Sarah-wear: Thongs to T-shirts, in Alaska and on the Web

Alaska and Internet-based businesses are cranking out Sarah Palin products -- from "Palin Power" maternity T-shirts to "Wonder Palin" thong underwear.One Anchorage entrepreneur, Jim Dooley, printed about 700 John McCain/Palin shirts this weekend, delivering the first batch to the Alaska State Fair by 4 p.m. Friday. They sold out.Dooley said he made enough off the shirts to "pay for my turkey legs and pork-chop on a stick."Alaska Serigraphics, an Anchorage company, said it is producing pro-Palin T-shirts, including one that reads: "Our mama beats your Obama." reads one of the company's T-shirt designs.The company is also producing pro-Obama T-shirts, added John Williams, the production manager.The buzz over Palin's selection as McCain's running mate on Friday has other businesses and Palin advocates seeing potential dollar signs.Trish Houser, the creator of Palintology, an Anchorage-based pro-Palin Web site (http://palintology.com), has run the site as a personal hobby for two years. She's considering putting ads on it to generate income for the first time.After Friday's big news of McCain's selection of Palin, "I went from 100 hits a day to 10,000 hits per day," Houser said, adding that she spent about 20 hours keeping the site updated over the Labor Day weekend.Alaskans aren't the only ones cashing in.One of the country's major Web-based T-shirt retailers, Cafe Press, said its members from around the world had created 2,310 Palin-related items for sale by 5:30 a.m. Alaska time on Friday, even before Republican presidential candidate McCain had officially announced Palin as his running mate."It's fascinating to see how (the sellers) jump onto news items," said Marc Cowlin, the San Mateo, Calif.-based company's spokesman. By Tuesday, at least 93,600 items mentioning Palin were for sale on its Web site. But Cowlin didn't know how many had actually sold.Among the items for sale on Cafe Press: Pro-McCain/Palin baby bibs, T-shirts, thong underwear, political signs and bumper stickers.Dorene Lorenz, a Seward artist who hawks some of her designs online, didn't get busy until midnight on Monday. By Tuesday morning, she had pro-Palin T-shirts up for sale on the Web site Zazzle."It was purely for entertainment," Lorenz said, adding that she was disappointed that McCain didn't pick Mitt Romney as his running mate.(E-mail Elizabeth Bluemink at ebluemink(at)adn.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)