotton towel.

Simplify your fall vegetable explosion!

2010-09-08T10:40:00.001-07:00

Real Simple!
We love this magazine. It's especially nice to look at after watching an episode of Hoarders.

They included our bags in a list of items that make grocery shopping easy.
See it here!

Unfortunate Recipe of the Day!

2010-08-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

Plum Macaroon Bombe!
An enjoyable medley of a "sherbet-like mixture" and "low calorie dessert topping". Made with reduced calorie canned purple plums, optional red food coloring, and broken macaroons (so sad).
This gravity defying dessert is sure to please the elderly and most dessert mold enthusiasts.
Serves 8 hungry men.

Apartment Therapy House Tour

2010-08-02T12:28:00.001-07:00

A tour of our house! Thanks to Apartment Therapy.....

Amelia

2010-07-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

Meet Amelia!
A little store in Oxford, Mississppi that carries a curated array of lovely things, including some WT items.
Take a look at their new website.
And if you're ever in Mississippi, stop in, say hi, get yourself a soda.

Here's a little about Oxford, taken from Amelia's website, just to entice you......

"Just an hour south of Memphis, TN, Oxford sits in the hills of North Mississippi off of Highway 7.

Home to The University of Mississippi and William Faulkner, it’s a town full of world renowned artists (Jerry Allen, Glennray Tutor), musicians (Colour Revolt, Dent May, Charlie Mars, Shannon McNally), writers (Barry Hannah (R.I.P), Jack Pendarvis, Ace Atkins and Tom Franklin) and record label Fat Possum (Andrew Bird, Wavves, The Walkmen, Band of Horses).

Oxford is also host to Makers’ Market, a market of DIYers that gather the first and third Saturday of every month, just footsteps away from the front door of Amelia.

With the Oxford Independent Film Festival and The Southern Food Ways Symposium gaining more and more national recognition every year, Oxford has so much more to offer than many of it’s counter parts.

Often described as what one would imagine Athens, GA was like twenty plus years ago, it’s still young and under the radar.

Check in on the ground floor.

Vacancy."

Extra large bags!

2010-05-20T18:32:00.001-07:00

After months and months of deliberation(not really), we've finally decided to release a newer, larger, most biggest vegetable bag into our vegetable bag line. At a whopping 14" x 16", only you and your spiritual higher power can fathom what could be put in these massive, colorful, and useful drawstring bags. Perhaps a bushel of apples? Perhaps your pet cat. The possibilities are near endless! Available in our Etsy shop and on wonder-thunder.com in all three classic colors!

New Tea Towels!

2010-03-18T18:01:00.001-07:00

We're very excited to present to you our new and improved tea towels! Now printed on 100% organic cotton and all over prints, these things are the hot business! We updated our 4 existing designs and added a brand new one- Wide Ruled Paper Towel, the name says it all!

A brief recap of a birthday weekend.

2010-02-22T18:15:00.001-08:00

Today is Sasha's 28th!

A cake was made.

Seagulls ate popcorn.

We were almost kicked by a baby alpaca.

Moss was traversed.

Words were written in the sand.

Views were seen.

Notes were left.

The Stump.

2010-02-18T19:32:00.001-08:00

We rode the rails from Pennsylvania to North Dakoter. From Tallahassee to Eureka Springs, Mississippi to Arizoney! Thanks for the votes, all you patriotic muckrakers.

Medals coming soon. They're being polished by the shoe shine boy.

Daily Grommet

2010-02-16T12:30:00.001-08:00

See our feature on the Daily Grommet today! We couldn't be more pleased!

Blog Protective Services.

2010-02-06T12:03:00.000-08:00

Oh, the neglect. Our blog can't feed itself or even make a phone call, our priorities are obviously in the toilet.

For the last few months we've been working on bringing you a new revolutionized set of veggie bags. Finally, we've made some breakthroughs and within the next few weeks, we'll be presenting a serious upgrade! All we can say now is that it involves organic fibers and more cute graphic splendor.

Until then.....we're totallllllllllly excited to have a little post on Better Living Through Design, a blog chosen as one of Time Magazine's top design influencers. Hope we can influence you to give up your plastic bags. They’re soft, friendly, and won’t choke a turtle to death. Say no to plastic and adopt a set today!

Broadway Debut

2009-12-23T10:51:00.000-08:00

Yay! We're featured seller for a few days on Etsy!

New Prints!

2009-12-19T15:15:00.001-08:00

We're really excited to present our new screen-prints! Now available in our Etsy store!

Well then!

2009-11-20T16:28:00.001-08:00

So this is very exciting! Things are very busy this holiday season!

Next month you'll be able to find us at Seattle's Urban Craft Uprising, as well as Portland's Crafy Wonderland! True story!

It

2009-11-18T10:10:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's the it bag of the season.

Fall is here!

2009-11-02T19:39:00.000-08:00

We've been so busy here at Wonder Thunder headquarters we haven't had much of a chance to update our Internet presence! Thanks to your interest in our offerings we're staying incredibly busy keeping up with our stock and orders! We're working on some new items as we speak!

We now have new sets of vegetable bags available in our Etsy store, and will soon add them here!

We also have the Complicated Clouds shirts in new colors, once we have pictures we'll add them!

New colors of the Octopus's Accident pillow are printing this week as well as reprints of the tea towels, we'll let you know when they're done!

We're also working on some new screen-printed posters, as well as some new tea towels!

This December we'll have a booth at both Crafty Wonderland and Urban Craft Uprising, we'll have more details soon!

