rodeo bill

I've just got back from a week around Albuquerque New Mexico, which was totally made by extremely kind recommendations from @chicote. We're so grateful- thank you! Most of my photos are of family, but here are a some solo/landscape highlights, some including Working slack jeans: landscape just outside Corrales, where we were staying, on the way to a site of hundreds of Native American petroglyphs: which appear on rocks where black 'glaze' of oxidised iron is scratched away to make a lighter mark of the rock beneath: they were not easy to spot, here's a close up: we also saw a coyote clambering over the rocks, and the rest of my family saw a thorny devil (aka hornytoad, squirts blood out of its eyes), and we saw lots of anole lizards and 5-line skinks. Throwing a rock across the Rio Grande: the riverbed is almost totally dry at this time of year, where we were: best meals we had (we returned!) were at Itality in Albuquerque, on a plaza for indigenous-owned businesses, serving entirely vegetable local Native American food. It was fantastic, this photo doesn't really do the food justice but the stew was great (lentils, green chiles, summer squash), as were the 'pueblo tacos', and fry bread, which has a problematic history (devised from US-provided rations during enforced relocation), but seems to be a part of the NM culture now and tastes really good: up nearer Santa Fe the altitude is seriously high, and the clarity of light is spectacular. It's also a lot less hot, and a lot greener: Just outside the Jemez pueblo there's a calcium carbonate (chalk right?) 'frozen' waterfall: inside we found a crystal clear pool of water coming from a drip in the ceiling. Don't judge me, I tasted it, tasted like Topo Chico no lie Fenton lake, at the end of the same drive up into the mountains: the best bit for me was our visit to Sky City, the Acoma people's Pueblo- it's a long drive through pretty much desert to get there, but the landscape changes so radically with the geology that the drive itself was one of the best bits. It's at the top of a mesa (flat top mountain) and we got a bus up, and a tour by a woman whose family have a home there. Here's the view from the top: and the streets: a stairway to the skies (the top horizontal is a cloud, the verticals are rain) bread oven: the walk down is on very steep steps cut into the rock, with scooped hand holds: on our last day we went to Tinkertown, halfway up to Sandia Peak, which is the mountain that looks over Albuquerque. It's barely describable, but it's a gallery/workshop/home of Ross Ward, who was a sign painter and model maker. There are thousands of carved figures and scenes, a lot of them automata, mostly in the circus/fairground vernacular. Plus a boat that his brother built and sailed around the world, plus vast collections of pretty much anything you can imagine, all jammed into tight wooden corridors and rooms built out of concrete with thousands of glass bottles set into them, which act as windows, like this: bonus picture, I thought it was really cool that construction workers had hard hats with clip-on wide brims and sun/insect nets: Again, @chicote I'm just so grateful for all the time you took putting this itinerary for us together, I think we did all but one thing you suggested, which was too far of a drive. Best trip in ages.

This deserves more rep! Maybe not for everyone here but this is an amazing watch. My current favourite is a Junghans Max Bill, one of the original configurations, with plexiglass crystal. It's on a titanium mesh strap today but I also like it very much on black apple leather with Working SKEWed Slack Jeans

thanks @Le Clown Bleu- you can find some things at Goodies Oxford, Peggs & Son Brighton, and The Bureau Belfast. A couple of images of these went out in the newsletter I just sent out, but here are some more details. The best-worn pair of Weaver's Blanket Denim trews I've seen, very kindly brought in by a long-time customer and great friend of the brand. Note the twill switching at various points:

spotted this this morning growing under a neighbour's fence! Also Milkweed is everywhere (and a beautiful plant too)

