Slo-pitch: Part II

Made another DIY to wear while playing on my Slo-pitch team - this one a baseball vest. Letters stripped off of 2 name bars I had from previous Ebay purchases

to be reordered and sewn on again (luckily most letters included in the name I wanted - some modifications to make the L and the 2 F's). In the picture the front logo still to be modified to match previous project 'U ff' front crest. Rustclops burgundy main body cut out - gold still needs to be cut out.  Letters need to be sewn on name bars, and everything still needs to be sewn on jersey.

The finished product: front and back.
Eyeballed the alignment of name bars on back before pinning and sewing it on - probably should have spent more time and measured it instead. I'm likely the only one that will be seeing it in person that will look close enough to notice. Should also have had stuff on back of vest higher and closer together since it's an XL and if I end up wearing it with baseball pants I think the F.F. will disappear when tucked in.

Here's a closeup of the Rustclops on back.

Almost forgot to mention this: Rustclops is from another Shadow league entry for the Clink Room.

As far as playing Slo-pitch, I played a game this past week on my brother-in-law's team.  They were going to be short guys so I was an "emergency call-up" for The Benchwarmers.  He plays in a 7 & 3 League (field is 7 guys and 3 girls).  Played mostly the same as my 5&5 but I noticed some differences in rules.  As far as strikes you get an extra strike if the second strike is a foul ball.  If you walk a guy when a girl follows in the batting order, the guy gets 2 bases.  Girls are allowed to intentionally bunt [no one is allowed to bunt in my league - though occasionally there are the unintentional "full swing bunts", and they are allowed.  I've done those when I topped a ball.  You just put your head down and start running hoping that the back catcher or pitcher don't get to the ball quickly or that they throw it away].  Also, it isn't a strike when the ball hits home plate only when it hits the "mat" behind the plate.  The "mat" looked to be a little wider and I think shorter than in my 5&5 League, and it's made out of wood so it's easier to hear a strike.  Fielders don't need to stand behind any line in the field and can be anywhere they want.

Slo-pitch & baseball jersey for Slo-Pitch

After many, many years of working nights I am back working days.  Joined a Slo-pitch team back in my old league : Thunder Bay 5 & 5 Fun Slo-Pitch League.  Small independent (one of the few that wasn't absorbed by the Molson or Coors Light leagues years ago) non-competitive league.

If you are wondering what is 5 & 5 ? and what is Slo-Pitch  ? :
5&5 means you field 5 guys and 5 girls - 10th player is an outfield rover.  Batting order alternates guy-girl-guy-girl, etc.  All outfielders stand behind a line in the outfield until the ball is hit

and infielders must stay on the infield dirt until the ball is hit.  Slo-pitch is of the lob style of pitching - under handed and the arc of the ball must go over the batters head (or is it 6 ft.? I need a recent copy of the rules) and is unlimited (can go as high as you want).  Ball is a regular softball (think league is using grey dot this year).

All games are 3 balls and 2 strikes; all foul balls are strikes and if the ball hits the plate or the mat behind it it's a strike.

There is also an orange safety base on first.  Runner goes over orange - first baseman uses white; to avoid collisions at first.  There is also no lead offs, stealing, or sliding.

Regular season games are 7 innings (so league can get 2 games/day in all season before it is dark - league only has the one diamond).  Tournament games are 9 innings.

I had previously played in the league from 1992-2007.  Towards the end I was the team rep. and league V.P. for a couple years.  After I was working straight nights I had to quit playing and my brother in law ran the team for 1 more season before it folded (he then joined a more competitive league).  Team I was on had many sponsors over the years Country Home Cabinets, Twin City Stingers II (original was before my time on the team), Pier 61, L.A. Blues, Da Vinci , Friend's [Bar & Billiards], Glory Days, and Buzzy's.[Jerzee City].  One year we did the improbable and won it all:

Enough on Slo-pitch - on to the jerseys.  I joined the team late and they only ordered so many jersey to start with so I decided to make my own.

I had acquired a grey maroon striped grey baseball jersey a while back with this logo on it (turned sideways).

