Happy Mothers Day!
I hope all the mothers out there are being spoilt rotten today.
When I think of Mothers Day I think of all the awesome mums out there working tirelessly to create a better world for all our children. Mums are bloody brilliant.
Thank you.
And if you’ve come visiting because you just heard me on 774 chatting with Alan about the bra bug gardens, you can find the full article about them by clicking here.
Thanks for visiting!
xox
rayna
Iramoo day 1
It was a brilliantly sunny autumn Melbourne day and I packed up some kids, a picnic lunch and some weaving materials and hit the road south. It’s a short half hour trip from our place to Iramoo and most of that is spent on the Princes Freeway. So aside from the odd crazy van wielding driver, it’s quite the nice drive. My drive coincides with the 3RRR Smart Arts show which is a most appropriate way to get me in the right space for a great days making! I was really interested to hear a review of the new Miso show ‘Les Lumieres’ which is on at the No Vacancy project space at Fed Square.
I was so jealous to hear that Miso and her partner and equally well known artist Ghost Patrol have a studio space in the City of Melbourne Buildings which is my absolute favourite building in Melbourne! But what I never knew is that this building is full of bees! Yip there’s a giant bee colony living within the walls of the building. There’s a guy who comes and collects the honey and sometimes the honey leaks right through the walls into their studio. Isn’t that incredible! Not surprisingly, bees and honey does inform Miso’s work. I’m hoping to get into town to see the show, sounds amazing.
I digress!
I arrived at the Wyndham EcoLiving Centre which is to be my new studio space to fins a wee welcoming committee headed by Gail Price who is the Community Strengthening Officer for the Council. After a wee look around in the centre we set up camp next to the playground outside to share some food and chat about potential project ideas. It was so nice to just sit outside and familiarise myself with the sounds and smells of the area. There was plenty of birdlife and I was surprised to see some inch ants! Gee, keep an eye on them, nasty buggers!
After lunch I was shown around my new studio space by Linda , the Centre Manager from Iramoo. It’s the basement of the EcoLiving Centre and it’s been used for lots of things over the years including a childcare centre so it’s all nicely kid friendly. Outside the studio is a lovely overgrown garden with a great seed raising area a compost and a small kids playground. I’m planning to take the chooks down so they can have a scratch around. They’ll literally have a field day!
I also got to hear about Shoestring Gardens who work to transform local residential gardens into food bearing gardens. Right up my alley obviously! I’m looking forward to working with them to introduce creative aspects into the various garden design projects they’ll be doing while I’m around.
There was a fortuitous moment of good timing with the decision to start that day. There’s a local quilting group that meets weekly in each others homes and this week, it was the turn of a woman Rae who lives just across the street! So I popped over and said hi and gave her a quick run down of what I’m up to. And got a short history of her group and what they get up to. I’ve promised to keep her in the loop with my activities and I look forward to meeting the group properly sometime soon.
Then it was time to pack up the car and go on a bit more of an explore. Part of Wyndham Vale is the Manor Lakes development (Dennis Family) and I was keen to check it out. Wyndham Vale is such a diverse suburb and it literally feels like driving into a different town when you cross some major roads. So heading into Manor Lakes was a real eye opener. In contrast to the modest dwellings surrounding the community centre and in the new developments to the west, Manor Lakes is where the BIG houses are. The difference in architecture and landscape design was immediately obvious. And I could understand where some community tensions would arise from. One thing that was glaringly obvious was the lack of sustainability measures. Despite an obvious high level of wealth by residents I saw no solar panels or water tanks, no sign of vegetable gardens or fruit trees and the vehicles I saw were very large. I really hope I can find some workshop participants out of this part of town.
I don’t know about you but whenever I pass through new subdivisions on the edge of cities, I always feel like I’m cruising through Lyon Estates in Back to the Future. The edges of Wyndham Vale do feel a lot like it, there’s just really beautiful grasslands where the houses haven’t taken over yet.
So finally, I’m getting psyched up to start proper next week. The studio space will be ready by then so I can start moving some stuff in. And I’ve been making some excellent contacts at the council about tapping into different resources. I’m planning on making this a resource positive residency so I’ll be using mostly found materials from around the local environment, the tip shop and I’m starting to connect in with local businesses that might have offcuts I’ll be able to use. And that’s what I’ll be spending next week doing. If any readers know any local businesses that might be good to make contact with please let me know.
Til then, don’t forget to tell any of your Wyndham Vale/Werribee and surrounds friends what I’m up to so they can keep in the loop with upcoming workshops and public crafting events.
See you next week!
New Shop!
Hi everyone
Last year I was so busy stitching for various shows I didn’t get any time to stitch up new designs for the shop. So over summer I was determined to get some new ones done. In anticipation of the newbies hitting the shop, I built a new store on site. As much as I love Etsy as a marketplace, I really want to be able to offer patterns and pieces in Australian Dollars since the USD can be a bit high for us non-US buyers.
Now when you click the Go Shopping button on the right, it takes you here!
Hooray!
There’s some new patterns in there like the Every Heart is a Revolutionary Cell pattern and the Choose Your Own Rebellion pattern. Plus there’s some more coming. PLUS there’s going to be some more kits available soon. Fan us on Facebook or Follow us on Twitter to keep up to date.
I’m a bit excited!!
