RADICALCROSSSTITCH

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!

Craft Cartel takes on Sydney

Yep still catching up on blog posts..

A few weeks ago the Craft Cartel cruised up to Object Gallery in Sydney for We Craft This City.

And we had a riot!

The opening was delicious with a lovely turnout of people on a sunny Saturday morning.  Might have had something to do with the champagne and yummy treats from the Frankie books on hand. Thanks so much to all the wonderful people who made the treats, seriously nom!

The highlight of the day was the workshops.  Sadly I missed the first one as I had to sneak out for some breakfast.  The second workshop was the Craft Cartel one and we initiated the locals into the joys of handmade ammunition.  It was such fun. I just adored the intense looks of concentration as everyone negotiated the wool, hooks and loo paper rolls.

The next workshop was the Knitty, Gritty, Loopy plarning workshop.  As a recent crochet convert I was pretty keen to get into this one and had fun making my own little crochet bowl.  And I must confess to a couple of little sneaky goes since I’ve got back. It’s addictive!

And of course we had a bunch of stuff exhibited in the gallery.  The Craft Cartel had a stockpile of knitted and crocheted ammunition.

And Casey and Ann had their rad embroideries

And I had the Sampler, the Oh Sorry, Was that your Land? piece, the QR code time series (which I still haven’t really blogged about properly, but you can get the feel for the project by reading these posts) and a new piece, Make Revolution

Some readers may recognise this piece as a Groundswell design.  When I saw the original poster design a couple of years back I just knew I had to stitch it!  It was stitched direct on linen and took me months and months (and almost my eye sight!) to complete but I’m so happy with it.  I was super proud to get some great feedback about this piece during the show.  Massive thanks to David Morgan for giving me permission to use the design!

After the opening day, there was a screening of Making it Handmade at the Mu Meson Archives.  Wow! What an amazing venue! I highly recommend all you Sydney types out there check it out if you haven’t already.  There was a full house and quite an interesting conversation took place at the end of the screening.  The film is certainly provoking debate and I’m planning a Craft Cartel podcast interview with the director, Anna Brownfield real soon so we can get into some of the issues in more depth.

If you still haven’t seen the film, it is available for purchase now on DVD! Perfect present for that crafter in your life. Especially if YOU’RE that crafter in your life.

And yes, Sydney was fabulous to visit.  The highlight for me was definitely checking out the Oh Alfred! fence installation at Alfred Park.  I took far too many photos to post up here so check out the whole gallery on our Facebook Page (may as well Like us while you’re there ).  Do check them all out – such phenomenal work! The installation was on a temporary fence surrounding the park upgrade and was based on the community’s memories and experiences within the park. Truly stunning and overwhelmingly inspirational!!

Thanks for having us Sydney I hope to be back soon!

For the love of craft,

Rayna

Home is where the craft is

A long time crafty buddy of mine, Cate Lawrence who readers will know from Polka Dot Rabbit and Green Renters, curated a wonderful show during the latest Melbourne Fringe Festival called “Home is where the craft is”.  The show and accompanying market, featuring some wonderful local craft talent, was literally held in Cate’s home.  Cate used the show to ask some quite interesting questions about the definitions and value of craft vs art.  In particular the difference in value between something that’s produced for the home vs something that’s produced for a gallery.

And the work in the show was stunning.

So much work was there and wouldn’t want to think how many collective hours went into producing it all.  Sadly I missed the opening due to one of the kids choosing that day to explode.  But sounds like the opening was a great success and the other days were well attended.

Nice work Cate, can’t wait til the next show!

SITE

As previously blogged, Radical Cross Stitch got together with Public Assembly to produce an installation at the Sculpture Now?!? Exhibition with the aim of gathering together a community of people to stitch the term SITE for the Embroidered Digital Commons project facilitated by Ele Carpenter.

And we did!

And it was fun!

The opening night was a total riot with a whole pile of people leaping in to participate.  Wine was drunk, cake was scoffed and plenty of stitching was completed.

I was so rapt at how many people got into it.  There was an expected hesitancy to begin with.  People aren’t used to art that you sit on, eat, drink and play with.  And I’m happy to say there was at least one person who didn’t get it at all.  A lovely old bloke took it upon himself to be our heckler with exclamations of “what? what is this? knitting?!?”, “where’s Germaine Greer?!?”.  And as he got drunker through out the evening, the heckling got louder and more verbose.

I could have kissed him.

We didn’t really expect to get a lot done on opening night but surprisingly quite a lot was done.  I was impressed with the number of people who wouldn’t move until their patch was completed.  But we followed up the opening with two day time sessions in the gallery which were a lot more relaxed and focussed on the stitching and discussion (and kids!).

There’s plenty more photos of all the sessions here.