Blue lines are just showing what I am did to convert it into a U f f crest instead (main sponsor for the team I'm on this year is Unleashed Fighting Fitness).  Part of the reason I did this is to save what burgundy twill I have for the team name on back and the main logo.  Here's how it looks on the front:  If the jersey looks familiar, it's because it's the same jersey I got off Ebay for one of my earlier Ryberto's jerseys (but with a different number on it).

Now for the back.  For the back I used a font called Bazar (downloaded from Tack-O-Rama site). Dachshund is taken from a Clink Room member's Shadow League contest entry from a while ago.  My first though was of doing a dog or dog's head with a leash lying on the ground beside it, but then I remembered this contest entry and his dachshund is much better than anything I am likely to come up with

Was originally going to put the vest on the dog but looked to be a bit much with the big #1 already on the back of the jersey.

Here's a close up of the dog:

Game of Thrones Faux-Knit concept

Sparky Chewbarky is a member on the Chris Creamer Forum.  I think I first became aware of his work with his Halifax Highlanders concept.  He went all out with his concept; not only logos and several jerseys but goalie masks, mascots, loads of different merchandise, an arena, and a video.
http://boards.sportslogos.net/topic/84509-halifax-highlanders/?hl=%20halifax%20%20highlanders

More recently he came up with some Faux-Knit Olympic Sweaters for Canada, USA, Finland and Sweden:
http://boards.sportslogos.net/topic/96515-faux-knit-national-olympic-hockey-sweaterswant-one-also-new-template/#entry2144574

I slightly modified his Faux-Knit template (designed more for Photoshop and the like) so it could be used by the more low-tech MS Paint or Paint.net users.  Just use the 'Paint Bucket' aka 'Fill with Colour' to colour in the blank spaces one by one.

Here's one for the back:

Made a Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire concept with the template.  The Stark hockey sweater concept is in a style similar to Dave's Olympic Faux-Knits. If it's not readily apparent, it's supposed to be a direwolf on the front with snowflakes on the shoulders:

If you want to see some other Game of Thrones jerseys concepts a great place is Dave's Geeky Hockey:
http://davesgeekyhockey.com/?s=game+of+thrones

Some of concepts have been produced as actual jerseys by the Geeky Jerseys site https://www.geekyjerseys.com/index.php and are usually only available for a limited time and are gone after that (unless enough people show enough interest for a later re-issue).

Jofa goalie helmets

While I have previously posted the pic of my Soviet goal jersey and my San Diego Samurai goal jerseys a while ago, I didn't post the helmets I wear with them when wearing them in goal.

Both of them are decorated with vinyl decals.  Most of the decals were obtained through the website stickeryou  by using my icoke.ca points - unfortunately the free icoke deal is ending the end of next month.

With all the roundness in the Jofa helmet getting the larger decals to lay flat can be a bit of a challenge.  With certain types of vinyl some people use soap and water mixture on helmet or mask to help it lay flat.  I think some heated it up to help stretch the vinyl when laying it down.  There is some info on these methods in the goaliestore.com thread on vinyl mask graphics:
http://goaliestore.com/board/forum/equipment/equipment-forum/96191-vinyl-mask-graphics
may be something in the thread on 'Helmet decals' also.
Myself, if I remember correctly, I don't think I used soap and water or heat but just tried to stretch the large ones out a bit when putting them on.  Takes a bit of patience - more than I have much of the time.  The results were far from perfect but not too bad.

Here's the Soviet one.  A Jofa 390 helmet with the Jofa 267 cage and a lacrosse dangler:

Here's the Japan one.  A Jofa 390 Helmet with a Cooper GL100L cage/dangler.

The clips on the side of the Japan one are homemade; just doubled up and cut some of the metal strapping of the kind that is used to hold up duct work.  The clips on the side of the Soviet one are some picture hanging clips.  Have since found and bought some of the clips made for this helmet (have one set installed on one of Jofa helmets I use to play "out" - defence and forward).

You may have noticed a couple stickers that don't match the Japan/Samurai theme - the IVO and Czech shield stickers were a memorial for one of the players, who passed away a few years back, in the afternoon group I currently play in.

Dock Placement Chart

A while back made a "fun" placement chart for work.

Work at a courier company; the name of it is close to the one in the image below.  If there was a coffee machine still on the counter in the lunch room at work this would make a good logo for it.