Thanks for the suggestion @ATWM! I'd not heard of this, but Deborah had, and now I see it there's quite a bit of it around our neighbourhood. Deborah had already been thinking about getting some- she's developing our backyard into a very small native forest garden. Interesting! In the meantime, Lukas Mauve just wrote a lovely piece for his substack Present Forever (well worth a look through generally) here: https://presentforever.substack.com/p/the-tender-co-interview

seconded @chicote: @rbeckthese are spectacular- congratulations 🙂

beautiful @chicote, thank you for the photos. Here's a picture of it brand new. The fabric for this was called 'Laundry Bag Cloth' and was a 100% cotton version of fabric woven for NHS hospital laundry sacks- the warp is pale blue (if I remember correctly) with a white weft and occasional blue weft bands, which mark off where the bags would be filled to and seamed. This was made on the same loom, just the weft was switched from polyester to cotton. Here's a photo of the original garment- it's a wattle dyed 424 Wallaby Pocket Short Sleeve Shirt from SS17

Thank you for this @merzbot! I want to do a superfuture-level rundown on the Working SKEWed jeans in the next week or so, but actually I just came on to show some details of the 900 Bull Denim, so good timing. This fabric is woven with a 100% cotton warp and a 50/50 wool/hemp weft. Generally speaking, dyes react differently with cellulose fibres (eg cotton, linen) and protein fibres (eg wool, silk), and even more generally speaking dyes stick better to protein than to cellulose. This can be quite subtle, for example with woad, where the blue is relatively deep across all the fibres in the fabric (with the original undyed fabric below): the khaki, particularly, took to the wool much more readily than to the cotton or hemp, creating a sort of turquoise wool fuzz over the top of a paler green cotton/hemp ground: lastly, though, here's a version which is a little more subtle, but which I'm really excited by. This is dyed hadal blue with a formula that reacts only with wool, so that the cotton and hemp remain completely undyed. It gives the effect of a fabric woven with an undyed warp and a melange fibre dyed warp, where dyed wool is spun with undyed hemp, but all with a single garment dye. The jacket reads as denim, but with the softness and lightness of the bull denim cloth.

Thank you so much, both! Actually, I'm going to continue making jeans in the UK for the foreseeable future- it's the seasonal things that will be coming through made in the US. I have a lot of denim fabric in stock in England, and this way I can keep repeat orders of jeans going there while doing the more hands-on stuff here. It's all still shaking out, but I really appreciate the enthusiasm. Michael, best of luck with the move, and AlienToy indeed! I'm very excited to be starting up with Today- they seem to be lovely people and it's a great store. I mentioned this in the newsletter too, but how's this for a beautiful colour?! purple logwood on very fine yarn cotton Mackintosh:

I love this modification! Did you cut away the pleats from the inside, or is the fabric still there? If so it would be cool to let them out again once the main body fabric has faded out a lot, so you'd get a much darker contrast in the sides. Either way, though, lovely job- very exciting 🙂

lovely @Georg! I'll post pics of my own one of these sometime soon. For now, though, I have a new jeans type, 156, which are coming in to stockists and which I'm really pleased with. they're a significantly higher waist than previous cuts (varies a bit by fabric and size, but my indigo sizer 4 pair is 14.75" front and 18.5" back), and come with X back braces. More to the point, though, they're cut straight, as tailored trousers, rather than open, as jeans. Here's my double indigo broken twill pair, which I've been wearing since September or so: They're based around somewhere between the 132 and 136 cuts, but with a raised waist, and rather than having an angled front and back seam (like jeans), the fronts are cut almost straight on the grain line. This is a cutting angle which works best with suspenders/braces, and is traditional for dress trousers, or early workwear which was basically a heavy version of the same thing. The first Tender jeans, 132, was adapted from British Rail uniform pants, but cut open to wear like jeans. This is going back to the original, in some ways. Here's a fairly clear demonstration of open and closed cutting: Ok they're all diagonal, but you can see the change in angle across the centre seam in type 133 trews: Compared to the almost parallel stripes in 156: The side pockets are cut into the seams, and the yoke remains at the position that it would be for a standard waist pair, so that the extra shape stays in the seat and the raised waist sits above it (if they're worn high- if you wear them low like I mostly do then they fall down a bit but feel like high waisted trousers worn low, which is a really nice, subtly different, effect). The waist band is put on as two separate pieces, with a gap in the middle where the seat panels are just hemmed. This is a less costumey take on the idea of a split back or fishtail back, but done in a mechanised jeans waist way. These come from the new Spring/Summer 2025 production, which is the last fully UK-made Tender collection. More in all this soon, and as it develops, but the plan is to move clothing production and dyeing, and eventually weaving, to our new home in the US. Having said that, I have stock of denim fabric in the UK so for the foreseeable future jeans will continue to be made in the UK. More soon!

