”These are the last dayz…” Well, actually I’m not feeling at all like the Onyx homeboys (I just linked that because somehow the tune came into my mind) but it IS my last day as a laFraise blogger. My feelings about that are quite mixed. To be honest I’m feeling somewhat relieved but at the same time it’s hard for me to leave behind something I really loved to do. I mostly loved it because of the people (the laFraise team, Spreadshirt employees, our community members and some other great persons I’ve met along the way) and now it’s about time to write a few thank yous.

Guillaume.

Thanks for being the best boss a man can have. You’re tough when you need to be, you’ve got the strength to fight for your vision for better laFraise (and I do share the same vision so I hope it will be reached) but the best thing about you from my personal perspective is the way you’ve treated me; you’ve always been fair. Besides being me boss you’ve become a friend. Please do visit me whenever you want – there’s always room for one bad ass french DJ in my apartment.

Maïa.

Thanks for supporting me when I needed that and kicking my butt too when that was necessary. Thanks for drinking me under the table, thanks for your company, thanks for… well, being you. You’re way cool and hope you visit me too. I’ve told you about our summer cottage and I really think you would like it there. So, whenever you’d like some peace and serenity just hit me with a message or give me a call.

Mike.

Haven’t heard of you in a while but thanks for all the late night conversations we had on Skype. Also thanks for the graffiti session and your company. I hope we get to paint together again someday – either in Helsinki or in Berlin.

Camille.

You’ll probably read this in a month or so and we’ll probably speak with each other sooner than that. Even if you already left months back I’d like to thank you for keeping me sane through some rough times. I really appreciate it. If you won’t come to Finland (which you are most welcome to do) I’ll visit you in France sooner or later.

Sophie.

Woman, you kick ass. Even if I haven’t been in constant touch with you I’ve always admired the way you’re the mother figure of the French community. Thanks for helping me whenever I had something I wanted to ask and respect for loving Salmiakki Koskenkorva. When you need a bottle of that, I’m your man.

Lâm.

Thanks for pointing me to the right direction when we started off with laFraise. The vision you had was a strong one and I have to respect you for that. I hear you’re doing great and hope things keep that way for you.

Frode.

Much of the stuff I want to thank you for has nothing to do with laFraise. Thanks for being a great man, sharing your family with me when I visited Norway. I still think an ”insjö” is an interesting concept and loved the view down from the farm. Please visit me and bring that crazy cousin of yours with you. We’ll burn down Helsinki together.

Jana.

Thanks for being the easy to approach CEO (most aren’t that way and it’s a quality I really admire in you), thanks for the dinner in Paris and thanks for introducing your husband to me. Evan is a great fellow and it’s really a shame if I don’t ever get to see you guys again. Say hi to him for me, will you? I’m sure every time I’m eating Ben & Jerry’s (..and it’s going to be often since I love icecream) I’ll remember you two.

Also thanks to Helle (I’m overusing the word ”cool” in this post but you’re a really girl. Thanks for your company and taking me to the Christmas market in Berlin.), Vilja & Arto (I really should call you guys and get smashed together), Christian (Keep the Nordic team kicking!), Tobias & Marcin for drinking beer with me and stealing my money in a poker game, Lutz for the photography related and not so photography related conversations, Ines for booking my flights and such… and am I forgetting someone here?

Thanks for the EU community members and…

Fredrik.

Thanks for being so active and a nice fellow. Keep that way and we’ll see on laFraise even if you won’t probably know it’s me. Then again, you can always reach me through Facebook – sorry for taking ages to answer.

PsyKopaT.

Thanks for submitting loads and loads. It’s been a pleasure following the evolvement of your style.

Lyra & Anqqa.

Well, you guys know what I’m thanking you for.

Gasgas, Kerstin00, jayjay., perkele_cold, Vachefolle, Lufograf, Emanon, krusty68170, Meksu, Bendev and all the others for reading the blog and participating in the friday games. We had fun, didn’t we? WELL I HAD.

Thanks for our designer members and especially…

Cuypi. Pagan. Casajordi. Pandaluna.

Love your stuff. It inspires me.

Pffffth.

Somehow I think I should drop loads more names but… I’m done, I suppose.

Thank you everyone, one more time.

I’ll continue being a t-shirt junkie and a laFraise fan. Just to show you I’ve been that way while I worked for the company here’s a collection of my laFraise shirts. I’m sure some are missing from the picture.

I won’t say ”adios” yet. There’s at least one more post to come before I go. ;)

Since this is the last Friday game I’m hosting I really started digging through my mind for a game that would be appropriate for the situation. I don’t think I’ve ever done a puzzle game so it’s about time for one.