I really enjoyed the day time sessions especially in regards to the discussions that took place.  A big part of the project was to facilitate dialogue but in a very loose way.  We had assigned a discussion theme to each session but weren’t fussed if those themes were touched on.  The main objective was to create a space for creative people to get together and just hang out and TALK.  We live in such a time poor society that it’s a rare thing to just sit and relax, let alone intentionally go somewhere else and do it with other people.  And the conversations did go to some very interesting places!

A massive thanks to the curators Anna and Kelly and to all the people who came and hung out and stitched.  Too deadly.

We didn’t quite complete the embroidery over the space of the show but I’m working on finishing the half finished ones and we’re planning another get together some sunny day soon.  In the mean time, friends are more than encouraged to drop in and pick up a needle!

I was also pretty interested in the gallery surrounds.  Some nice street art around the place. But sadly this awful vacant fenced off bunch of buildings next door.  Clearly council property. Thanks government..

So I said hi.

Sydney, here we come

When I first moved to Australia, Sydney was my first stop. I have an aunty there who’s always been a great friend and at the time some old buddies were based there. I wasn’t there long but it sure was a crazy time. And while Sydney is probably not the kind of place I would chose to live in, it’s definitely a place I like to visit.

Sydney always invokes memories of sunny days, tropical storms, plenty of trees and fabulous bird life. It’s definitely one of those big cities that is so diverse geographically that it’s not hard to find a spot where you feel like you’re in a small town.

So I was pretty excited when Casey and I were contacted early in the year to see if we’d bring some work up for an exhibition. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here!

This Saturday Object Gallery is opening We Craft This City. The Craft Cartel will be there displaying our stockpile of knitted ammunition for the Stop the Pulp Mill campaign. We’ll also be holding a workshop so you can join in and make your own. No experience necessary of course!

We’ll also have some work on the wall. Casey has a couple of pieces in the show and I’m showing three of my larger pieces, including a brand new one, and a series of small pieces.  I’ll do a full write up with pictures after the opening.

Also in the show and holding workshops are the awesome Ebony Bizys and Knitty Gritty and Loopy.

And then! On Saturday night is a screening of Making it Handmade in Annandale. There’s not many tickets left so if you want to come you should get yours quick smart! After the screening, there’ll be a short Q&A with the Director, Anna and Casey and I. Do hope you can make it to see this awesomely inspiring film.

xox
Rayna

p.s. apologies on the lack of blogging recently. If you haven’t heard, we were broken into and had our laptops stolen. I’m still waiting on our insurance company to replace them! In the meantime I’m using a dreadfully slow computer that HATES the internet. It’s hard I tells ya.. Normal sporadic service should resume shortly (I hope).

Catching up

I haven’t posted in a while, but that doesn’t mean I’ve not been crafting. So i thought I should do a roundup of what I’ve been doing.

Let’s start with the most recent finished project: I’ve seen a few blueprint embroideries around (the first was this beautiful rendering of a Frank Lloyd Wright blueprint by Craftster member muddlepud), and wanted to make one of my own. And what would fit a textile nerd better than a part of a Jacquard loom?

I’ve also made a new cross stitch, based on one of a quote from Mythbuster’s Adam Savage. Free pattern here!

And some of the other things I’ve been up to: apart from stitching I’ve been screenprinting, knitting and sewing. Both printing and sewing are techniques i haven’t worked a lot with in a while, so I’m trying to find my way back to them. I’m also trying to get out of my comfort zone by trying new crafts: I’ve signed up to a carpentry class that starts in september (and which I’m looking forward to so much). Hopefully it’ll be inspiring and lead to lots of new ideas.

Making it Handmade

I’m sorry folks, I’ve not really been quite up with the play with the blogging thing recently.  But I’m trying to get better I promise! One really super important thing that I let slip was the fact that I’M IN A FILM! And so is Casey, and Gemma and Pip! And even better, Anna made it (mostly) all by herself!

Making it Handmade is a documentary about:

A seditious and subversive subculture is gaining momentum in Melbourne. But rather than wielding megaphones and placards, they’re cross-stitching slogans on hurricane wire and constructing plush female genitalia from craft supplies.

Following four local women who’ve taken a seemingly staid past-time and injected it with a youthful, modern aesthetic, filmmaker Anna Brownfield shows a side of craft more closely aligned with punk DIY culture than with Martha Stewart and ‘home sweet home’ tapestries.

“I wanted to show that craft was no longer daggy but had moved into a new era and was being reclaimed by women who had been brought up as feminists.” – filmmaker Anna Brownfield

And it’s AWESOME!  Making it Handmade just had its premiere screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival and was insanely popular.  There was only one screening and it was one of the first to sell out.  And there was so many people sad they missed out.  But don’t fret, there are more screenings being planned as I type.  There’s also plans afoot to take the film to other centres so those of you in far off places can see the awesomeness too.

