My Motto
Every now and then you stumble across something and think ‘gee, I’d totally tattoo that on myself’. Well, this year I had one of those moments and went with it.
I’ve always thought I’d wait until I was at least 30 before I got a tattoo. I had that gut instinct that if I did something like that before then I’d most probably end up regretting it. I was a fickle young thing.
So for the last couple of years I have seriously contemplated a couple of ideas. I did get very close to a cross stitch design. Figured I needed to stitch it up before embarking on actual ink. And after I had done that, decided it would be a bit big for what I wanted.
I’m a collector of old craft. Either finished pieces or the things people use to make with. I have lots of old needle cases and needle books. Tons of old needles, wool winders, thimbles, you get my drift. A couple of months ago I bought this simply gorgeous antique souvenir sewing kit. It didn’t take long for me to realise that THIS was what was going on me forever.
Click here to see the other images of the box. It is such a delightful object, I am going to treasure it for a very long time!
I’m the kind of person that believes in the importance of signs. It’s crucial to remind yourself of the messages you hold true. Some people hang stuff on the wall, pin things to their office cubicles, embroider samplers, paint on footpaths. I have a small affirmation stuck on the inside of my wardrobe door, I have pictures on my walls, and a vast collection of button badges I can pop out for the right moment.
It’s Never Too Late To Mend, is very much a motto for me. I apply it to craft, politics, our lovely planet, my relationships and communities. And now I proudly wear my motto on my arm to help me keep on track for the rest of my life.
A massive thanks to Matt Gordon who was working out of Down to Earth Tattoos for his beautiful work. He was so much fun to hang out with!
And another massive thanks to Mark Burban for the great pic. I did some really great work with Mark and will be revealing more on that project soon!
Now, get mending!
xxx
rayna
Saucy fun!
It was a perfect Melbourne Autumn day when a bunch of lovely folk got together in the Iramoo Community Centre to embark on an epic wee apple sauce making session. See the EcoLiving Centre where my studio is has a huge apple tree outside. A random act of inspiration hit me when I saw hundreds of apples going to waste. My inner desire to waste not want not led me to start a sauce making day. I couldn’t think of a lovelier way to introduce myself to the locals and kick off the residency.
Coincidentally there was already a community swap meet in the progress of being organised so the two events were merged and a community day was born!
Wyndham Vale is out in the sprawling meetropolis on the edge of Melbourne. And it’s a rapidly growing area with Wyndham Vale having the highest population growth in the country last year. But like all suburbs filled with busy working people, struggling to grow a strong sense of community. That’s what I love about community kitchens, they have a fabulous way of bringing people together.
So a group of like minded folk gathered in the kitchen armed with peelers, knives, measuring cups and wooden spoons. (hint #1 have lots of peelers!). Soon the smell of cinnamon was wafting through the centre.
There was a bouncing castle, a swap meet, a brilliantly awesome coffee cart and a mental note to my love to take photos of these things next time!
Once we got the first batch cooked and jarred and the next bunch on the go I did a short chat about myself and the craft I do and then got into our Gocco session.
We were blessed to have the very awesome creative talents of Pilgrim from Draw! Pilgrim for our label design. And she’s agreed to have this label up as a free pdf download. Click here to download a nice printable version. It’s set up to fit most jar sizes.
I managed to give a very clear example of how NOT to do gocco first up! See we had this great design that was designed for two colours on each print. BUT in my nervous flustered rush to get it done I FORGOT to lift the plastic layer up before sticking on all the tiny bits of foam and then squeezing on all the ink. (hint #2 when running workshops take deep breaths and double check your steps!)
Sigh.
We probably could’ve figured a way of reusing that screen but I decided that time was ticking away so I just grabbed another and we got into it. We decided to keep it simple this time and not do the different colours rather do one label in each colour. I think they were feeling a bit sorry for me!
The first print was gorgeous! There was a hearty round of oohs and aahs and everyone was mad keen to give it a go. And I dare say there was a significant level of gocco converts in the group!
After some drying and cooling time, it was finally time to decorate the jars and they look HOT!
A heap more cooking and sterilising and stirring and printing and chopping and gluing ensued and before we knew it we had a bench covered in yummy scrummy jars of sauce. If anyone wants the recipe I’ve posted it at the bottom of this post.
And how chuffed were all the attendees to take home some jars? Yip, pretty blimmin chuffed. I for one went straight home and cranked up a roast pork and it was DELICIOUS.