Below you see a 450 x 450 pxl image which is mostly black. To make this a bit easier the object in the image is a cover from a record. Your task is to tell me the artist and the song. A new image with more pieces will be added here every 5 minutes. The winner of the game will naturally be the user who gives me the correct answer fastest.

There are 81 pieces in the puzzle and the game would last almost 7 hours in case I revealed the pieces one by one and you wouldn’t know the right answer before the last piece. Naturally I don’t want that to happen on a friday afternoon so during the first 30 minutes of the game 1 piece is going to be added every 5 minutes and during the next 30 minutes 2 pieces are added every 5 minutes. After that I will reveal the whole cover and the first user to shout the answer will be the winner. Like pretty much always, the winner gets enough brouzoufs for a free t-shirt from our selection - shipping included.

Have fun and I’ll meet you in the comments of this entry. ;)

You might be wondering about the ”Laurea Students”-gallery on the left navigation bar. We’re currently running a cooperation with a finnish design school. Some 40 students have been introduced to laFraise and have now made their first designs according to our requirements. Submitting to this gallery is for the students of Laurea only but it would be just marvelous if you took the time to vote and critizise their work. They’ve got until sunday evening to submit their work and a winner will be selected a week later when the voting is done. The winning design will be printed for the students. Hopefully we’ll see a lot of them here again improving their skills and showing their imagination!

When I look outside I’m truly worried and have been that way for years now. The climate is getting more random all the time. There currently a huge snowstorm going on outside – on the 26th of march. Some 20 years back we still had distinctive 4 seasons that lasted roughly 3 months each but now it seems like it’s quite possible to enjoy a beer on your backyard wearing a T-shirt and a pair of short on a Christmas day or go snowboarding in june. Well, maybe not quite like that but the seasons are definitely really messed up. Springs seem to be brief periods between winters and summers. Winters start way late and summers last until September. All this and still it seems like nobody really cares. When I’m writing this Kalle is reading news about a huge chunk of Antarctica breaking off again… and still some people claim global warming is nonsense.

Dear EU community (and hello FR & DE too),

This morning I told you that I've got something to announce and now the time has come for that. I've been thinking about the right way for a while and have come to a conclusion; as a blogger I've tried my best to be truthful and a bit funny at the same time. So, I'll continue on the same path through this post. In case you're not into reading lenghty stuff (which I can totally respect) the main points of the post are as follows; I'm resigning in a few days and even if the reason for that is mostly frustration I'm not leaving in anger, will miss many of you and will still be a part of the community under a different pseudonym. Ready for a longer version? Here goes.

It's now some 18 months since I was asked to join laFraise. To be honest I was really thrilled about that; the concept was (and still is) something that could rock pretty damn hard, the team I was working with was a team of young really talented indivuals with a strong vision and we were all highly motivated to do next to whatever to achieve our goals – sacrificing a huge chunk of one's life for this seemed like a thing to do even if I always knew laFraise wasn't going to make me rich, famous or handsome (Uhh, wait a minute. Sure enough, I didn't really need the company for the last bit anyway.).

My job description was cool as hell too. Well, you know me as a blogger – a guy who writes stuff for you to read, takes care of the submission process and moderates the competition slightly. That's really what most of my job was about when I started doing it but lately my duties as a blogger have become quite something else.

Along the way we've come across many difficulties and I'm proud we as a team have found a way around most of them. Still, the vision we've fought for has required many casualties; most of the team I started with is gone and I've felt like I'm fighting against windmills for a long time now. Now I feel like I'm out of breath, need to give up and face the fact that I don't have the ways to reach the goal anymore. I've waited for things to change and evolve but unfortunately this hasn't happened. Believe me, we haven't been sitting on our thumbs – there are many plans to improve laFraise (some of which are quite sophisticated and have been done in our end for a long time) and I'd like nothing more than to have them on the site already.

Uhms. I really seems darn difficult to explain this to you so what if I try to illustrate it a bit? Check the fine art sketch below.

”A Place Called Happiness” is where I like to spend most of my time but it's just one train stop away from ”The World of Shit.” Even when I'm really busy and slightly stressed out I'm still in a happy place as long as I know how deal with stuff and the things I do work out one way or another. The World of Shit is place where I land when I encounter difficulties that I can't really beat but it's still a place I can stand since most of the time there's an option of taking a train back to the happy place – even if the train may be slightly delayed and getting into it may require some extra attention or work. I've visited the World of Shit many times in my life and during my journeys I've also found out that there's a next stop further down the tracks. Unfortunately the train only takes you one way to ”The Land of I don't give a shit.” This is a place filled with people that were once filled with ambitions, visions, strenght and that special power to fight for what they believe is right. Unfortunately for a reason or another they've lost all that and ended up in a place where there's nothing left for them than to feel numb and neglect all the stuff that used to be important and hold value.