After the screening there was a short panel with Anna, Casey, Pip, Gemma and myself and there was some nice interesting questions asked.  I’ve had some amazing feedback from people since the screening. Friends have told me they had their horizons shifted once again and strangers have got in touch with overwhelming levels of inspiration bubbling out of them!

So were you there? What did you think? What was your favourite bit? My favourite bit was watching all the happy people making stuff and seeing my now three and a half year old looking little and cute as a one year old!  It was exciting for her too.  It was the first time Tara had ever been to the movies and she was in it! Not many kids can say THAT.

For more information and to keep up with future screening news check out Anna’s blog http://www.annabrownfield.blogspot.com I’ll try let you know too. But yeah, bit slack on the blogging..

xox

For the love of it..

One of the main reasons I craft is for the joy of process.

I find nothing more calming than sitting down with a cup of tea, a good podcast or tv show and picking up some stitching.  Sometimes though, stitching can turn in to a bit of a chore.  I do most of my stitching for exhibition or testing designs for sale as patterns.  And I enjoy both equally.  But it is super important that I give myself a balance between the two otherwise it does sometimes start to feel like work.

And occasionally I like to sneak in a stitching project just for fun! We truly can’t take ourselves too seriously all the time otherwise it’s easy to lose perspective on why we’re being serious.

I’m guessing I’m not alone in the craft community in feeling like crafting is a form of meditation for me.  What I find particularly interesting is how my wandering thoughts change depending on what it is I’m stitching about.  I have spent time stitching and thinking about craft history, feminist organising, radical parenting, environmental activism, identity politics just to name a few things.  And I very much enjoy this intellectual space crafting provides for me.

However, when I’m working on a bigger project I sometimes find I need a BREAK! The problem when you’re on a deadline though is that it can only be a little break. It’s times like this I often crack out the sewing machine and make a small project or two. Or I do a small cross stitch project, often on a kids tshirt or something.

My latest short break was inspired by a dig in my craft room and I stumbled on a wee frame I got in an op shop. It had been lying around for a while and I decided I’d had enough looking at it and wanted to use it.  So I grabbed an opportunity to make something new and little and frivolous.

And I’ve decided to give this one away.  I want to give this to one of our readers just to say thanks for your ongoing support.  Despite not having too much time to blog at the moment it makes me so happy that people continue to visit and say hi.  And people keep joining up on Facebook, Twitter & Tumblr to share ideas, projects and thoughts.

So to enter this give-away, just comment on this blog post and I want to hear what it is you get out of your craft? What sort of fulfilment do you appreciate from having time to make stuff? Comments before July 16 go in the random draw.

xox

Talking Craft and Crafting Craft

Hi folks

How are ya? Things are cruising along rather nicely in Radical Cross Stitch land; projects slowly coming to completion, babies growing nicely, plenty of baking going on. Goodness this winter is a bit chilly isn’t it? Really can’t wait for Spring and Summer to brighten our lives again.

In the meantime, there’s a couple of events coming up you should know about.

Firstly, as part of the State of Design Festival, the Craft Cartel is going to be part of a panel discussion during the Counter Point project at Melbourne Central.  Together with Citizens of Elysium, Clothing Exchange and The Social Studio, we’ll be chatting about the social and environmental realities of consumerist culture and what the alternatives are.  I’m really looking forward to this event, there’s some great people on the panel and it’s part of a really interesting and subversive larger project.  I do hope you can come along!

(click on images for larger view)

Next up on the events calendar is SUPER TOP SECRET and I truly can’t tell you about it yet.  But it is ACE!!!!!! and it’s about craft and it has some other super people involved and it’s in Melbourne on August 1st. So put that day in your diary, I swear I’ll tell you all the details as soon as I can. One word though. SQUEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!! Ok one more word, POPCORN.

Flicking over in the calendar a bit the Craft Cartel are heading to Sydney in October to participate in We Craft This City at Object Gallery.  We’re pretty super excited about this one! We may even be heading up a bit earlier to do some sunny, spring time crafting in the park to get people ready and excited about the show.  Will let you know if that happens.  But what’s definitely happening is some hard core Craft Cartel knitted dynamite action.  And you can be part of the fun! Just pop over to the tutorial and grab yourself some wool.  We’re trying to get the worlds largest knitted ammunition cache together.  We’d LOVE you to help!

Finally 3CR subscribers would have already got your copy (I think..) but the theme of this years Radiothon was ‘Handmade Radio’ and the lovely Nicole asked me to help her make a handmade radio tutorial.  Nicole did some ace instructions for a plushie radio and I contributed some patterns for some speech bubbles to come out of the radio.  Pretty darn fun!

And to help with the super important efforts of keeping community radio on air, I will pledge $20 for anyone who sends me photos of their completed hand made radio.  G’arn!

(click on images for larger view)