Overall, the day was a brilliant success. What was most satisfying for me was bringing together a bunch of like minded people who are all based in the West and working in various ways on issues of community, environment and sustainability. But whom in most part didn’t know each other. Many great conversations were held and it was fabulous as a facilitator to be floating in and out of conversations about cooking, politics, climate change, gardening, parenting and economics. Even more exciting for me has been watching everyone connect on Facebook post event and continuing the conversations and collaborations.
The other aspect of the event that I was really happy about were the people who didn’t attend but still contributed. There were people contributing apples and jars all week even though they weren’t able to attend. I’m really looking forward to starting the next stage of the residency and meeting even more awesome locals!
Massive thanks to all who attended and made the day such a raving success.
xox
Rayna
APPLE SAUCE RECIPE
Preparation Time
10 minutes
Cooking Time
20 minutes
Makes
750ml (3 cups)
Ingredients
1kg granny smith apples, peeled, cored, coarsely chopped
100g (1/2 cup, firmly packed) brown sugar
185ml (3/4 cup) apple juice or water
1 tbs fresh lemon juice
2 x 7cm cinnamon sticks
1/4 tsp mixed spice
Method
Combine the apple, sugar, apple juice or water, lemon juice, cinnamon sticks and mixed spice in a large saucepan over low heat. Cook, stirring, for 3 minutes or until the sugar dissolves.
Increase heat to medium-high and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes or until the apple is soft. Remove from heat. Remove cinnamon sticks and discard. Set aside, uncovered, for 5 minutes to cool slightly.
Transfer apple mixture to the jug of a blender or the bowl of a food processor and process until pureed (we didn’t bother doing this, just cooked it a bit longer and mashed it in the pot). Place in a clean saucepan and stir over low heat until heated through.
Notes
This apple sauce will keep in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 days.
Permablitz! part 2 – how does your garden grow?
Now following on from my previous post about our permablitz…
Four weeks and buckets of rain and sunshine later, our garden has completely transformed!
Firstly and most importantly, presenting our fabulous new chickens! This is Susan.
And this is Patti (who refuses to sit still for a photo..)
They’re both very happy hens and were laying less than 12 hours after moving in. We are loving the fresh eggs! Needless to say, Tara is pretty stoked about her new friends, or as she calls them ‘our two mums’.
Post blitz, we’ve done quite a bit of work to their space. We had to move the house and construct a chook fence to keep them away from our neighbours (bless them..). And we’ve put in the beginnings of an orchard.
Their wee garden is coming along nicely!
I’ve started stitching on the fence – the ladies approve! Hoping to do more on it over the summer.
And the rest of the garden is coming along amazingly
our new garden beds are going crazy, and as you can see we’ll be harvesting out of them very soon
We’ve had our first potato harvest and they were super yummy. Even made some potato bread. It was so delicious there wasn’t even time to take a photo of it…
Everything is growing so green and luscious. We’ve been eating fresh spinach every day and the tomatoes, beans and capsicums are all flowering and starting to produce fruit. There’s some seriously awesome salads coming up.
So finally we have a wonderful kitchen garden and outdoor dining area. We had our first proper test drive this week when some of our good friends came over for a BBQ
And everyone approves!
Finally – and I’m not even showing you everything, there is SO MUCH going on in our garden – I made a little hanging strawberry garden out of some old formula tins and some jute string.
Plant pots are a great way to reuse formula tins. Just whack some spraypaint on the sides to cover the ugliness and away you go. Hanging them is a great way to fill up underutilised spaces. They’re the perfect size for strawberries. Can’t wait til these babies take off!
So our medium sized Melbourne block is currently growing: potatoes, garlic, countless varieties of tomato, chillies, capsicums, spinach, zucchini, beans, eggplants, carrots, spring onions, kale, strawberries, chives, rosemary, basil, lemon thyme, sage, pineapple sage, oregano, cress, lemon balm, parsley, chamomile, liquorice, comfrey, figs, plums, lemons and nectarines. Plus of course the chickens. And we have HEAPS more space to use. And we probably spend about 5-10 hours a week pottering around attending to weeding, pruning, staking, harvesting etc.
The increased value of our quality of life? Priceless.
Permablitz!
