Ahoy me hearties! Land pirates straight ahead!

Oh to be a speculator.

It must be such a great life buying up blocks of land, sitting on them for a few years watching the community grow and the infrastructure develop, then when the time is right, flip them off for some easy capital gains. Even better when the land isn’t in your suburb so you can externalize the problems that vacant land creates like weeds, rubbish, vandalism and housing affordability pressures. Even better when the council has a rates system that charges on land and buildings so the blocks around yours with houses and businesses on them have to pay more than you do.

Well, just ’cause the council thinks it’s ok for all these pirates to be sailing around our hood, looting the bounty created by our communities, doesn’t mean the Melbourne Revolutionary Craft Circle does.

We’re sick of looking at these blocks. We want a re-imagining of how we use land in Maribyrnong. We want to address housing, sprawl, waste, food security, transport, health, community gardening and play.  In our separate lives we work on these projects but are daily undermined by the pirates.  We want the people of Maribyrnong to join with us in starting the conversation about the blight on our suburbs that is vacant land and what the Council plans on doing about it.

Currently, they don’t see it as a problem.

So, we ask the question “What else could go here?”  We are surrounded in blank canvases and we call on all citizens to spend some time thinking about what better ways we can use this land. Let’s keep animals, let’s grow food, let’s grow trees, let’s build parks!

Have you an idea? Put it on your closest fence tonight! Or get some chalk and write your ideas on the footpath! Use your imagination people, our communities are in our hands.

Love + rage

MRCC

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Y’know economics can be really boring. All that lingo, boring white dudes and acronyms. Anyone would think they made it boring on purpose so we wouldn’t pay attention to how much economics is the single greatest driver of our planets destruction. And anyone who thinks this has nothing to do with craft oughta read this.

What we really need is economics with wicked beats, and plain speak. Then maybe we would pay attention and sort this madness out before our lovely planet is unfit for habitation.

Oh wait, here you go.

Watch. Share. Agitate.

(check out the fence stitching)

http://realestate4ransom.com/

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Righto! Who’s up for a stitch-a-long?

Radical Cross Stitch is teaming up with Public Assembly to create a contribution to the Digital Embroidered Commons project that’s being facilitated by the amazing Ele Carpenter. We will be stitching the term SITE and we want you to help!

We’re creating an installation piece as part of the Sculpture Now!?! exhibition at the Yarra Sculpture Gallery and we are creating a craft room inside the gallery for the purposes of stitching the term together.  And we’d love you to join us.

We will be in the gallery for three making sessions.  Each session complete with cups of tea, baked goods and of course, radical discussion.

“SITE: Location, both as in the fact of being somewhere, and also, as in the answer to the question of “where”, that “somewhere” is. Hence, situation.”

Step into our craft room, make yourself a cuppa and pick up a needle.  All welcome, no experience necessary. Join us as we embrace the radical political and artistic spirit of centuries of craft circles to unpick the big issues of the day.

xxxxx

Public sessions:
Friday 27th August 5-8pm (open session – this is the official opening of the show so will be a tad busy..)
Thursday 2nd September 1-4 (limited spaces, RSVP kids welcome)
Sunday 5th September 1-4 (limited spaces, RSVP kids welcome)

The installation is viewable as a snapshot of a work in progress at all other times

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Sculpture Now!?! will deliver a snapshot of the current thematic and conceptual influences that inform contemporary sculptural practice in Australia. The artists range from emerging to established with an emphasis on innovation and experimentation. The exhibition aspires to shed some light on the myriad of diverse trajectories in which sculptural practice is heading.

Other artists participating: Stelarc, Hannah Bertram, Rod McRae, Karleena Mitchell, Petra Svoboda, Junky Projects, Eliza-Jane Gilchrist, Linelle Septo, Lucie Hallenstein

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I’ve been promising new patterns for a while and here’s the first of a new bunch.

This design is getting back to some old school roots with a lovely redwork antique border.  And a quote from one f my favourite films of all time, The Edukators.  This quote was sprayed on a wall in the film and I love it!

And I have a guest stitcher for this pattern, the adorably ace Curegreed who you may also know from her guest blogging at Mr X Stitch about her studies at the Royal School of Needlework (for which I am INSANELY jealous).  We met last year at a Craft Cartel crafternoon when she was visiting these fair shores for a wedding.  And I’m so excited to be doing more work together.

You can buy it in the Radical Rags store for a special intro price of only $5, score!

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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

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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

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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.

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I didn’t post a picture of the piece going into the Explosive Expression show ’cause it’s not framed yet and photographing two different shiny materials is really freakin hard.  But I just pulled these off the camera and they’re not too bad.

It was stitched with silver metallic embroidery thread on black satin and is very shiny!

I really don’t think I was able to capture the true look of it with these shots but you do get the idea.  Hopefully once it’s framed and up nice on a wall there’ll be better ones to share with you all.

This was definitely a patience tester to stitch up as metallic thread is SUPER fragile.  I think I threw away as much as I used due to all the broken bits.  But the overall effect is very much worth the effort.  I hope they can show the piece under lots of bright lights so it’s extra super duper shiny!

Extra special thanks to Groundswell Collective for providing the original image and the inspiration!

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I made this tea cozy the other day, with a little help from the internet for tutorials and my cousin for some of the materials. The cross stitch is pretty simple and something I’ve been working on since around May Day. I really like how it turned out. I found the picture at Radical Graphics and then turned it into a pattern.

Except it’s awesome cuteness, I also like the notion of that something is brewing – that underneath the surface we can create our own little pockets of resistance and  counter culture and that one day, it might boil over into the rest of society.

You wanna make you’re own tea cozy? Here’s a tutorial and here’s the pattern that I used for this one:

Or just make up your own pattern!

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