FREE LEX WOTTON
National Day of Action – Emergency Rally
FREE LEX WOTTON!
Free all political prisoners!
Stop Aboriginal deaths in custody!
Jail Hurley and all killer cops!
Rally and March
12 noon
Saturday 1st November, 2008
Old GPO, Bourke St Mall
For more information:
Tel: 03 9388 0062
0419 53 84 25 or 0401 806 331
Initiated by the Indigenous Social Justice Association, Melbourne
If you don’t know about this case I urge you to visit the facebook camapign page and read more about these gross injustices.
If your arts looks good in bike shorts we want you
We want your bike crafts!
Or on a bike, or just somewhere in the general vicinity of a bicycle…
The Melbourne Craft Cartel is running a bike themed craft market at the Bicycle Film Festival Street Party on Nov 23. So we’re on the hunt for crafters with arts and crafts to go on bikes, use on bikes, make bikers look hot, or have crafts that have bikes on them. Sound like you?
The Street Party is gonna be super neat and will have tons of music, beer, hot boys and girls doing ace bike tricks, a bike fashion parade, and a bike-themed art jam. Check out the BFF website for more details http://bicyclefilmfestival.com.au And of course this is our FIRST market for the summer season so we are PUMPED! (that was a bike pun, be warned, there will be more).
Stalls cost a measly $10 or $15 if you want to be a full Craft Cartel member (which means you get a whole page on our soon to be snazzy website for just $5 – deadly!) and you need to provide your own table.
Your stall can have non bike related crafts on it but it needs to have at least one bike related.
So if you’re keen to join in the fun of this awesome day send the following details to
Name:
Email:
Mobile:
Website:
Table size:
What crafts you sell:
What bike crafts you’ll have:
Member? Yes/No
Wanna be? Yes/No
If you want more details about membership, the bike crafty pageant, the Bike Love bicycle mating project, the Art Jam or whatever check out our facefuck page or give me a buzz and I will ramble at you about it all for a while.
love & rage
casey & rayna & crew
casey-0439 354 560
Patch Your Pants! Smash The State!
One day I’ll make it to this:
Revolutionary Craft Circle, Thursday October 30th, 7-9pm
Get your craft on and get down to Loophole on the 2nd and fourth Thursday of the month for a Sewing good time! No experience necessary, spontaneous skill-sharing predicted, bring a project you have or start something new! Patches available by donation, BYO pants/clothes to sew, other DIY Projects welcome. Sewing machine available to use. People of all gender identities welcome.
At Loophole, 834a High Street, Thornbury, Melbourne. Say hi from me!
Calling all Melbourne conscious crafters
All aboard!
Seriously folks, if there’s a good cause to craft for then this is surely one of them. Goods 4 Girls is an amazing group that assists young African women in sustainably managing their periods in order to keep them in school. And they do a fantastic job!
10 points to the lovely Ms Cate for coordinating this! The bonus is learning to make your own pads if you haven’t before. So you can be inspired to go home and make some for you too!
I’m gutted that I’ll miss the first one, but definitely on board for session two.
Pass it on!
Takin’ over the town
Craftster user craftcore has done these two gorgeous embroidered graffiti pieces. I especially like the crochet one. Especially in this time of a global economic crisis, I’d rather think we were using at as an excuse to create sustainable and self-sufficient communities rather than have a violent uprising. Sounds much more interesting (and less painful) to me.
Craftcore has also made some contributions to the upcoming issue of Hoopla which is perilously close to the photocopier!
Also found on craftster was plavalaguna’s version of the Firefox pattern which has been getting a fair few hits recently. So if you’ve been wondering what it looks like finished, here it is!
Check out her website and deviant art
Wear it with pride
This is quite a timely post given all the elections flying around at the moment. Typically when one thinks of a rosette, the image comes to mind of a slightly greying man in a grey suit, bad glasses and a slightly worn brown suitcase. He’s just knocked at your door and is trying to convince you that he deserves your vote (power, baubles, junkets) to do absolutely nothing different from the other guy.
Well politics has changed a little bit but the rosette is still a time-honoured tradition of all political parties. A rosette is designed to proudly declare your political view. It says ‘hey look I support this party and I’m a good person so it’s ok for you to support them too’.
A rosette is also used a prize. I’m sure you’ve all got memories of a country fair or a horse show or something similar. The shiny blue ribbon rosette which declares a winner is always worn on a puffed out chest, especially if it’s a first time winner.
Which is why I absolutely adore the new rosettes from Zoe (see podcast episode 5). She has taken a selection of colloquial terms for menstruation and turned them into rosettes so you can wear your moon on your chest!
