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
Image: Cecilie Knowles
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
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!
Anna in Frankie Magazine
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
Love Is…
2010.
Such a futuristic sounding year isn’t it? Brings to mind images of spaceship looking cars, whiz bang robots, intergalactic councils of funny looking folk with tentacles sticking out of their cheeks. Possibly not? How bout a time where people use renewable energy, recycle and reuse materials as much as possible, public transport is quick, clean and efficient, our food is organically grown by local producers, and all peoples are free from oppression and discrimination. One would think that sounds more likely, but sadly it doesn’t seem to be the case.
The upcoming Australian elections seem to be about the least important things. Politicians looks and appearances, shady backroom dealings, gimmicks and media trickery. Anyone who saw the leaders debate will be astutely aware that vision is sorely lacking in this election and rather than striving to demonstrate who might be the better leader, both major party leaders seem to be stuck in the great race to the ideological bottom.
I’ve always been a firm believer in the politics of love. Elections should be a chance for the community to declare their aspirations, visions and ideals. Rather than spend time dwelling on what makes us afraid and angry. Our elected representatives make daily decisions on an amazing range of issues. They take the time to think about the stuff most of us would never be bothered to think about. And our lives flow so much more smoothly because behind the scenes our politicians work very hard on what can sometimes be insanely mundane matters.
When we chose who we want to represent us, it’s not just about where they stand on one or two issues. Just as important, it’s about how they see the future of our world and how they approach decision making as a skill.
Sadly I can’t vote in this election, but if I could, the main factor I would use for my decision making would be the candidates’ commitment to basic levels of social and environmental justice. This election is about far more than tax breaks and ‘border’ ‘security’. This election we need to elect a group of people adequately prepared to put aside the silly tricks and take responsibility for some true leadership. If we don’t, it’s our grandchildren we need to answer to.
What qualities do you look for in a leader?
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On that note, how frickin ridiculous is it that we still have to have conversations about legal equality? When we look for candidates who have sound decision making practice, a very easy indicator is if they believe it’s ok to withold basic legal rights based on a persons sexuality. And even more importantly, are prepared to stand up, be a leader, and help change the laws that discriminate. Sadly it seems too many of our ‘leaders’ have decided it’s politically safer to pander to fear and hate than to take the just path and stand up for what is right.
So when the gorgeous Ali got hold of me last year and said ‘hey I found some old patterns that need subverting and you’re just the person to do it’, I took one look at what she sent and knew exactly what needed to be done.
I had such a lovely time stitching what became affectionately known as ‘my boys’. And you can too. The pattern is for sale in our store and 50% of all sales will go to the equallove.info campaign. Because after all, love knows no borders, no religions, and most importantly, no discrimination.
xox
Rayna
p.s. you might notice things look a bit different round here. Yip, in the middle of redecorating. Click on one of the images in this post. See that? Clever huh? I got that going all by myself There’s more to come, keep an eye out. And please let me know if you have any feedback, I’d love to hear it.
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.
Raaaar
I’m super pleased to present the latest RCS collaboration, this time I got together with Katherine Beefheart who designs some super awesome pieces. I said ‘go on, make one for our shop!’ and awesomely, she said ‘for sure!’. So everyone, say Hi Katherine!
Helloooo,
I’m Katherine Beefheart and this is my design. I’ve been embroidering for what feels like forever, mainly for my own pleasure. But in the last few months I have been encouraged to put my stitchings out there which meant taking it a lot more seriously and consequently producing some huge pieces which have taken me months to complete. My inspiration comes from anywhere and everywhere….overheard conversations, music lyrics, my beautiful family and friends, literature and my constantly twittering inner monologue. To me, there is an enormous sense of creating when many hours, days, weeks and sometimes even months go into a piece along with a sizeable chunk of my heart and soul. It’s ridiculously therapeutic for me which relates to this particular pattern. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it
You can buy the pattern in our store (AUD) or in our etsy shop (USD) and you should grab it now while it’s at our special introductory price.
Gocco!
If you’re a twitter follower you might have picked up a while back that I scored a new Gocco set for super cheap and it was PRETTY BLIMMIN EXCITING!
It took me quite a while to gather up the confidence to have a go. It’s all new and scary, you see. But I finally had a project I really wanted to do so I hitched up my pants and leapt in.
I was armed with the awesome tutorial by Pip which I wholeheartedly recommend checking out. Even if you’re not planning on doing the fabric thing and printing on paper with actual gocco paint, this tutorial is super helpful. I definitely used Pip’s tutorial alongside the official instructions and it made heaps more sense with both.