Coming back to earth
Just a quick note to say thank you to everyone for your lovely comments and amazing support during this crazy crazy time. The kids are now 8 weeks old and doing brilliantly.
And my life is starting to return to normal. Projects being planned, new designs being made. And most exciting, the Radical Rags etsy shop is open again! AND I’ve opened a new shop at Zibbet. Come visit!
More news soon.
xox
Fan us!
Tweet
In an insane moment of procrastination, radical cross stitch and twitter combined forces yesterday. So if you’re a fan of the minutiae, come follow us!
Intermission and celebration
Hmm yes, well, for those of you who visited over the last 24 hours or so, you would’ve noticed a distinct lack of website. Yeah well that was a nice little birthday present from Yahoo who decided not to email me to let me know the domain name payment hadn’t gone through (wankers).
Which means that we’re 1 year old! Wow.
So a big thanks to all of you who have visited, contributed and commented over the last year. This has turned into a wonderful little community and we’re having a ton of fun putting it all together.
Imagine the projects we’re gonna pull off in the next 12 months!
Happy Birthday to us!
Yay! Eat cake!
xox
Linky Linky
When I’m procrastinating I find it good to find something I’ve wanted to do for ages and do that. Not only do I experience the satisfaction of putting off what I really should be doing. But I also get the joy of doing something that’s important but way down the priority list.
So I’m pleased to present you with an all new shiny and improved Links Page!
I’ve reorganised it a bit. And purged it a bit. And added to it A LOT. So check them all out.
And make sure you say hi when you go visiting people. In this busy hyperconnected world we’re often pretty slack at telling people when they do things or say things we think are really choice. It’s like when you walk down the street and noone says hi to you anymore. But the difference is that when you say hi on people’s websites they don’t think you’re some kind of weirdo trying to sell you something (except you stupid spammer dicks). It usually makes people feel super nice inside and inspires them to keep saying/doing ace things.
So I challenge you to comment on at least one of the websites on my link list. Oh and feel free to comment here occasionally some of you lurkers eh? This site gets literally hundreds of visits a day but not many comments. OK end of rant.
If you know of any sites that should be on this list, please let me know.
xox
This riot grrl’s a cynic
So, I’m gonna try and write an intro post for myself… I’m Johanna, I live in Stockholm, Sweden but will probably move down to northern Mozambique sometime in October this year. I got hooked on needles (no, not that kind) when I realized how easy cross stitching really is and above all, how creative you can be with design, colours and so on.
I’ve actually just been cross stitching for about a year now and it all started when I was trying to find a birthday gift for a friend and ended up with one of the cross stitch kits from Fuldesign. At first I was just gonna give it to her, but then I thought it would be fun to do the embroidery myself and put it in a nice frame and all that. And well, the rest is history… When I started searching the Internet for fellow cross stitchers who was into something more radical than flowers and puppys, I found this site and it was love at first sight I guess (so you can try to imagine what a honour it is for me to be a member of the crew now). If you haven’t done it yet, take a look at the DIY page and get inspired. It really got me started, not just with the cross stitching itself, but also got me into the politics of crafting and it’s links to DIY culture.
Being a feminist and activist I try to give the work I do some kind of political twist, even if some stuff is just for fun (or gifts to friends and family). Most of the cross stitch that I’ve finished are already posted on my blog cross yr stitches (and I think they will end up in the gallery here as well), but I thought I’d give you a few samples.
A gift I made for a friend, think it’s been posted here once before. The quote is from a fundraising letter by american politician Pat Robertson.
This one might actually be my favorite, I made it as a housewarming gift for my father and it says and then there are idiots who can find comfort in art (quote from Jean-Paul Sartre). Sort of a comment to all the self obsessed male artists of the world…
The mini backdrop I made for the swedish punk band Wolfbrigade (if you look closely on the front cover of their next album, you’ll see it featured on Dadde’s drum kit).
That’s all for now… promise to try and update pretty often. Right now I’m working on four different projects that I hope I’ll finish sometime soon. Stay tuned kids!
It’s a Grrl!
I am pleased to announce the newest addition to the Radical Cross Stitch family.
Coming all the way to us from Sweden, or maybe somewhere in Africa… everyone say a big hi to Johanna!
We all know and love Johanna from the mighty Cross Yr Stitches blog. The Ninja and I decided that since one is an obsession, two is a conspiracy and three is a gang, we really should expand the crew a bit. We are also working on secret handshakes and passwords.
Johanna makes super ace cross stitch, and we thought she was absolutely deserving of a place in the community. Here’s some of Johanna’s latest bits.
We are also planning a fundraiser to get Johanna a new camera so she can take super cool photos of her finished stuff!
And I’m working on a special place in the Gallery for all of Johanna’s stuff so you can be even more inspired!
I haven’t actually asked her to do this yet, so I’ll do so publicly (sorry lady!). I’d love it if you could make you first post a bit of an intro and tell us a bit about who you are, where you’re from and what got you into radical cross stitch.
I also want to take a moment to say a big thank you to all the people who read this site. It is such a fun project and great to know that we are just a small part of such a vibrant radical craft community. I especially want to thank those of you who have been supporting the other media projects; hoopla and the craft cartel. Just so you know the zine is almost complete and the podcast is being edited as we speak!
We have some big dreams and visions for this project so stay tuned, keep conscious and most of all keep crafting!
Arohanui