A tile game about a printed scarf

The Porch Print Shop

Someone comes to the porch and asks for a scarf. You print it square by square — a flower on an ink — and the cloth counts ink patches, flower bunches, mirroring, the border and the flower at the heart. Nine guests across four seasons, each with wishes of their own.

The game is free and asks for no account. It opens in a browser on a phone or a computer, keeps working offline, and speaks English and Ukrainian. It also opens inside Telegram, at t.me/babakokum_bot/porch.

Print a scarf How the game works

Opens the game in English or Ukrainian · free, no account

Illustration: women of several generations in bright printed floral headscarves, hand in hand on a field path in autumn.
Illustration: women of several generations in printed floral headscarves on a field path in autumn.
The object

A thin printed cloth with two names — хустка · kokum scarf (Plains Cree kôhkom, “your grandmother”). Nobody has published where the Prairie scarves were made or how they arrived; the story of women trading and gifting them lives in families on both sides, and the one peer-reviewed study records it as memory.

What is documented, what is remembered →

How the game works

What happens on the screen, in order.

  1. Honesty first

    Who made this, that nobody has endorsed it, and that the guests on the porch are invented people — the screen you read before anything else.

  2. A year on the porch

    Nine guests across four seasons. Each one arrives with a cloth of their own, from three squares across to five.

  3. The request

    The guest names the flowers they want and a few wishes. Wishes carry the biggest points, and the third star waits until every one of them is granted.

  4. Printing

    Two tiles in your hand: place one on the cloth, take one from the basket, and again until the cloth is full. Points come from ink patches, flower bunches, mirroring, the border and the flower at the heart.

  5. The clothesline

    The finished scarf hangs up with its stars, the count behind them and the guest's answer, and then goes into the chest.

  6. The herbarium

    Each guest opens one more flower. Its card carries one thing we know for sure, with the source printed under it.

Print a scarf Opens the game in English or Ukrainian · free, no account

Where this stands, September 2026

Who made it
A community project started at UAFest. Ukrainian-Canadians made it: the words, the drawings, the code. It is a prototype.
Status
No Indigenous community or organization has endorsed or partnered in this project yet. We have asked for community review; it has not begun.
Voices
Every Indigenous voice in the story is quoted by name from something that person published. The guests on the porch are invented people, and every flower card names the source it rests on.
Printing
No scarf has been printed. We asked four print shops for prices; one has answered with a price list; we have placed no order.
Funding
Nothing submitted, nothing awarded.
Language
The game is in English and Ukrainian. This website is in English, French and Ukrainian.

The story on this site quotes published authors by name. Corrections from the communities described here outrank anything we wrote.

info@uafest.ca What an Indigenous co-author would decide →

Sixteen flowers in the herbarium

Three are printed from the first day — sunflower, kalyna, wild rose. Nine more open one at a time, one for each guest you print for, and the last four come from the scarf of the day and the fair. A card says what the plant is, where it grows, who is recorded using it and where we read it; it makes no claim of symbolic or traditional meaning. Where we found no record for a plant, the plant stayed off the cloth.

Open at the start

The kokum scarf: what is documented Print and embroidery: two different objects

Other ways to print

The scarf of the day deals everyone the same flowers and keeps your best score and how many days you have printed in a row. The fair runs round after round, each one asking a little more. Free printing leaves the wishes aside and opens every flower you have. Every finished scarf goes into the chest, and one tap saves it as a picture.

The classic scarf journey keeps its own address: six stages that end with a printed square you compose and name, with the story and its sources along the way.

The classic scarf journey

Want it on cloth? No scarf has been printed yet. Write to info@uafest.ca, and we write once — when a printed scarf is real, or to tell you the path closed. One letter, no newsletter.

Write to us about a printed scarf

Sources on this page