Zoe has been pretty busy recently ’cause she also co-presented a Pecha Kucha night with Jared Davidson from the Garage Collective. They did 20 seconds each on 20 slides about art and activism. I was hugely inspired listening to this and I totally recommend anyone who is into conscious practice to take 10 and have a listen.
Global Economic Crisis Craft
Goodness, seen the news recently? I’m mildly enjoying the irony of all the free marketeers crying out for state assistance. It reminds me of the old Mussollini quote “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
So given that we’re rapidly heading towards a global depression of a level never seen before, it’s time for you all to be thinking a little bit more about making your lives a bit more self-sufficient. Luckily for those of us in the Southern Hemisphere, it is the best time to be planting a whole heap of stuff, so we’re gonna have cranking vege gardens soon. I’m super excited that my tomato seeds I carefully saved from our last harvest are sprouting on the bathroom window sill. And since we have a cranking grey water flow from the washing machine out to the back garden, all our shower water is now going straight to the vege garden out front so it’s humming along.
But it’s also a good time to think about the items you use in your daily life that cost you a bit to replace that you could just as easily make. So I want to recommend a couple of crafty economic crisis projects for you.
Firstly, every one needs knickers. And given most knickers are badly made from cheap and boring materials, it makes a whole heap of sense to custom make your own. LUCKY FOR YOU the ever inspirational paintergirl has got the Kaotic Kraft Kuties DiY Knicker pack for sale in her etsy store.
You get the pattern, instructions and fold over elastic (which I am now quite convinced, is indeed awesome), all you need is an old tshirt or stretchy fabric and scissors, thread and a sewing machine and you are sorted. It says you need basic sewing skills and that’s pretty accurate. I hadn’t used a sewing machine in months, and I’m far from good at using one, and I handled this project beautifully. Although my knickers turned out more art project than functional undies..
But you could make some that look like this!
How hot is that?
And the best bit is that if you get this kit, you can make as many knickers as you desire, you just need to get a bit more elastic and fabric somewhere along the way. This is a perfect project for getting together with a bunch of your best crafty buddies to make. If you do make some, make sure you share with the Kuties so we can all purr over your creations.
And of course a good thing to go with knickers is making your own cloth pads. The last thing you want to waste your scarse dollars on during a global depression is wasteful throw away bits. Plus, cloth pads feel so much lovelier, your body will love you for it, I promise. There’s a great pattern list on the Goods 4 Girls website and while you’re there you might want to get inspired to make some to donate to them while you’re at it.
So, anyone else out there got any hot crafty tips for surviving a depression?
Clever People Rule
Especially clever people that like to hack the crazy world we live in.
Like Evan Roth who has created very thin laser cut stainless steel plates designed to slip in your luggage and cheer up your friendly local customs agent. Getting there is indeed half the fun. I’m wondering if we should get some ‘not a property developer’ plates for our upcoming Vanuatu trip..
The amusing part of this project for me was discovering that the TSA actually has their own blog. And this project did indeed pop up on there, prompting an extremely long and amusing converstion, I recommend a read!
I found a link to Evans project on Wooster, where I also found this nice project:
Genius.
Return of the Ninja
In my last post I promised that I would return back to the radical stitching from the nerdiness. And so I did!
This is what I’ve been working on for the last six weeks:
I loved making the Youth house cross stitch last year, so i wanted to explore the theme a little more.
This one is 32 x 37 cm big and made on 20 stitch/inch Aida.
And lots of other things have happened too, but for some reason or another I haven’t gotten around to posting anything about it. I was invited to the group exhibition Strich und faden in Germany. I wasn’t able to go see it, so it still feels kind of unreal, but it’s been so exciting anyway!
The exhibition itself has ended, but it will be a part of the Berliner Kunstsalon too. So if you’re on your way past Berlin, make sure to check it out!
On a personal note I’ve been in a bad mood lately despite everything good that’s happened, but things are looking up. I’m finally going back to school after thinking about it for years, and I’ve got a new apartment that I love, so it feels like this winter is going to turn out good after all!
Economics without the spin
If you’ve been watching any of the news about the global economic crisis recently you’re probably wondering why all the ‘expert commentators’ are bankers, traders and politicians aka the people that got us into this mess. But if you wany to learn about what this economic crisis is really about and learn about the real solutions to use the economic system to put us on a true path to sustainability, Economics for Activists is the course for you!
Hosted by Karl Fitzgerald who you all know as the host of the Renegade Economist on 3CR, this four-week course is designed for activists keen to get to the root causes of many of the social and environmental injustices we face today.
It’s a four week course starting next Tuesday and registrations are limited and essential. It’s only gold coin so anyone can afford it. Get on over to the Earthsharing Australia website and register your bad ass self today.
xox