So a few months back we attended our first Permablitz at our friends’ house. A Permablitz is basically a backyard blitz with a permaculture design. And we had such an amazing time! So wonderful to join in with a bunch of awesome people to descend on someone’s house and transform their space into a highly functional, productive working garden. Not only did we get to meet heaps of interesting people, we got to learn a lot too.
Watching our friends’ garden grow since has been so exciting to watch so when we were offered the opportunity to have our own garden blitzed, we couldn’t be more thrilled!
As readers and friends will know, 2010 has not been the easiest for us. So we couldn’t have been happier to learn something amazingly GOOD was going to happen to us!
We had the amazing design help of Angela, Amanda and Mara, who worked with us to come up with a great plan to transform our garden. And one slightly boggy Sunday in November about 50 people rocked up to our place and made our dreams a reality. We had a pretty strict policy of buying as little new stuff as possible. In the end the new stuff we bought was dirt, sand, gravel, some chicken wire, screws, nails and a gate latch. Everything else was dug out of our shed, brought by people on the day or scavenged from around our neighbourhood. I’ll let the pictures tell the story.
BEFORE:
DURING
Pre-gardening stretches led by the awesome Lex. Coupled with the chi kung session after lunch, we cemented our role as the neighbourhood freaks 
SERIOUS mud. We had a clear day but we’d had a months rain the day before and this area was already pretty thick with clay. MASSIVE respect to the people who worked on this area!
Chook house construction. Utilising our old outdoor table, a few wooden pallets and an old cabinet unit.
Garden bed construction, featuring the old top of the outdoor table.
Planting! It’s always the highlight of a blitz, putting in the seedlings everyone brought at the end of the day.
Halfway through the morning we decided that since we had such an awesome turnout we’d do the nature strip too. Fully planted out with indigenous grasses, small shrubs and ground covers.
And at the end of the day, everyone was EXHAUSTED!!
AFTER
My favourite recycled material was the inside of an old screen door. We knocked it out of the frame, turned it sideways and attached it to the side of our courtyard frame. Perfect climbing frame for our happy wanderer!
Arguably the world’s coolest chook house!
Little window sill gardens for the chooks, drip watered from the chook house roof. Now planted out with marigolds, cress and strawberries.
And arguably the worlds first pallet chook gate with a nice mesh on the actual gate – a perfect cross stitch canvas! I’ve already stitched a small heart on it and planning a lot more. I’ve also planted beans on the right side to grow up the timber. And I just noticed the first one has sprouted today!
Well I reckon that’s enough pictures for one post. The blitz was just over a month ago and the place has grown so much. I’ll do another post with updated photos so you can see the transformation. EDIT: it’s here.
But before I wind this one up I just want to say how amazing the permablitz community is. The Melbourne Permablitz organisation just had it’s 100th blitz (we were #98). So that means 100 gardens at peoples houses, community centres and gardens and school gardens have been transformed into food producing spaces all thanks to the voluntary hard work of people who truly believe it is possible to turn this world around if we just roll up our sleeves and just bloody get on with it. And no one got paid, and everyone had yummy food and great times and learnt lots and met new people.
And if that’s not revolutionary then I just bloody don’t know what is.
Our biggest love, thanks and eternal gratitude to everyone who turned up and mucked in. Can’t wait to repay the favour at your house!
Extreme refashioning
In other news, the Craft Cartel has been a bit blimmin busy.
Last weekend kicked off the Anti-Gentrification Festy Fest in Fitzroy. We got together with Earthsharing Australia and started talking about the crazy state of our economy and what impact it’s having on creative peoples, and young people. And we thought it was a bit mad that this boom bust system which seems to be all about property speculators totally cashing in everytime a community starts making things a bit more blimmin interesting. It seems to us that the world would be a much radder place if we could all afford to make and grow things and hang out in our communities. looking after each other more. Instead we’re all stuck working stupid hours in boring ass jobs trying to pay the rent which never seems to stop going up. And don’t even think about buying a house ’cause the baby boomers have got all the land locked up and are quite content charging younger generations whatever they can to fund their retirement.
SO
Rather than sit around bitching and moaning about it or throwing our arms up in dispair that we can’t do anything about it we thought let’s get some creative people with creative brains together to try come up with some SOLUTIONS.
The festival has started brilliantly with a giant gory craft session with the old Tote hotel carpet as our chief material. Casey donned a ballgown made out of the stuff by the stupidly talented Kathryn Jamieson and thanks to some hardcore stinky branding, festivalgoers got to take home their own Tote souvenier doormat. Also on hand was a mad fun Lagerphone making workshop.