Just as fetid as west virginia's water.

2009-09-15T16:19:00.000-07:00

hello there binary friends. i hope you've had your honey crisp apple today.

bumbershoot went great despite the monsoons, we heard about 9.4 million people say "toast!" followed by giggling or just more "toast! toast! toast!" we only had nine pillows to offer you, though. so if you were one of the lucky 9, you can put your extraordinary eye and snatching skills on your resume. it may be useful when applying for jobs in the thieving arts, fly catching, noodling, even...

we have a new upcoming event, a brand new one for us this year. We'll be participating in the Sustainable Ballard Festival September 26th and 27th. We'll be offering our reusable vegetable bags for all of your bagging needs. Please come by if you're in the area!

(roughly copied and pasted from their website!)
Sustainable Ballard is a non-profit organization started in 2003, as a positive and active response to the Iraq War. We wanted to explore what we as a community could 'do' to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Sustainable Ballard embraces the idea that we are all founders of a sustainable Ballard, where community self-reliance and sustainability is good foreign policy implemented locally. Comprised of local neighbors, Sustainable Ballard originally organized around the idea of Ballard becoming the first US town to become energy interdependent.

Though they mention Ballard as a town, it's now just the neighborhood of Seattle where we live. Ballard used to be it's own rough and tumble sailor filled city but was sneakily annexed by Seattle. We hear rumors from the 1900's that that Seattle put a dead horse in Ballard's water supply in an effort to convince them to vote for the annexation.

Anyway...The 6th Annual Sustainable Ballard Festival. No dead ponies, but still fun for all.

Ordinary Machine.

2009-09-02T08:43:00.000-07:00

We've been so busy gazing at the fog seeping over Magnolia we haven't had the logical thought enough to write! But here we are alive and well! We're just days away from Bumbershoot (September 5,6,7) where we'll be exhibiting and selling with lots of other talented folks at Flatstock 22. Come see us in the Fisher Pavilion! We have some brand new things including a Moody Toast tshirt, you really need one. We'll have Sasha's posters, WT vegetable bags, complicated cloud tees, and lots of things on sale.

(the colors are backwards every time i upload this........)

Also exciting! Sasha designed the artwork for this years Bumbershoot campaign!

Be on the look out for butterflies, cupcakes, and skateboards, plus a tshirt of a guy boxing a bear!

Many thank you's to Daily Candy for featuring our vegetable bags yesterday!

There are lots of new place to find Wonder Things! If your are in the area, please stop by these lovely establishments!

Grand Somerville, Mass. Grand is a retailer specializing in contemporary home furnishings, apparel, and gifts. Grand brings to Boston a new sense of style by providing the latest products from independent designers around the globe that focus on quality, individuality, and affordability.

Little Otsu San Francisco, CA Little Otsu carries paper goods along with a selection of favorite small companies. We value well made, handmade, fairly made, domestic goods and feature a variety of them in our storefront.

Amelia, Oxford, Mississippi

Frank Austin, TX Hot dogs, cold beer, artisan sausage, wonder thunder.

Velocity Art and Design Seattle, WA Velocity Art and Design is a business committed to enriching lives through the life-enhancing elements of art and design. A comprehensive website, curated Seattle showroom, and supplemental social endeavors, each in their own way, promote the importance of creativity and quality. Home furnishings and artwork embody standards of innovation, accessibility, humor, responsibility, and visual joy.

Renegade Handmade

2009-07-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

This weekend!

No Notion Like Rainbow Notion.

2009-06-27T16:29:00.000-07:00

Oh yes! One of our favorite places Bluebottle Art Gallery and Store did a little interview with us. Read it and do a little shopping!

We're still getting ready for Readymade Handmade in San Francisco (July 18th and 19th). Here's a really basic preview of our new booth design. Does it lure you inside?

My computer is about to overheat from the extreme heat of indoors. More soon!

Finally!

2009-06-20T17:25:00.000-07:00

Summer's finally here(if you're living in the Pacific Northwest, otherwise you should be pretty deep into the heat), and we're happy to announce the first couple items for the season!

We've made some new batches of our famous vegetable bags, this time in a bright green color! We're real happy with them, hopefully you will be too!

Secondly, our new Moody Toast Pillow is now available for purchase! He's a nice little addition to any moody household, flip him over depending on how you're feeling.

We'll have some new shirts up verrrrrry soon!

Big things!

2009-05-28T14:03:00.000-07:00

Are in the works! We've been busy playing house and getting our new studio space in to shape. We've managed to get things in working order, and here's some pictures of a few things that we've been doing!

Here's our new bready friend, he helps us decide what kind of mood to be in each day.
Yay...

or nay...

Some stacks of fabric, take note of the green!

About ten loaves worth of bread.

The bathroom in the studio/ basement is pretty intense. For now it's our jars of food room. On the left we have what will hopefully be a gallon of ginger kombucha(made with black tea). On the right we have what will be some fermented vegetables, namely pickles and carrots.

And there's been a little bit of this going on as well.

That paper bag in yonder corner holds what will be a small army of praying mantises to devour the coming aphid scourge that will be our neighborhood.

And it looks like the cat made it to the new house as well.

New internetings!

2009-04-28T22:56:00.000-07:00

Couple of new things came out this week-

The new issue of The Crafts Report is out, we have a little quote in the Beginning Business article.

Today the folks at Re-nest were kind enough to feature some of our new goods!