Yesterday I did a slot at my son's elementary school careers day, and talked with a group of third graders (8-9 year olds) about being a fashion designer. They were all great, and one kid was really pleased when he was pulling apart a cutting of denim that I'd passed around and saw that the inside of the yarn was white. "this must be why jeans get white when they get worn out". I swelled with pride on behalf of all of us.

Thanks Georg! I'm really pleased you enjoyed the talk 🙂 I'd add a couple of points to @julian-wolf's excellent advice- firstly I think these spots actually look kind of great, and especially as they're quite low on the garment I don't think I'd worry about them too much. But if they're an issue for you, the first thing I'd check is if you've tried a stain remover as well as a wool wash? These can be a problem with dyed garments, but as this is just undyed wool it's worth having a go with a natural stain bar (I like the clay-based type sold as 'savon de marseille terre de sommière'), or even just a regular supermarket one- Oxiclean stain stick gel does a pretty amazing job, although it's potentially harsher. If you do decide to dye your shirt, please bear in mind that the thread on these Weaver's Stock shirts is synthetic, so it may show up as a contrast white to whatever colour you dye with. This depends a bit on the dye and the method you use, and will be less noticeable on a relatively light dye colour. I hope this make sense and helps! the texture on your shirt is really special, so it should look good whatever you decide- please let us know.

As promised, here's a video of my talk. Just gone out to mailing list subscribers, but for people that aren't on that, here it is: https://mediaspace.wisc.edu/media/Understandable+Design+and+Perfect+Imperfections+with+William+Kroll+of+Tender+Co./1_8yi6cv0u/171463141 A bit in there about superfuture and how great our community is in general, and some examples of member's Tender clothes, although I could have sited many more. I checked with the only person who's visible themselves (thank you!), I hope other members won't mind their things being shown- I only used images already posted publicly.

thanks @jeash90! Yes it was a great trip. I was mostly just on the University campus, so I'm sure there's more to see in the city, but the college was fantastic and it's always a pleasure meeting students. I'm hoping to get a video back of the talk, in which case it'll go out as a newsletter asap.

Congratulations Ooms! Shirt looks lovely, I hope you had a good meal. Great PopSwatch too. Here's a lovely photo from a great customer and friend of the brand. Pocket use par excellence

I think I've had that one at some point, or at least definitely spent time with it. Excellent but exactly what you'd expect, and nothing more, if you know what I mean? I like this book, gratuitous boob cover notwithstanding. It feels very personal and includes a lot of bootleg Ts, which I like.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, things are very busy personally and with Tender- it feels like forever, but we've still only been in the US five months! Thank you so much @julian-wolf @chicote and @clawbytes for fantastic photos. More things coming, but in case it's of interest to anyone, I'm doing a project with students at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and will be doing a public talk on Tuesday Feb 4th at 3.30 Central Time. It'll be livestreamed and there's a signup here: https://cdmc.wisc.edu/event/understandable-design-and-perfect-imperfections-with-william-kroll-of-tender-co/ I'm putting together a bunch of Tender garments and my own things, which I'll show and discuss. Hopefully it'll be interesting!