I'm halfway between the two latter stations right now when it comes to laFraise. Because many things that I think are important for the evolvement and improment of the site, the concept, the team and the spirit have been neglected I've partially become a neglectful bastard myself. I have to add I don't like it one bit. I don't want to end up not giving a shit about laFraise since deep down I'm still madly in love with our dear strawberry. The core of my personality is being a fighter – I'll furiously defend everything that is dear to me and unfortunately this time surviving to see another battle means that I have to jump off this train, hike back to ”The Place Called Happiness” (long walk, but what the hell), recover and find a new way to help the Strawberry become all it can be.

Remember Lâm, that geeky asian fellow (always wearing the girly cuts of our shirts) that hosted the French community with Sophie? I remember him very well and he's got my respect for being the toughest damn fighter for laFraise I've seen. He just rode the train a bit too long and I understand his decision quite well. It's hard to tell when to give up but as much as it pains me I think my time has come.

Enough already? Well, I must sound pretty grim!

This is not the whole truth though. Just the dark part of it. The brighter side of it is easier to write about; in many ways I've been having the time of my life with laFraise. I've shared numerous very special moments with our team and our community members. I've travelled all around Europe; Ireland, Norway, France and 3 times to Germany. I've beat challenges that I still can't believe I've beaten – it makes me proud. I've laughed my ass off countless times and felt like a rockstar for being a part of this bunch. I mean, let's take our designer members for an example; many of them are so talented I'm privileged to ever have met them and I owe that to laFraise. The shirts we do ROCK. Even more now than when I joined. The concept still kicks butt and it has the potential to be just about bigger than Jesus. Ok, not that huge but quite big anyway.

This week will be all about doing this and that for the last time. Hopefully I'll have the time to write one last ”weekly rant”, do a really phat Friday Game, praise all the people that deserve to be praised and all that. Funny enough – when I'm writing these last words to a basicly pretty sad entry I'm feeling more motivated than I've felt in a long while. Well, just like I already said in the first paragraph I won't really go anywhere. Starting next tuesday I'm going to be here with a new name, maybe a new funny cartoon face but with the same old opinions – as a regular community member.

If you've got any questions regarding my departure, just ask them. I'll do my best to give you the answers.

With regards,

Jouni Väänänen

Blogger (fall 2006 – spring 2008)

laFraise.com

No need to say anything, he? This design rocks. Lutz, our photographer, gave his best to prove it. "Lost in the city" is our last Vice Magazine winner and it really deserves it. I just love this pixel-art inspiration. Cool cool cool.

Lost in the city? Try in the shop!  

Congrats Whiff "the Fucker" Focker!

Here's the easter egg gallery that I promised to do just as soon as I'm back from my easter vacation. I was quite positively surprised to see that there was a nice amount of eggs waiting for me on my mailbox when I came to the office!

Many of these show dedication – many thanks to all of you for participating. One has to rise above the others though and this time it's Tillieke's contribution (below). Easter is traditionally the time of death and rising from the dead – therefore I really liked the kind of halloweenish aproach to the subject.

…and ehms, yeah. I also laughed out loud when I saw gasgas' entry. He deserves 500 brouzoufs too. ;)

Join me again this week. This week Friday game is very special for me and you'll soon know why.

Ok, let's start this beautiful day (I just woke up) with THE big news. It all holds in one word: Organics.

You've read correctly, your favorite brand is moving forward to selling eco-friendlier products. It's not like we were totally unconcerned by the environment anyway, but we just went another step ahead on the biological road to a better planet. Organics is therefore a new collection, just as nice as before, but involving a completely chemical-free production. To achieve this new challenge, we sought help from the Fondation Nicolas Hulot for Nature and Mankind – the only state-approved foundation to act in the field of education about the environment. With such a big partner, there's only one thing we miss now: gorgeous new designs. And that's exactly where you can get involved, by participating to a new  contest with the following inspiring thematic:  sports and environment.

- What is it about? Two submissions will be rewarded: one about sport & environment in general AND one about one outdoor sport (cycling, surfing, snowboarding, skiing, hiking, diving, climbing, yachting, kayaking).  

- Until when? April, 5th.

- What is to be won? 1500 Euro. 

Wanna join? We're waiting for you!

Easter is celebrated quite differently depending on the culture but I still thought Easter eggs are a fairly safe subject. Today's Friday game is a virtual version of something most of us have probably done while we were kids; painting eggs. Download an egg-template from here, paint it with your favourite piece of software and send it to me.

The Easter vacation is 4 days long which means I'm going to be available again on tuesday. That's when I'm going to publish a gallery of the eggs you've sent me and announce the winner. So, you've got loads of time to complete this task. The winner gets enough brouzoufs for a free t-shirt from our selection (shipping included).Have fun and take it easy!