And Adriana van Dam at the Seattle Examiner had a very nice write up today featuring our vegetable bags and more! Hurrah!

Tomorrow is the big move in!

3 more days!

2009-04-27T21:54:00.000-07:00

3 more days of free shipping! Take advantage!

Brand spanking new

2009-04-22T18:35:00.000-07:00

WEBSITE!
That's right! We've decided that one online marketplace(etsy) just wasn't enough for our worldly wares. In our new internet website lair of magnificance you'll find all of our wonderous goods, locations where our items can be found in person(real life 3d!), and all kinds of other useful information.

In honor of this momentus occasion we've decided that all standard domestic shipping(within the US) be free until the end of the month! That's right, FREE SHIPPING until April 30th! But, in order to get the free shipping you must place the order on wonder-thunder.com. Deal? Deal.

Go on, have a look!

Towels?

2009-04-20T18:12:00.001-07:00

Indeed!

Hot off the Wonder Thunder press (and a week before the big move), two brand new tea towels(or towels, as they are also known) to brighten up a kitchen near you. Weighing in at a beefy 18 x 28 and featuring brand new illustrations just in time for Spring, these towels are a force to be reckoned with(or enjoyed).

Destruction of Property

2009-04-16T13:02:00.000-07:00

In some act of defiance, Fatty pushed our picklemeister jar out of the cabinet and smashed all of his feast ware.

Maybe he was tired of eating out of a teacup. Fatty ain't no girl's toy!

Anybody else remember this nightmare-inducing psychedelic horrorfest Raggedy Anne movie?
From the simultaneously swimming in and eating the Greedy to the black and white land where everyone talks in car horns to the king whose various body parts expand when he's laughing, this movie created a dark spot in my psyche.

Interrogated! Again!

2009-04-13T14:03:00.000-07:00

Here's another wonderful little interrogation with us here at Wonder Thunder Industries, this time it's a little more freespirited....Thanks to Bri at The Craft Begins...

Pre move in pictures!

2009-04-13T11:00:00.001-07:00

It's hard to take pictures inside that do the rooms justice(everything is way bigger in person), but here's some glimpses into our new rental! we're really lucky to have found this place, we'll be the first renters ever!

the backyard as viewed from our future bedroom-

one corner of the kitchen, complete with curtains

our incredible frigidaire flair stove! check out the retractable range option and great pattern on the ovens!

partial view of the living room and fire place

the living room from the other side, you can almost make out the high ceilings! similar ceilings in the bedrooms, but the bedrooms were hard to get a good picture of!

the workshop area, complete with all kinds of stuff! most of it we won't keep, but we had a chance to go through it all and kept what we could!

future workroom of wonder thunder industries. once we get rid of that huge freeze and move some stuff around it will be grand! finally in a finished room! no more cold winters! plus it has it's own bathroom(not pictured).

this is the bar room(soon to be former bar room). the fridge is gonna go and this will be the screen-printing room! so nice to be able to print inside! there's an old tv we might keep to make a table out of.

another view of the backyard, when it's not cloudy you can see olympics back there!

the covered cabana/deck! soon to be fatty's summer hangout. might even be enough room for a mini ramp in there! there's an uncovered deck area too!

so, yeah! that's a brief overview of our new digs! there's 3 bedrooms upstairs(we'll have a guestroom) that we didn't get pictures of, but they are also awesome! two more weeks and we'll be movin on up(back in time!) the front of the house is nice too, but it was raining so we didnt get any pictures!

Moving back in time!

2009-04-10T13:33:00.000-07:00

Time to pack up! Looks like we're moving into a new house! Nick at Nite house here we come!

Interrogated!

2009-04-08T12:40:00.001-07:00

We've been very fortunate with online activity and kind words spoken in regards all our hard work! This week Tina over at Pfeiffer Photos has posted a blog entry of an interview with us truly! She runs a great blog over there, complete with a soundtrack! Have a look!

Thanks to everyone who entered in the Oh How Lovely vegetable bag giveaway, we were blown away by the response! Congratulations to Megan from Spring City, TN! We will have a package out to you full of god knows what!

Behind the rainbow.

2009-04-03T13:05:00.000-07:00

It's nice when people show of their aesthetically pleasing work rooms. We'd like to showcase the dark under belly of this trend. These pictures make our basement studio sort of look like a dump. While this is half true, it's more spacious and habitable than these pictures can tell. If you are claustrophobic or detest clutter, proceed at your own risk.

First, as you descend the stairs, you enter Meagan's piles of wreckage. Wonder Thunder sewing, special project sewing, and sewing for other people makes for piles of stuff. At least it comes out pretty in the end. Please note the cat in his customized suitcase, stretched out in front of a million degree heater.

Fatty is staying very warm in his suitcase. The heater is turned up to four and extra hot both of which attest to the climate of our surroundings. The pockets of his quilt stuffed case are filled with his precious belongings, toys, scarf, chicken hat, string, ribbon, catnip vial, leash and harness, and various cat portraiture.

Look to your left and you will see Sasha hard at work cutting out vegetable bags. A cutting stance this perfect only comes with dedicated practice. This picture also features all two of our windows. In the daytime, you can see grass, the neighbors fence, and our recycling.

Then, immediately behind you is the illustrious packing and shipping counter. Here we collect those used envelopes, cut out addresses, and wrestle with tape. The bright lights are obscuring the best part of the shipping island, pictures of little girls with puppies and on swings.