Best of all the bar was aflush with wonderful conversations about potential models for change and plenty of stories were told about histories of creative resistance against the landed gentry.
The festival continues with an exhibition in the windows of the Workers Club with the Ballgown and other crafty carpety stinky artifacts. And finishes off on the 27th at the Workers Club with the DIE YUPPY, DIE! concert and festy fashion jam.
We’re also putting together a zine of IDEAS and THINGS YOU CAN DO to smash the property monopoly that has our beautiful creative selves captive. If you missed out submitting your idea at the Festival in the weekend, you can submit an idea via our website. And we’ll pop it in.
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Also,
Craft Cartel presents:
Vogue – Bike Fashion Jam
DIY BICYCLE GEAR WORKSHOP TO KEEP THE COPS & THE FASHION POLICE HAPPY
11:00 – 13:00
Saturday 19 June 2010
Coburg Library
Cnr Victoria & Louisa Streets, Coburg
Craft Cartel, alarmed by sights of fluoro lycra clad cyclists and equally aghast at the thought of coming a cropper while partaking in our favourite form of transport, are proud to present a solution: High Viz Vogue, a DIY bike fashion workshop.
The event, which is part of the Moreland City Council Coburg Carnivale, invites members of the public to adapt helmets and other clothing bits they’d like to make roadway and catwalk friendly, or to start from scratch using supplied materials. Local designers Miss Viz will be on hand to provide guidance and there will be displays of innovative bike fashion solutions such as designer Ann Maher’s ‘biker bustle’.
The event will culminate in a fashion parade with prizes supplied by Crumpler and will be followed by a celebratory ride through Moreland to parade the new hip gear led by Sugar Spokes all female bike crew.
“We don’t think riders should have to choose between having a sore body and being an eyesore,” says Cartel co-founder Casey Jenkins, “You can look hot while you’re cycling and still keep yourself safe, we’re going to show you how.”
Free! No experience necessary! All materials supplied. Ace prizes from Crumpler to be won.
Don’t Hate the Media, Be the Media
As readers of Radical Cross Stitch will know I am a big time fan of Melbourne community radio station 3CR. There is nothing like turning on the ol’ wireless to hear people from my own communities talking about news and issues that are relevant to me and the lives of the people around me. And it’s even better that I never hear any loud voices screaming at me to quickly empty my pockets into the hands of giant corporate consumerist empires!
So I didn’t hesitate for a second last year when the fine folk there asked me to contribute to the 2010 Seeds of Dissent Calendar. I still consider that piece to be my greatest stitching achievement so far and I was super happy over the weekend to finally pick it up from the framers after a 12 month hunt for the PERFECT vintage frame.
Well I promised that I’d make the pattern available and at long last it’s now in store. And if you hurry and grab it over the next couple of days it’s half price (sale ends Friday). Proceeds go straight to 3CR! If you don’t already know the 3CR Radiothon is on NOW! So you should pop over to their website and become a subscriber. The theme for radiothon this year is Handmade Radio and subscribers get a copy of CRAM which contains a fab pattern to make your own radio! Including some wee cross stitch embellishment patterns from me.
Need more reasons to love 3CR? Check the spunks in this wee clip
3CR Radiothon TVC 2010 from 3cr on Vimeo.
Help Uncle Kev
Ok folks. Put your hands in your pockets. Uncle Kevin Buzzacott (Aboriginal Elder/Activist) needs money for a big operation soon. You can donate by buying his track “Rok Hop”. He needs your money quick, so dig deep folks and follow the link. You can donate as much as you want.
You can also buy one of my cross stitch patterns from the Radical Rags shop. 100% of proceeds between now and the end of Jan straight to Uncle Kev.
Uncle Kev is one of the most inspiring, endearing, radical and deadly funny elders in the movement to protect country. The irony that a man who’s spent so many decades fighting uranium mining is now needing treatment for cancer is not lost on any of us. Please give back to a man who has given so much.
Fence Stitch Tutorial
THE RADICAL CROSS STITCH GUIDE TO FENCE STITCHING
In collaboration with the realestate4ransom prankster campaign against the rampant land speculation plaguing Melbourne’s suburbs, Radical Cross Stitch and the Melbourne Revolutionary Craft Circle invite you to engage in a small piece of community beautification. This post is all about the how – make sure you read all about the why before you begin.
