Sweet Maria's T-Shirts and Soccer Balls ?!?
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What does this have to do with coffee? Nothing at all. Well, these lovely ladies are from a photo I took of a Saloon, er, Salon facade near Karatina, Kenya. You see, Salons are called Saloons quite often, and Saloons are called Bars ... just so nobody gets confused. So now that you know the story, you don't need to ask, "which one is Maria?" *The green is a little more forest colored and less bright than these flash pictures.
Nice, soft, American Apparel shirts, too! |
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$16 On the back near the waist is our little football player too, 4" wide.
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Double Expresso, in fact. Remember the good old days when you could get an expresso almost anywhere? Well, we are bringing it back with a vengence. This ultra-mod graphic spans the gap between high and low ... mostly ending up on the side of low I suppose. The ink is a maroon color. American Apparel shirts, comfortable right out of the bag. The orange shirt is bright - not safety orange, but pretty darn bright. A "wake up fast!" sort of orange.
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$16 On the back near the waist is our little football player too, 4" wide.
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Weird Chicken (with a cup of coffee) It is one weird chicken indeed! But we didn't do anything to make it that way. This is another t-shirt from coffeelands; in this case it was inspired from a painting on a restaurant in Chiapas, Mexico. The area around this small town is surrounded with coffee, and on Saturday and Sunday the town is packed with the coffee farmers. I can't attest to the popularity of this particular restaurant, and whether their "wierd chicken," pockets and all, actually helps business. The shirt is a nice yellow-orange Hanes cotton, so this is an orange-on-orange theme. Our cup logo (also from a local painting) is in orange on the back, lower corner: very "low-key." so you won't feel like a walking billboard. Kids love this shirt- it's silly. We are thinking of making some child and even baby size versions.
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Sizing on Hanes Authentic Cotton Shirts: |
Men's Sizes Only |
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We have more than a few requests for kid's shirts, and since Maria and I (Tom) now have a baby, it makes even more sense to print some baby-sized clothes! Ben (left) really liked my Chicken shirt when I wore it, so why not make him his own Baby Chicken shirt? Maybe you know a baby human that would like it too. These shirts are paler in color than the adult ones, more like a custard yellow. The logo on the rear (the cup, like the adult) is in black ink. We have 3 sizes: 12 month, 2T and 4T. They are all "Hanes Playwear" brand cotton, but the 12 Month is a stretchy light cotton with lap shoulders, while the 2T and 4T are a more typical t-shirt make. As I write this, Ben is 8 months and could wear either the 12 month or even the 2T shirt, although it would a bit long. If you have bought kid's clothes, you know how it is; buy big! Here's a picture of all 3 shirts together, so you can see the size difference. |
![]() Ben Otto Owen in his 12 month Baby Chicken Shirt |
Baby Chicken Shirt |
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It's a no-tech painting of a lo-tech computer. What's your guess? A 286 circa 1988? Well, if you go to David, Panama, an agricultural center in the lowlands of the Chirqui province, and you are looking for an "internet cabana", that is, a place to check email at speeds around ...oh 56kb ... you just might see this exact painting on the wall outside the datacenter of your dreams. Okay, I admit it's a fake: I added the coffee cup from a place a few blocks away. It had to have something to do with coffee, right? Well, like most of our shirts it barely has anything to do with coffee, but it's great "art brut," printed in black and blue duotone. This is on a lightweight white cotton shirt of decent quality, and it will shrink a bit. On the back, down at the wasteline, our simple cup logo in blue.
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Sizing on Hanes Authentic Cotton
Shirts: |
Men's Sizes Only XL sold out-sorry |
| Sweet Maria's T-Shirts of the Past... | |||||
![]() Our first shirt from around 2000 |
![]() Safety Orange - hey, I Iiked it. It fades well... |
![]() The safe color, beige. It matched my '70 VW Bus. |
![]() The remade Brave the Smoke Shirt 04/05 |
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![]() "Good Greens" from '04 |
![]() the skunk shirt - some loved it, some didn't. "skunky" is a cupping term for a bad roast flavor |
![]() The "falling dog shirt" of 2006-7 was actually very popular. go figure. |
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![]() Espresso monkey shirt on white |
The Cupping Spoon shirt- nobody seemed to like this shirt. Maybe the fact that is said "slurping, sucking and spitting since 1997" had something to do with it. |
![]() A shirt we printed just for ourselves, too wacky and, like others, totally unrelated to coffee. |
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Sweet Maria's Soccer Balls ?!?
Why? Well, I love soccer, and I hate lousy soccer balls. When I travel to coffee origins, one thing I see is that from India to Ethiopia, from Peru to Honduras, at schoolyards and coffee drying patios, the workers play with lousy duct-taped half-inflated soccer balls. Not making any high-falutin' claims about quality here: this is a "practice-level" ball that wouldn't pass FIFA in a thousand years. But it holds air and stands up to a beating. So offering them to our customers was not really the intention here, but when you get custom-made soccer balls, you have to get a lot. Selling a few will help fund our give-aways to school kids, coffee pickers, and mill workers when I travel. See the pictures below. So here it is ... skunk and all. By the way, we ship 'em flat - you need a pump. |
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| Giving away soccer balls in coffee-producing countries... that's why we really made them, and when you buy one you are helping us to gift them to coffee producers, to small teams, to farm owners, to children. We have just started taking them on our trips (I pack them flat and bring a pump to inflate them on the spot!) Here are a few pictures of our recipients. And thanks for buying a ball and helping to fund this program! | ||
![]() Askar Ogsadey, son of a cousin of MAO Harar Horse coffee exporters, Dire Dawa, Ethiopia |
In Hirna Ethiopia. This ball was for the small boys Hirna football club. |
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![]() At the big soccer game between Gashonga and Maraba coffee mills. Our ball was the runner-up prize, and the trophy was 1st prize. |
![]() Another gift at the cupping lab near Maraba. This great picture was by Jasper from The Coffee Company, Amsterdam |








































In Hirna Ethiopia. This ball was for the small boys Hirna football club.