That's all the pictures for now. We left out some great parts like the washer and dryer, supplies closet, and the cat box. Until then, feel free to model your own home studio after our cave like dwelling.
Wonder Thunder: Making the ordinary extraordinary from a local basment and so can you.

Vegetable Bag Giveaway!

2009-03-30T14:57:00.001-07:00

True story! Head on over to Oh How Lovely and try to score you some free digs! Lord knows what else we'll throw in for the winner....could be a baby raptor, perhaps a couple fertile chicken eggs, possibly a Waffle House giftcard, or maybe even a ticket to paradise.....no one knows but the soothsayers!

How many?

2009-03-28T22:04:00.001-07:00

The Kitchn.

2009-03-27T15:27:00.000-07:00

Thanks a lot to Cara Jordan, a much missed Craft Center cohort, for letting us know our vegetable bags were on Apartment Therapy's The Kitchn!
We're happy these reusable bags are catching on. Maybe the island of trash in the Pacific won't run aground too soon.
Keep up your non plastic use!
Shame your friends into giving it up, too!

Prints. Patterns.

2009-03-25T12:07:00.001-07:00

I love print and pattern, so now we can scream in a pillow because they did a little write up on wonder thunder. yay!

on an unrelated note, here is the cat being cute.

Made it.

2009-03-23T18:37:00.001-07:00

Finally, we got into a gift guide.
I like slow food, cuz it is easier for me to eat.

Mom Needs Extra Cash.

2009-03-21T12:26:00.000-07:00

Wonder Thunder invades Atlanta!
Please direct yourself to the video on the right side of the screen.

Font page action!

2009-03-18T10:22:00.000-07:00

I learned how to take a screen shot just for this.

New pics!

2009-03-17T18:23:00.000-07:00

Have a look at our new vegetable bags in action! Pretty nice!

Extravaganza

2009-03-16T14:56:00.000-07:00

It's spring cleaning at Wonder Palace!
We have a new reduced section at our Etsy store, please take advantage post haste.
Wallets, embroidered portraits, and more reduced just for you.

We are trying to understand it.

2009-03-12T15:31:00.000-07:00

Follow us on twitter? if you want, i think we are there. in binary space. come give us a hand so we don't float into space just like joaquin/leaf in space camp. ANDIE!

New vegetable bags! Finished!

2009-03-03T17:41:00.000-08:00

Feast your eyes upon these, conscious shoppers of the world...

Pretty nice, eh? We're sure pleased with these new vegetable bags!
These are sets of four reusable shopping bags complete with drawstrings, made from preshrunk recycled cotton muslin. A great biodegradable alternative to plastic bags.

Take to the farmer's market to bag your apples, cabbage, limes, lettuce, snap peas, or radishes without that horrid plastic bag guilt. Perfect for the bulk aisle of the grocery store for lugging home a bunch of bulk cereal, gummy sharks, or chocolate bits.

They won't effect the scale at the grocery store either!
The large bag weighs .75 oz, the medium .45 oz, and the small .25 oz. The largest bag will add .001 lb.

They come in these sizes:
10” x 12”
6” x 10”
6” x 5.5”
3.5” x 5”

And you can get yourself some HERE.

Your face!

2009-02-26T11:06:00.000-08:00

Be our Facebook fan!

Get what you want.

2009-02-25T09:57:00.000-08:00

We finally got in all sizes of our tees! So if you haven't been finding your size for a while, it is now available.
We're currently taking the pictures of the new vegetable bags, should be up in a few days, stay close!

New vegetable bags!

2009-02-19T18:20:00.000-08:00

We've been hard at work! We have new vegetable/bulk/grocery bags in the works, as you can see! We're switching over to this recycled cloth fabric and a sweet new all over print! More to come!

Funeral Procession

2009-02-10T12:52:00.001-08:00

Sunday was a sad day here at Wonder Thunder HQ. Our first foray into international pickle domination was met with agonizing defeat, there was nothing left we could do but bury the evidence.

As you can see, the pickles are less than suitable for consumption, and were given a definitive "Thumbs Down" by our resident pickle panel of judge.

Upon our arrival to the grave site, we found a lone soul who was ecstatic about our pickle disaster. Every cloud really does have a silver lining, it seems.

The grisly scene. We didn't want the pickles to be lonely in their dirt dungeon, so we threw some other compost in there too. Our worm friend could barely keep composure when he/she saw the afternoon buffet.

Digging the grave. You can't hear it in the picture, but there were fireworks and a 4 gun salute going off in the background.

Final words...

Covering the evidence. Never to be seen again.

Fatty was visibly shaken by the whole ordeal, and refused to come outside during the funeral. He watched from the dining room and shed a couple tears.

Time to try again!

Nope.

2009-02-07T16:56:00.001-08:00

The naming of things

2009-02-06T10:23:00.001-08:00

Inspiration Nation!(Friday).

Tomorrow marks 2 weeks for our briny jar of pickle mystery! If they're not acceptably pickly then it's back to the drawing board. This time with smaller cucumbers and genuine spring water.

For now, we have a some things to share with you from the world wide internet.

Our Seattle choir brethren Fleet Foxes released this charming video for their song "Mykonos" earlier this week, constructed entirely from cut paper!

Mykonos from Grandchildren on Vimeo.
There's also a neat making of video

Mykonos making of from Grandchildren on Vimeo.

We can't get enough of this Cookie Monster cupcake we found on Flickr. Laughs for days, indeed.

This week we were fortunate enough to receive some new art for the Wonder Thunder Castle, namely this wonderful screen- print from associate Tyler Stout. Fortunate indeed, as they have since sold out!