The following document contains full instructions on how to cross stitch a dollar sign on your favourite local block of vacant land.
Materials:
x Red wool – can be obtained from your local op shop, your own craft stash or raid someone else’s
x Time
x A fence with either diamond or square grid on a block of vacant land
x A friend or two – ‘cause these things are always more fun with mates
Part A: Finger Knitting
Step 1: Tie your wool in a loose loop around your index finger
Step 2: Swing knot around to the back of your index finger then loosely loop wool round your middle finger.
Step 3: Bring wool round the back of your hand and from left to right, wrap over the front of your fingers above the existing loops.
Step 4: Take hold of original loop on your index finger and pull it over the second loop and over your finger and release. You’ll need to bend your finger down to get it over easily. The first one might be a bit tight if your original loop wasn’t loose enough. Don’t worry this is normal and won’t happen on the rest of them.
Step 5: Repeat step 4 for the loop on your middle finger. Will look like this when finished.
Step 6: Take hold of loose wool and wrap around your hand counter clockwise, ensuring the new wool sits above the old wool looped on your fingers.
Step 7: Repeat steps 4-6
Step 8: After about 7-10 rounds a ‘snake’ of knitted wool will be forming behind your hand. Pull on this snake to lengthen and tighten it.
And that’s it!
Now time to keep knitting. You’ll need about 10 metres for this project. Once you have about 5 metres of knitted wool, cut the wool and tie it round your finger knitting to knot it. Don’t worry about this looking too attractive; it’ll get chopped off during the fence stitching process.
Part B: Fence Stitching
Now these photos aren’t as sexy due to the whole night time installation aspect of this kind of thing. Turns out my camera doesn’t like taking close shots of bright red wool at night with a flash… But you’ll get the drift.
This tutorial is based on a stitch done on a diamond shaped chain link fence. If you’ve struck gold and found a square grid fence, the directions will be slightly different. I’ve italicised the extra bits.
Step 1: Figure out where you’re going to start. You want your stitching to be nicely centred. Don’t rush this process! Count it a couple of times if you need to. Make sure your design has enough room without running into the edge of the fence, or into a broken bit of fence.
Step 2: Tie the end of your wool onto the fence onto the left corner of the diamond or bottom left corner of the square. Don’t worry about the hanging end bit of wool, you can tidy these all off at the end. But ensure it’s tightly secured so it doesn’t come off!
Step 3: pull your wool straight across the diamond and through the next diamond. Pass the wool behind and down to the diamond below. Gee that’s kinda hard to explain – look at the picture! For square grids you’ll go diagonally up and then down.
Step 4: pull the wool vertically (or diagonally) up, through and behind to the next diamond. In the picture my next diamond was the one up and to the left from my first.
There’s your first cross!
Now a brief pause to talk about tension. It’s really important to keep all your stitches tight! Firstly because it looks better, secondly because it lasts longer and finally and most importantly because it uses less wool! All that time finger knitting – best to use it efficiently! I usually stop every couple of stitches and give everything another tug to make sure it’s nice and tight.
Step 5: repeat steps 3 & 4 for the rest of your pattern. Once you get the hang of it you can start to get a bit clever about using the ‘thread’ to secure the behind work a bit neater as you go along. You want to keep the behind work as close to the stitches or the wire as possible so it keeps it neater and makes your finished design really clear. There’s no clear way to explain how to do this because it all depends on what direction you’re going in. It’s something you pick up with practice. So the more fence stitching you do the better!
Step 6: When you’ve finished the pattern, tie your wool off as tight as you can. As with your original knot, make sure it’s super secure.
Step 7: Cut off the extra wool. Make sure you leave a couple of centimetres spare just so the wool has a little bit to move before coming undone. Remember your stitching has to brave the elements so it will all move a bit over time.
Step 8: Step back and admire!!
Congratulations you just made one ugly mofo fence, heaps less ugly. And if you’ve used this pattern – you’ve also helped educate your community that this wasted block of land that appears to be just collecting weeds and rubbish is also helping line the pockets of some fat cat speculator. These blocks don’t just sit there doing nothing – they sit there making money!
The Pattern!
While of course you can use this tutorial to make whatever pattern you want – there’s no such thing as a bad fence stitch! – this tutorial has been put together to encourage to get on board with our campaign to highlight the vacant land in our suburbs. Land that is sitting there being ugly when it could be a lovely home – or a nice local business.