Yes! It's a lovely one, Deborah has one too. Here's the original linebook entry: Type 781 Tube Neck Pullover The Tube Neck Pullover has a deep, wide, plain knit tube neck which can be rolled down or worn loose around the neck and face.There is a large single hand-warmer pocket across the front, and the cuffs, neck, and hem are finished clean with no rib or change of tension. -Made in Scotland -Fully fashioned, hand framed, and hand finished -Plain stitch -The pictured sample is in black cold felted lambswool

A couple of lovely outfits from an old friend of the brand, with an octave mandolin, in his 916 1-1/2 breasted Common Coat in Khaki dyed Herdwick Check Casement and 122 hadal brown Pleat Back Trousers in corresponding Herdwick Stripe Casement. Then below with a Weaver's Stock shirt home-dyed green and an 886 Stock in Barge Blue Flannel. I love how the herdwick yarn pulls the cotton casement in after dyeing, giving a quilted effect.

Thank you! Yes indeed this is Levant Red in the foreground (bright red Shetland and a natural white yarn), and the background is Agate Blue (dark blue and natural black yarn): For reference size 3 chest is 21" not including the gussets, and the full length is 27". Please just email me if you'd like full measurements.

Stunning photos! and jeans are looking beautiful. I got bitten by a big dog once (not sure what kind), hurt like hell and drew blood but just kind of mangled the fabric, didn't make as nice of a tear as yours. I hope you've recovered well. It's been a long time since some in depth factory photos, here's some from a woollen spinning factory, in preparation for the yarn that went into AW24 Tacuinum Pullovers and Cardigans, and Paper Boat hats. These photos are of "woollen" spinning, as opposed to "worsted" spinning. Worsted spinning is a more refined process where the fibres are made to lie more smoothly, and is typically used for worsted suit fabrics, where as woollen spinning (two Ls!) gives a fluffier yarn more normally used for knitwear or coarser tweed woven fabrics. For these Shetland-type yarns a slightly uneven colour is preferable, so a blend of different coloured fibres are used. The wool fibre is dyed under pressure, which could also damage finished yarn, so it's better to do the dyeing right at the beginning. The yarn designer has a library of colours: what was going through during my visit was a greenish tweed yarn with flecks of other colours. Even though the yarn will end up looking pretty classic, seeing the fibre mix is an eyeopener: The yarn is all mixed together in a big barrow, so that the colours are randomly dispersed. They're then fed up into the long carding process: the wool fluff is pulled through a succession of spiked rollers, in a stream, and as they go through the fibres start to lay inline with each other: until eventually the stream of fibre has enough body to be pulled off the carding rollers into a sort of loose scarf called a sliver: here's a closeup: the sliver gets pulled around a corner and flattened out again, which continues to straighten the fibres through another length of the room, until it's ready to be separated, like this: the stream of fibres is run through slightly tacky, static-charged rubber belts, which pull between sharply defined metal grooves, cutting the stream into ~1" wide sections. In the picture above, my guide has pulled out on of these sections- you can see that it's only barely holding together. however: Spinning itself will happen later. For now the narrow slivers are gently wound up onto cones, so that they can be put into the spinning process. Here are a couple more pictures- at this stage what looks like yarn is still just sliver under very slight tension. The brown rollers are also slightly tacky, which helps everything move through, but these run quite slow and at very carefully controlled tension to avoid snapping. At this point we'll switch over to a blend of natural undyed British wool, which is actually much closer to what I ended up using, but is less dramatic in the blending: these wrapped slivers are moved over into the spinning room, where they are set up over vertical spinning cones, to put twist into the slivers, under a higher tension, and create usable yarn: this is ringspun yarn, and that little loop in the wire over the pink cone top is the ring which the yarn is spun through, bouncing it around and giving it surface character. Now I'd originally enquired about spinning a blended natural grey with a blended blue- these yarns with this result: But while it's a beautiful thing it seemed a bit anticlimactic and subdued, so in the end I made a 2-ply yarn combined of a pure bright colour and a pure natural colour. Here are the results:

@chicotetotal fantastic! happy travels

Late 90s early Italian production T-shirt, my first evisu aged about 14, now my son’s pyjamas. Check out the twist!

I'm sure I remember a few people alluding to their own home-made jeans projects, and I thought it would be cool to have a thread for jeans that people have made themselves. Doesn't matter how amateur they are, and failed attempt stories are welcome too. Home-made is always best:)