That's it for now. It's time to go back to coughing.

Not a quite a pickle factory.

2009-01-30T14:32:00.000-08:00

We've mentioned we're trying to brew these pickles in the lacto-fermentation method. Basically you seal some cucumbers in a container (in our case a gallon glass jar with an air lock, traditionally ceramic crocks) with salt water, dill, garlic, coriander, and a variety of other spices. We added a habenero to ours, hoping to recreate a great spicy garlic pickle my dad made. The instructions told us we'd have perfect pickles in 5 or so days, but so far, in our taste tests, we have cucumber flavored with garlic water. They smell amazing, but I think the fermentation process has yet to reach the inside of the vegetable. We started out with a few things going against us. First of all, we used normal sized cucumbers instead of the preferred small pickling cucumbers. We found some pickling cucumbers later on in the week at Uwajimaya, the amazing and giant asian grocery store. Thanks to Eric Eugene Smith for that enlightening tip. Secondly, we didn't use filtered water, but the filthy, unsightly, evil, cancer causing tap water straight from our Seattle pipes. We drink the water all the time with no thoughts, but some people seem to detest the tap....we don't know if it really makes a differnce in the pickles. And lastly, it seems that organic unwashed cucumbers ferment better. Ours were neither. The skins of unwashed cucumbers have more of the good bacteria (maybe bacteria is incorrect, i should check with a pickle authority on that one) than washed/processed cucumbers.
So we're giving them a few more days to see if they start to transform. A beautiful pickle emerges from the ratty cocoon of a cucumber.......
They might not be ready in time for our Refuge From the Superbowl party, but one day, pickle success will be ours.

The set up.

Cucumbers in their briney prison.

Where have you been all my life.

2009-01-28T11:14:00.001-08:00

Let's try and start a trend!
Inspiration Station(Wednesdays)!

I'm in love with this.........

.....a website called Volksfaden that carries fabrics by a range of designers but heads up each portfolio with a vintage yearbook fabric collage.

Some of Wonder Thunder's favorite things! Graphic patterns and old yearbooks. Yes!

I saw this website today, full of wonderful ideas and constructions, the work of Thomas Keeley.

In the audio realm, the music of Tallest Man on Earth and Sleepy Eyes of Death have been jamming our headwaves pretty frequently this week.

And finally, a week ago today we were fortunate enough to see Jenny Lewis perform here in Seattle! Sorry for the poor quality video(we didn't film it).

Subscribe to happiness today!

2009-01-27T16:05:00.000-08:00

We're gonna start doing this thing where if you sign up for our mailing list, we'll send you some special subscriber only deals through the email. Free shipping, discounts, and possibly some giveaways are some of the many things you have to look forward to when on the Wonder Thunder email list. Other possible things you might get are wittily written prose, captivating photography, and the heart warming sensation of supporting the partially unemployed. Yes, Wonder Thunder is one half victim to the massive job cuts of current day america! So, as not to dwell on the negative, we're offering you some sweet deals on some handmade things that will make you laugh more often than cry. But you have to sign up! Send us your desires at wonderthunder@gmail.com.

Not so elaborate post from the sickly and unbrushed.

2009-01-26T12:13:00.000-08:00

We're in a little write up on Apartment Therapy from a few days ago. That necktie ice cream never gets less cute. Thanks Apartment Therapy and Sararae!

I've got a pretty awesome cold at the moment, but this tea, by Flying Bird Botanicals, is saving my life.

Have you read The New Kings of Nonfiction? It's well worth getting the plague for just to have the time off to read.

Will we remain mysterious?

2009-01-24T20:00:00.002-08:00

Yes! Mystery is synonymous with Wonder Thunder. But we just joined Facebook, got booked in the face space.....you can be our friend if you like. We will keep our secrets though.

Pickle Factory.

2009-01-24T14:15:00.000-08:00

We're deeper in the process of pickle making today, collecting the mustard seeds and pickling salts. Last week, we received the picklemeister in the mail. Things will be brewing soon! But more on that later. We have to go up to Fremont's Peak Park, to look at the view while it's still sunny.

Until then, here's something to look at. OMG Posters had Sasha answer some soul searching questions and got a tour of our house too! You can see all our junk in full color, plus our rustic workspace.

Teapot Massacre

2009-01-23T11:46:00.000-08:00

We've gone a long long time. Or so it seems and so we always say.
Since getting back from Tennessee, we've been trying hard to think of ways to make Wonder Thunder better. More awesome, more funny. More honed, like an olympic athlete, yet still soft and nice to squeeze. An emotional olympic athlete. An athlete that cries when bunnies walk on clover. Yes, the vision is clear........
One thing we're going to take on this year, is hopefully selling in more retail stores. If anyone knows of a store in your area that might take kindly to crying toast, please let us know. We're sort of lost at the moment on how to find appropriate stores in fancy states like California and New York, much less places like Nebraska. We'd love to inhabit your town! Let us know the best place you love to shop.
We've talked about making some new big toast pillows and some new fabric vegetable bags.
Big toast pillows may or may not have a smiling side to counteract the angry side, some people, specifically siblings of mine, feel the need to soothe crying toast. A happy toast side would make this soothing and spreading of happiness possible.
We also realized that rip stop vegetable bags, though reusable, aren't biodegradable, which sort of defeats the purpose in the long run. Expect some new ones to show up in the shop sometime. I you think you might prefer the rip stop version, please go get your self a set, cuz what we have is all that's left.
Off to try to decipher and use? google analytics.......
Also, hypothetically, if your copper teapot was horribly burned in a boil dry incident and now resembles a black and scaley version of it's former self, do you think it's still safe to drink out of?