A placement chart just shows where each dock employee is working that shift.  I'm sure you're not interested in the minutiae of the internal set up of the night dock at work so I'll spare you those details.  The usual placement chart while serving it's purpose is rather dull, so I made a video game themed one.  I think the last time it was used was on a dock employee's last day at work before he transferred to another city.

Most of the characters I got from font packages by 'Goatmeal' called 'The First Six Year' (it also comes in six parts).  It's a collection of six arcade video game dingbats [1978-1983]:
 http://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/the_1st_six_yrs_1of6
I just found pics of the girders and ladders online - they aren't the best quality images at that size but they do the job.  Modified a Donkey Kong logo to make it Dock Monkey.  It can be taken as a term of derision for the dock employees, the lowest guys on the totem pole at the company, but it has been adopted many of the dock guys to describe their jobs.

To tack on a bit of humour, Here's a link to David Thorne's site with the entry regarding the subject of couriers:
 http://www.27bslash6.com/courier.html

Ryberto's Burritos

Ryan Connelly came up with the logo and whole idea for Ryberto's Burritos.

Some of the back story on its inception and on Ryan's various Ryberto creations:
http://www.theclinkroom.com/taco-shop-league/rybertos-dyi/

If interested in the Ryberto character Ryco (Ryan) has a Facebook group for him:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/177814542267970/
Ryan's old blog 'Project 840' also has Ryberto's Burritos things on it:
http://project840.blogspot.ca/


Did some of my own DIY takes on Ryberto's Burritos.  Here's the front of my creations.

First one started off with this Ebay purchase and stripped the front patch and made a Ryberto's 'R', and stripped the name off the back.

  

 

On the back cut out 'Ryberto's Burritos' in twill and sewed on.  Font used was Sancreek.

The next one I did was the white jersey.   Got a blank white jersey from Liquidation World.  The font I used for this jersey is also Sancreek.  Used ribbon from a fabric store for the stripes, tackle twill for the name and number, and the arm patch came from Ryan Connelly.  Here's the back.

The final Ryberto's jersey was originally an Ebay purchase.  Specialty day? or fan giveaway? of a Padres affiliate - Eugene Emeralds.  Here's a before shot when I had the burritos cut out but hadn't sewn anything on the jersey.  The font is Baron Black DB - I found a closer font to the '78 Padres one but liked this one better.  The front number font was a slightly modified Ornitons Serial-XBold to get it close to the number font already on the back.

For now I left the back as is.  Here's a pic:

Got a couple caps from the thrift store and couple online.   Added the Ryberto's 'R' logo.  Had to zig-zag twice around the letter, as near the bottom of the letter it would sometimes skip stitches.  Did one 'R' in the Sancreek font for the pinstriped hat
The first cap I did was the padres bell style hat.  Cut out some gold twill for the bell shape and took the top button (Squatchee) off another cap and switched it with the one originally on the brown cap.

Hockey Haiku

Quite a few years back stumbled onto a site called Hockey Haiku.
http://www.hockeyhaiku.com/

Decided to try making a few of my own; sent them to the author of the site but he wasn't really updating it much anymore.

On the Hockey Forum site there was a thread on Hockey Haiku so I added them there:
http://www.hockeyforum.com/hockeyforum-chit-chat/38921-hockey-haiku.html

My contribution is below:

here's a few i made up last night. first one "paraphrased" from Slapshot:

It took my quarter
Gimme grape or orange and
no stinkin' root beer.

thought puck was shot wide
heart races, sweat runs down brow
when post rings loudly

the puck, once spinning
now lays flat trapped motionless
under glove's mesh cage.

line of red is gone
straying forward picks cherries
now more plentiful

Daneyko D-Man
feels no need to play offense
patrols his own zone

Irbe the goalie
throw back to bygone era
still repairs own gear


HF Boards also has a thread on Hockey Haiku:
http://hfboards.hockeysfuture.com/showthread.php?t=853475 


Of course, I went out and bought a copy of a little book on the subject:
Hockey Haiku: The Essential Collection by John Poch and Chad Davidson

Here's on review on the book:
https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/missouri_review/v029/29.4parmentier.html 

and page 2 of that review
https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/missouri_review/v029/29.4anglade.html