Here’s the two dollar sign patterns. One for a square grid (these are the easiest to do – but the fences are rarer) and one for the diamond grid.
They’re not the best quality image for the diagonal fence sorry… Will work on getting a better one, but it should do the trick for now.
And that’s it!
I’ve also made a pretty pdf version (8MB) of this doc which is easiest for printing if you prefer.
Very much looking forward to seeing what people can do with this tutorial. As a special treat, if you send me pics of your finished dollar sign and let me know your postal address I’ll send you one of our limited edition gocco printed speculator cum rags!
So get out there kids. There are literally hundreds of canvases across our suburbs to decorate! If you need help finding one maybe check out the invest page on the realestate4ransom.com site for some ideas.
xox
stitching a new economics
Those of you who’ve been following this site for a while will know that one of the biggest issues that concerns me is the stifling effects of land speculation on our communities and our creativity. While many of us crafty types would love to make stuff full time, it’s just not possible when we need to work so many hours a week to pay the rent/mortgage. It’s bloody frustrating that our economic system rewards those that just buy and sell for a living yet punishes those of us who actually create.
One of big current issues in the craft world has been the ripping off of the ideas and designs of independent crafters/illustrators etc. It seems like a weekly occurrence that some big company has found the work of a designer online and stolen it for their own products. And who has the legal budget to fight that kind of crap?
Whilst this might seem like a new phenomenon, the practise of capitalising off the creative talents of artistic communities has been around for a long time. And the most damaging application of this practise occurs in the land markets. While we’re out busting our bums creating vibrant awesome and sustainable communities, behind the scenes is a secret, shady bunch of land sharks circling.
It’s called gentrification – and there’s a really good explanation of how it works on the I Want To Live Here film comp site.
It sucks that we bust our asses creating great places to live only to get priced out of the area by lazy land hoarders cashing in on the value our hard work creates.
I think it’s super important for creative people to understand because it’s pretty common to see creative responses to the aesthetic issues of land banking – but rare to see these responses address the real drivers behind the issues. I’ve been seeing more and more projects emerging that are designed to make boarded up buildings attractive or to ‘help’ landlords find creative people to move in. But while the intentions behind these projects are very positive and genuine, they do all have the long term effect of making the land more valuable, thus compounding the problem. What’s needed are creative ideas to try and break the cycles and systems that create the problem of high rents and vacant buildings in the first place.
But of course the first step is understanding.
I always say that an important role of the artist in society is to act as a mirror of society – so we can see what we’re really up to, and to help create the visions of the way things could be. Inspiring and creating change is something artists and crafters are really good at – and have been doing for centuries.
So I was super proud to be asked to be part of a team of local creatives keen to get together and create a visual campaign around the effects of rampant land speculation in Melbourne. It currently takes 9.5 years of full time average wage to buy an average house in Melbourne (it was 4 years when the subprime crisis hit the US). This is absolutely insane! Yet still our media and politicians continue to perpetuate the myth that forever rising property prices are a good thing.
But who are they good for? Not young people, that’s for sure. How many of you young renters out there could ever imagine having the half a million bucks it takes to enter the market in Melbourne today? How many of us continue to buy the story that the First Home Owners Grant is about supporting young people. When in reality all the policy has done has further inflated prices above and beyond the original grants. First Home Owners Grant? Baby Boomers Bailout more like.
This stuff is so important for creative people to understand for two reasons. Firstly because it directly impacts on our lives in regards to the hours of our lives we waste working to pay for the roofs over our heads. And secondly because our own communities are guilty of perpetuating the same behaviour. I can’t count the number of craft and indie design markets I have seen this year alone with insanely high stall fees. There was one in particular I saw where the stall fees for a ‘fringe’ event alongside a major design event were higher than for the design event itself. And this is becoming more common.
We need to call bullshit on it.
The fact that there is a massive shift in awareness towards the important economic and environmental benefits of handmade stuff is freakin awesome. There are wonderful communities everywhere making and buying the things they need in life without destroying an ecosystem or exploiting another community in the process. We need to do what we can to support these systems and a big part of that is keeping a close eye on the marketplaces that support the trade in these products.
I have personal experience in running a market so I have an idea about how much these things cost – in both time and money. Our markets were run for the love of craft so we didn’t ever break even on costs but we really didn’t charge much for stalls. What was important for us was that our sellers had the freedom to make really out there stuff. Charging a high rent – which is what a stall fee is – would impact on that freedom, so we kept the fees low.