Holiday cat.

2008-12-25T13:59:00.000-08:00

Fatty is in the holiday spirit.

Muck Luck

2008-12-20T20:05:00.000-08:00

It's snowing!
Fatty gets a day off of school!

We encountered the first snow earlier this week at Crafty Wonderland in Portland.

We had a fish taily drive to the Convention Center.

Here's our the side of our booth!

I borrowed some of Jessie's shoes to replace my holey converse.

Later, sledding happened.

But that was last weekend!
It's a blizzard in Seattle right now!
We just hiked through five inches of snow to get to the grocery store at midnight.
After some driving drama on thursday and friday (snow drifts, spinning tires, malfunctioning windshield sprayers, blinding snow sun, stuck station wagons, crowded hour behind schedule buses...) we've sworn off driving till the first wildflower blooms.
More later on the punch in the face the northwest is taking from the arctic!

Wonderland of Craft!

2008-12-09T15:03:00.000-08:00

Our first foray into the Urban Craft Uprising this weekend went well! Over 7500 people came through to see all the fancy wares and support the small businesses! Continuing with the holiday craft sale theme, Wonder Thunder will be hitting the asphalt towards Crafty Wonderland this Sunday in Portland , Oregon!

We recently received some photos of some younger Wonder Thunder supporters, Penny Scout Glasgow and Jay Worley.
Here's Penny sporting her Octopus shirt! She sure is cute!

And here's Jay donning his Sun and Tools shirts!

Time to prepare for Portland!

Listen up ya'lllllllll

2008-12-03T14:32:00.001-08:00

Holy calamity!
Just you let you uns know, we'll be at the Urban Craft Uprising show this weekend at the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall.
In all of our thunderous glory!
There's a brief interview with us up on Urban Craft's blog.
You can learn all about us if you didn't already know enough. Somehow we forgot to mention Fatty which is an abomination and a disgrace.

Will Fatty forgive us?

No. Not since we gave his tshirt to Otis.

We've been busy!

2008-11-26T15:22:00.001-08:00

There's no excuse like the "We've been busy" excuse, especially when it's true! We have been toiling away at a whole slew of new stuffed items!

This holiday season we're having the first annual

***WONDER THUNDER MILLION DOLLAR FIRE SALE***
Thursday November 27th through Monday December 1st
Any order of $100 or more will receive free 1" pins, limited edition Wonder Thunder decal, and a 2.5" Mini Toast Plush!
Any order of $75 or more will receive free shipping!
http://wonderthunder.etsy.com

All of the new stuff included!

We're very excited about these brand new Strawberry- Banana plushes! This new plush features a strawberry heart that lives inside the banana in a secret pocket! About 12" in length.

We also have some new decorative pillows printed with allover illustrations!

The Little Forest Pillows are 10" x 12" and are available in Orange and Green colorways.

The High Seas pillows are around 10" x 10" and are available in black and red colorways.

We've brought our crowd pleasing Octopus Pillow back into the spotlight and are now in stock!

And finally we have more of the Mini Octopus an Toast plushes in stock!

Have a great holiday weekend! More news about Christmas time Craft Fairs coming next week!

Coasts and Prints!

2008-10-30T11:11:00.000-07:00

We were fortunate enough to spend part of this past weekend exploring some of Oregon's finest natural finds....from the coast to lava fields and waterfalls in between!

Lava Fields with a view of the Sisters Mountains

The Lava field observatory

Waterfalls because of gravity!

Outside the Devil's Punchbowl

Inside the Bowl of Satan

And checking up on ol' Pre in Eugene.

We've been slowly adding some individual prints to our Etsy store, with the option of buying them already framed! Please take a look!

Starting this weekend we will have some of our items for sale locally! Finally! Bluebottle on Pine St. here in Seattle will have a cache of Wonder Thunder stuff starting tomorrow!

Fleeting of the foxes

2008-10-20T12:09:00.000-07:00

We were fortunate enough to catch Seattle locals Fleet Foxes this weekend at the legendary Moore Theatre, and boy did they sing pretty. This was the third time we've seen them this year, but the first time in an environment like the Moore. Very good indeed! They just wrapped up their North American tour, so hopefully some of you American blog readers got to catch them!

In the Halloween tradition we've been trying to inject some creepy movie watching into our weeks, this week we caught up with some Guillermo Del Toro and an 80's cult classic.

All of which were a treat in their own special ways.

And, we picked up a copy of our favorite new book, Over and Over by Mike Perry. Filled with fantastic hand drawn patterns and illustrations! Highly recommended!

That's all for now! Time to doodle up some pillows!

Blogging our way into the past!

2008-10-14T20:35:00.000-07:00

Hello, strangers! It certainly has been a spell since we last spoke! In that time we wonder thunderers have been plum across the country and back, have witnessed the world in financial despair, watched a good bit of Deadwood, saw a couple movies, read some books, did some painting, and well, lots of other stuff! Everything but update our little blog, it seems. What slackers we've become! But, no worry, we are still alive! And updating! Let's start things off with some pictures, shall we?

We printed, sewed, and stuffed these little guys for our friend Amy over at Pikaland for her seasonal Pikapackages! They're also available in our Etsy shop!