So I’ve now made TWO different screens and made a heap of patches.
The first lot were made as some pretty banners for vacant blocks of land. We’ve attached ribbons on the corners so they can be tied on to fences. I thought this was a good first project since the prints don’t need to be perfect and we can’t be too attached to them since they’ll probably get taken down.
Here’s a bunch drying.
And here’s a couple in action! The first one was in St Kilda and the second was on Malvern Road somewhere
FUN! Part of my little creative contributions to the realestate4ransom.com campaign highlighting the stupid waste of land we’ve got going on round the place.
The next project I did was in honour of Buy Nothing Day 09 and also as my wee action towards Copenhagen. Being seven and a half months pregnant does preclude a fair amount of activism so I took the creative option!
I got the idea after a cool chat with an awesome Friends of the Earth volunteer at the Green New Deal conference. Sorry I can’t remember your name! Hope you see these and like When I get around to sewing up some more I’ll send some to the FoE shop. I decided to border some of them with small black satin ribbon, just to make them a bit glam. I also decided I very much like printing on calico. It seems to pick up the ink best and it looks nice too.
Printing on fabric with Gocco is a little bit hard and takes a bit of perseverance. I’d very much like to try it with someone else doing some of them!
What is really easy though is printing on paper!
Last weekend I went to the open studio for the super cool Gemma Jones. The open studios were part of the Big West Festival – which was also super cool! Can’t wait til the next one! (I should also write about that – especially the knitted bridge installation – but I reckon it won’t happen so go check out the other cool crafty stuff on their website).
Gemma gave a couple of demos on how to use a Gocco and we all got to have a go. It was MOST FUN. I picked up some new prints for my wee girls new room so the walls are quickly filling up with rad art.
Those prints were done on an old sex guide book. Some of the pages were hilarious! My favourite was ‘what to say in bed – and when not to laugh’. Genius.
So now I’ve gotten over ‘the fear’ I’m psyched to do more!
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
Colouring in the city
If you went into the city in the weekend, it’s quite likely you saw something a tad unusual. You may have seen a garden in a strange place, a performance that left you scratching your head or a group of people doing something a bit odd. Or you may not have even noticed at all as a group of silent people walked past you, experiencing the sounds of the city without making any of their own.
It was a fantastic weekend of interventions by all the artists involved in the Interventionist Guide to Melbourne. Did you see or hear anything over the weekend? I’d love to hear if you did.
As for the radical cross stitch component, there were two interventions over the weekend. The first was a cross stitch on an existing grid on Lonsdale Street, just near the corner of King Street. There is a beautiful old blue stone building there which is currently a barristers office, but in one of its manifestations was the home of the Seabrook Wine Merchants. Fittingly – at some point in time – a grape vine was planted outside the front and over the years has been trained up the side of the building. To help it along the way, a wire grid was attached to the side of the building.
This is what caught my eye.
During the G20 trials I spent a bit of time in this area and I noticed just how few children were around this part of town. During the week most of them are in school I realise but even small children are noticeably absent. And gee, try taking a pram through court security.. In the weekend this part of the city is a ghost town.
I decided this spot was perfect for a bit of commentary on the invivsibility of children in the urban space.
All the times I’d visited this space previously there wasn’t any greenery on the grape vine. The last time I went past there was a very small amount. So I was delighted to see how much had grown on it. The vine created a perfect frame for what I’d planned to do!
There’s a few more pics on our Facebook Page if you wanna check them out.
The next stage of operations was the Melbourne Bicycle Beautification Society Outing in Flinders Lane. Normally this is a site rich in bicycle basket bounty but Sunday there was very few. So rather than sit there and stitch baskets as they came and went, participants were armed with a zine including instructions, a needle, wool and a thank you tag and sent around the city to find baskets in other places.
Each zine kit had wool to make one of these
And one of these wee tags to say thank you to the owner of the bicycle for being a cyclist
Hopefully I get some more pics from participants over the next couple of days. Were you one of them? Where did you find your basket?
The zine with the instructions and all my thoughts about the issues of intervening in the city will be online for download soon. In the meantime I have a couple more kits with all the bits in them left to giveaway. If you’d like to win one just leave a comment below and tell me what are some of the things you think about when you’re walking through cities.
Overall, a wonderful weekend! Massive thanks and congratulations to Lynda for her brilliant curating. This has been a wonderful show to be a part of and I do hope we get to work together again soon.