I know we could’ve charged a bit more. I’m sure our sellers would’ve forgiven us for wanting to at least cover costs. But if we had of charged that, and if we’d have hired a flasher venue and spent more on advertising etc there is NO WAY we would’ve been charging some of the stall fee levels I’ve seen recently.
I think it’s essential that if the craft movement in particular is going to have an analysis on issues of environmental impacts, multinational retail and workers rights we must also have a solid analysis of the politics of property – both physical and intellectual – since these areas have such massive impacts on our practice as crafters.
Enough ranting.
For this campaign we decided the main objective was to try and get young people to pay attention to the way land was being used in our suburbs. And to try and draw attention to who really drives the debates around these issues.
So presenting Melbourne’s latest real estate company: realestate4ransom.com Check the website and Facebook for more info on what it’s about and to see some of the images of the street part of the campaign. I’ll try and update some major bits here too.
But the main reason for this post is to get some of you undercover operatives in the Melbourne Revolutionary Craft Circle fired up to get out and do some craft! I’ve put together a tutorial on how to do a dollar sign on a fence. This post was supposed to be that tutorial but given the length of this post already I think I’ll do it separate..
So check out the website, fan us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Youtube (stay tuned for mad clip) and help us spread the word about what’s really going on.
Tutorial next!
xox
3..2..1.. Launch!
3CR’s Seeds of Dissent Calendar Launch
Everyone is welcome to come to the Calendar Launch on Friday, November 13 at Readings Bookshop in Carlton at 6pm for free wine and talk! [Readings is located at 309 Lygon St, Carlton, Victoria: Phone (03) 9347 6633.]
Face Up To The Future! with 3CR’s fifth Seeds Of Dissent Calendar. 3CR asked 12 artists who are part of Australian activist culture to contribute an artwork that reflects their idea of the future.
In 2006, 3CR created a Seeds of Dissent! Calendar to celebrate 3CR’s 30th birthday. The full colour, nationally distributed calendar teemed with radical dates, ideas and inspiration for social change. The calendar sold out of its 2000 copies. Since then 3CR’s Promotions Sub Committee’s Calendar Team has produced a yearly calendar, each with a fresh theme.
Face Up ToThe Future! — 3CR’s fifth Seeds Of Dissent Calendar — looks ahead to imagine a future we want to live in, while also celebrating Australia’s radical history. We asked 12 artists who are part of Australian activist culture to contribute an artwork that reflects their idea of the future. Some artists have created images that imagine the ideal future and some have chosen to depict issues we need to address today in order to achieve it.
Australian history re-envisioned with a cheeky female bushranger, uranium mining and the need to recognise the interdependence of ecology, the tyrannical expectations of female beauty, the return of tumbling as a form of transportation (!), Indigenous people at the heart of popular culture… these are the some of the issues explored by artists such as Arlene Texta Queen, Deborah Kelly, Bindi Cole, Adam Hill, Tom O’Hern, Mitch [? sorry Mitch], Jo Waite, Rayna Fahey (that would be me), Tom Civil, Mickie Quick, Lachlan Conn and Paul J Kalemba.
Cross-stitched samplers, stencils, felt pen drawings, collages, cartoons, illustration, computer art… these are the media the artists use to take us into the future of the 2010 Seeds of Dissent Calendar.
Also!
How to Make Trouble and Influence People
is a wonderful new book by some trouble-making bloke called Iain McIntyre, and is published by the redoubtable and not-at-all nervous Breakdown Press.
Launched in Newcastle at TINA it will be launched again, kicking and screaming, in Melbourne on THURSDAY the 5th NOVEMBER (remember, remember..) at the BELLA UNION BAR (Victorian Trades Hall, cnr Victoria and Lygon Streets) between the hours of 6 and 8pm.
The book compiles tales of unconventional political dissent included in three previously-published pamphlets — How To Make Trouble And Influence People (1996), How to Stop Whining and Start Living (1998) and Revenge Of The Troublemaker (2003) — and, as an EXTRA! ADDED! BONUS!, interviews with a number of pranksters, photos galore, and er, other stuff.
Thanks @ndy for the blog post which I just nicked and reposted here. There’s plenty of Radical Cross Stitch in BOTH these publications so make sure you get along to at least one of these great nights. And make sure you get your copy of the calendar! It does look fantastic. It’s a must have for your wall in 2010.