Here we have Wonder Thunder associate and benefactor F.M. sawing away at some home grown garlic wearing his new favorite t-shirt!

And here's Wonder thunder patron Petro wearing her Complicated Clouds shirt while enjoying a smoked turkey leg at the Mid- South Fair! Beware the snake lady! Tricky business!

Our spell of internet absence was not without some Fatty devotion. Having little self control, and particularly enjoying laughs at the expense of others, we found the time to put some things on our cat.
First, innocently enough, a Dixie cup which he enjoys immensely.

Second, a chicken hat. We figured Fatty could use a Halloween costume, and seeing how he's earned himself a reputation as the local coward, a chicken costume has been deemed appropriate. He loves the chicken hat only slightly more than the Dixie cup.

In Seattle, there is no such thing as summer. There's some months where it's spring-ish with relatively warm temperatures... then sometime in July it gets cold again and the frigid rainy hand of winter starts pulling us back in. Thankfully enough, we have a fireplace to help keep the house warm, and the cat mesmerized.

Today, on an unusually sunny yet cold day, Meagan and Fatty traverse hills, oceans, basins, and lava fields to pick some apples in the furthest regions of our backyard. They're almost ripe. The apples.

Wonder Thunder is happy to announce that we will be part of the inaugural craft community that is Paper n Stitch, a new website created to help promote artists and boutiques! It launches tomorrow, check it out!

We're also glad to report that all of our t-shirts in our Etsy shop are on sale for no other reason other than we say so.

In December we will have booths at Seattle's Urban Craft Uprising and Portland's Crafty Wonderland! So, we'll be spending the rest of October and November preparing for them! Soon we will have new pillows and shirts in our Etsy shop! And who knows what else!?

OH! Halloween is coming up! Any ideas what you're gonna be?

New vegetable bags!

2008-09-15T15:56:00.001-07:00

We recently whipped up some fancy new vegetable bags, a modern take on the original! The bags now feature a cute produce illustration to lighten up your day and all come with a draw string sewn in to the top! They come in Royal Blue or Grass Green. Pretty cool, right? They come in sets of 3 sizes for one low price! You can bag pretty much anything you want in these guys. They are machine washable and weigh almost nothing! Renounce plastic!

Later this week Wonder Thunder will be making a departure to our ancient homelands to seek southern heat enlightenment and the bright lights of Rock City. Any orders will be shipped as soon as we return at the beginning of October! Totally gary!

Some new items!

2008-09-04T17:32:00.001-07:00

In preparation for Bumbershoot, we whipped up a couple new Wonder Thunder items! Feast your eyes!

A limited edition Mini Print set! Nine 6" x 6" 3 color screen-prints!

A new baby tee featuring a hammer, screwdriver, and custom dye!

Another new baby tee featuring our famous octopus!

Here's a shot of our booth from the Flatstock show...

And lastly, Fatty models by his favorite Ice Cream pillow...

Bumbershoots!

2008-09-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who came out to Flatstock 18 at Bumbershoot 2008! It was an incredibly busy weekend, but a good one! It feels like we worked nonstop for months preparing, for the next couple days there will be nothing but sleeping til noon, sunbathing, cookouts, and fourwheelers! If only we were so lucky. Back to work!

Here we are at the booth...

And with our new friend, Little Roy.

In the press!

2008-08-26T18:08:00.000-07:00

Wonder Thunder's more male half is featured in an article in the Seattle Times about 4 Seattle poster artists! You can read the article online. There's also a snazzy little video showing the screen-printing process! Check out that swell shirt he's got on! What style!

In related news, anyone in the Puget Sound area who's planning on attending Bumbershoot this Labor Day weekend should be sure to come see us(Wonder Thunder) at Flatstock 18! Please come by, we'll have lots of goodies! Flatstock is in the Fisher Pavilion and is open to anyone attending Bumbershoot! Poster artists from around the country and more(like us)! We'll have the usual Wonder Thunderfulness as well as some new vegetable bags, a new set of limited edition art prints, and more!

In unrelated news, Fatty got a little crazy the other night...

Cashews in mountain towns taste like chlorine.

2008-08-17T14:47:00.000-07:00

ONE!!
Thank you to Pikaland for featuring our octopus pillow on her blog! This website is my new favorite to visit every day.

TWO!!
Thanks to More Ways to Waste Time for featuring a bunch of our junk!

THREE!!
An ambitious group of us trekked out to Seattle's epic volcano, Mt. Rainier.....view the gory details at on flickr .
Somehow on this mountain it was a million degrees and icy at the same time. That ice sure saved our lives though, from the ice hat, ice lounging, ice throwing, and drinking the melted ice.......mt. rainer ice is our new best friend. The thin air was not, we saw our weakness in the trail mile markers. We soon retreated to lower altitudes, french fries, and pie.
Highly reccomended.

FOUR!!
Look at this awesome picture we just got in the email from Sylvia, a flight instructor and competitive glider pilot. A WonderThunder shirt breaks the sound barrier!

From the cranium to the stadium!

2008-08-09T11:02:00.000-07:00

Finally and at long last, we're starting to reveal some of the new things we keep hinting that we're so hard at work making.

Please welcome them with open arms!

Coasters to protect your hardwoods!

A zombie pocket wallet!

A haunted pocket wallet!

Brand new baby tee! Complete with buck teeth!

Also for sale, one cat.

Binary Accolade

2008-08-09T10:55:00.000-07:00

We want to thank a blog lars and addiefor featuring our vegetable bags on their feature friday. We're happy that they love the bags and happy that they're helping spread the word that plastic carry out grocery bags aren't the only ones that need to be replaced with reusable bags.

Also thanks to funky and delightful for mentioning the yearbook patch in the same thought as motley crue.

Things to look at.

2008-08-02T11:56:00.000-07:00

First, we want to thank Jim at Modern Craft for the Wonder Thunder post on his awesome blog. And secondly for amassing the largest collection of yearbook portraits that side of the Rockies. He supplied some really good yearbook photos to work from, later we found out that one of them was him. Here's how it turned out.

Speaking of embroidery, I started a side project blog mostly about free hand embroidery. Find the link on the side that says Meagan's Stuff..........or click here.....

Second bit of news, if you happen to live in Philly on Friday maybe you were dazzled by a pic of our ice cream pillow in the Philadelphia Inquirer. If you weren't in Pennsylvania, you missed out. Like huge! Thanks to Joy for finding us, she also has a blog about textiles and such.

There's not much Seattle news at the moment, we're just workin hard getting prepared for the show Sasha alluded to in the last post. Is it a secret? hmmmmm.....
We should get back to work, regardless.
Wait, I just wanted to mention, if you are in Seattle and happen to get a donut from Top Pot in Capitol Hill, there is an amazing fearless trick finch that will snatch donut crumbs right from your fingers! Meet a creature!

Anyway, we haven't mentioned Fatty in a little while, but don't worry, he's still hard at work.

Sleeveless?

2008-07-28T12:41:00.000-07:00

A couple of our world class ipod sleeves/ wallet pockets/ secret keepers have returned to the wonder thunder emporium! new ones to come! we've been screen-printing, cutting, and sewing like genuine hard workers lately!

5 weeks to go!

til what?

Offical Interrogations!

2008-07-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

One half of the Wonder Thunder board of trustees has recently been the subject of a rigorous and skinning inquiry by none other than Seattle's Sub Pop Records. If you find yourself feeling a tad bit interested in reading said interview, just follow the link below! Or, if you're simply feeling genuinely bored, this will certainly kill some minutes.

People Who Work There.

2008-07-22T20:17:00.000-07:00

You totally thought we forgot. But we didn't. We dreamed at night of this epic blog post.
Wonder Thunder brings to you our picture heavy adventure in Lind, Washington, the 2008 Combine Demolition Derby!

Lind's population is sparse. We arrived to dust, desolation, and actual summer temperatures.
Here is the single atm. We breakfated, lunched, and dinnered in the sole restaurant. No one had country accents, which we expect in small towns, being from the southern portion of the u.s. It was unsettling with the tractors and boots and trucks and not a single yall.

This here be the dirt track.

We took in the parade where there were vikings.

and a giant turtle who sometimes walked and sometimes allowed himself to be dragged along on a skateboard.

The combines took a lap around the town before their impending demise. We didn't know Washington was rebel country....

Are we in the South?

We soon waited patiently for the derby's to begin.....

First up were lots of car demolition derbys. Pretty exciting! We don't remember who won. Being a fan and driver of a volvo station wagon, I wished hard for this car to be a winner, but it stalled out and had to be towed out most of the time.

Watching demolition is serious business for some. Finally, the combines lined up, and with suprsing agility and speed, began the fight to the death!

Smash!

Crash! Jaws, the blue one here, was the winner. Third year straight maybe! Can't beat a giant machine named after a giant shark.

After the adrenaline subsided, and on our way back home, we took in some eastern Washinton sights. Like tumbleweed.

and graffiti...

and some giant canyon. Who's that guy with the grill?

Bread Bits and Mice Lunches

2008-07-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

For all you bread and mouse lovers out there, we have some new placemats and napkins just for you! Printed on some mighty fine linens and sewn by two hands, these table adornments will look fantastic in any setting! Really!

We also added some Egg & Moon sets to the shop!

Enjoy!

Tuff Pillows!

2008-07-18T14:08:00.000-07:00

Bold! Also known as strong in spirit! Strong like ghost!
We got featured in an Etsy collection of bold children's decor.
Is your kid tough enough to be surrounded by this curated group of defiant decorator items?

Worked Horse.

2008-07-15T22:28:00.000-07:00

Oh so busy! We've been busy tapping at the computer and breaking sergers lately. Seeing shows and getting in traffic. Walking to the post office and picking up handmade signs...more on that at a later date. There's nothing much to say besides hello and to leave you with a cute picture of Fatty.

Octopus's Accident Pillow!!!

2008-07-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

Check out this new pillow!

Happy Post Liberty!

2008-07-07T10:50:00.000-07:00

How did you spend your three day weekend of Liberty?

We here at Wonder Thunder, Inc. know how to celebrate our Liberty something proper, let me tell you.

here's some highlights from our weekend.

first, what's a little liberty celebration without some sickness? we got out our shred sleds

and, of course, shredded something gnarly.

after some hours of ripping the the concrete waves, we were a little famished. we pulled out our deep fryer, and whipped up some deep fried french fry hot dogs. nothing says Liberty quite like it.

once fully satiated with liberty's deep fried wonderfulness, we took a trip back in the way back machine and got to do some wrestling. the fabulous moolah, was indeed fabulous.

oh, and we gutted a grizzly.

and fatty made friends with the last unicorn.

OK. so all that may not be truth. truthful, at least. We did, however, play some mean badminton. that's meagan in the visor. it keeps her head cool and the sun out of her eyes. watch out for her backhand.