Craft Cartel Podcast Episode 9: Faythe Levine
Hooray it’s Episode #9 of the Craft Cartel podcast, and we talk to Faythe Levine about her brand new documentary film “Handmade Nation”
by Sublime Stitching.
Rayna has a great chat with Faythe about the film, making zines, the GFC, and yes, Paris Hilton comes up again! Check out the Handmade Nation website and blog and Flickr site to see pics of the Aussie tour and of course, the Paris Hilton pics. A MASSIVE big thanks to the awesome people at in.cube8r Gallery in Smith Street for helping to make this interview happen!
The track off the podcast is Craft Talk by Leslie Hall. It’s Craft-tastic! Check the video:
Next up we bring back the zine review section and review:
The Thrity Crafter from Apartment Cat
Sharp and Pointy – a craft zine by mir UPDATE – you can buy it here!
Outdoor Knit: the graffiti knit kit from Outdoor Knit
And a bit of an update on the Craft Cartel. Check out the Fashion Jam pics here, read about Trash Bag Rehab here, and the Melbourne Social Forum here, and the City Press workshop here!
Phew!
And as always we’d love to hear from you, comment below or drop us a line. And don’t forget to check out the archive if you’re new round here.
The best way to listen to the podcast is to subscribe and download today!
If that doesn’t work you can download the file directly from here.
We really don’t like advertising very much round these parts, so if you like what you hear, please make a donation to help support future episodes. It’s what an add-free world sounds like.
Art Fights Fire: Call Out!
Every Victorian has been watching the news this week and thinking ‘what can I do?’ Aside from the immediate obvious things like donating blood and money, many people are looking around and seeing what other skills and resources they have available to contribute.
One such person is the ever amazing and super cool Gemma from the Kaotic Kraft Kuties, who is donating her exhibition organising skills to quickly throw together a major contemporary art raffle.
And she needs more art so for those of you (especially overseas!) artists who would like to contribute a piece of work to this show, we’d love to hear from you asap.
The show is being held at Melbourne’s iconic Outre Gallery in Elizabeth Street and is featuring these artists so far:
Arthur’s Circus (thank you Nat and Nick)
Gina Garan (of This is Blythe fame in NYC)
Magic Jelly (in South Australia)
Lab Partners (San Francisco)
Angelique Houtkamp (Amsterdam)
Shag (Los Angeles)
Audrey Kawasaki (big thanks to Outré Gallery for the generous donation)
Beci Orpin (Melbourne)
If you think you can add your name to this list – and this means having a piece of work you can put in the post today if you’re overseas – please let us know.
We will be selling raffle tickets and then doing a live draw at Outré in Melbourne on Wednesday 25 February 2009, 249 Elizabeth St, Melbourne VIC 3000
When the tickets are available I’ll post details.
International people are welcome to buy tickets – but we are asking that if you win something, that you pay for postage (average AU$25).
Stay tuned for more details.
xox
Is that a bird? is that a shoe?
Note: pictures and language in this post would probably fall into the not safe for work category…
One of the great cultural institutions in our suburbs is the shoes thrown over the power lines. Normally the old flung shoe indicates your friendly neighbourhood ganja delaer. Although some of them have been swinging up there for so long now that I don’t know if it’s really too wise to go knocking on the door looking for your healthy dose of herb..
But the glory of swinging from a wire shouldn’t be exclusively reserved for shoes – even if they’ve recently gained a new cultural significance in the world..
One of my best friends had a rather significant life landmark swing by recently so to celebrate she decided to get some buddies together and have a craft off.
This was the result:
Friends
plus sustenance (thanks Casey’s mum!!)
plus craft supplies
equals cunty greatness! (that’s my one with the teeth)
Finally, add some power lines…
Beautiful! I just wish there was one swinging outside my place!
Thanks lady for an ace fun time, bring on the dirty thirties!
Radical Rainbow Seed Sharing
In the weekend I had the joy of attending my first Rainbow Serpent Festival. It’s one of the biggest remaining trance festivals in the world and it was pretty freaking cool. Probably a wee bit trendy for me, but hey, being able to get out in the bush, catch up with friends and check out some sunrises is never an opportunity to turn down.
What surprised me was the absolute lack of consciousness, both in the music and in the people. I came out of the festival at the end thinking I shouldn’t slag off baby boomers any more. Not only did I see fuck all of anything encouraging people to rethink our existence as human beings on this planet but quite the opposite. It was a giant consumer fest. From the pay showers in town on the way in to the refill strappy drink bottles..
It was billed to me as a place for cultural exchange but it’s not really what I saw. And don’t even get me started on the ‘Ta-dah!’ trance…
Anyway, while I was out there I was keen to spread some love and spread some good conscious vibes. So I decided to make some seed packs to share. I made about twenty of these packs and stuck them in little nooks and crannys where I knew people would find them.
They each contained three beans and this little note:
Hopefully some of the good little consumers found them and it awakened some brain cells. Especially the woman I handed one to out the car window on our way out. I think she thought I was giving her drugs. Hope she was pleasantly surprised.
I do have a couple left so any Melburnians out there who want one, email me your address and I’ll flick one your way. Sorry I can’t send them any further than that, being plant material and all…
And here’s some more Rainbow pics!
Braybrook Rules
In a continuing series about how ace the suburb we live in is..
Most people in Melbourne haven’t even heard of Braybrook. Which has it’s advantages, but this part of town is worth promoting.
The Quang Minh Buddhist Temple is the coolest place to visit. It’s perched on the edge of the Maribyrnong River and is the hub of the most beautiful community. My top tip for a family adventure on a Sunday afternoon is to visit for some of their yummy pho. In fact, visit tomorrow and you can participate in the Vu Lan Festival which is the Vietnamese Mothers Day.
And if you visit Quang Minh, you’ll be guaranteed to meet Tom, who is quite possibly the friendliest person I have ever met. And he’s also quite crafty. The photos at the top of this post are of Tom wearing his custom made safety vest (it’s bright orange in real life). ‘Cause it’s all about community! Respec’ Tom!
Quang Minh Temple is one of the most positive places you can visit. I love one of the latest stories on their website “Record Rainfall, Double Happiness”. Beautiful.
We go there quite often on a Sunday, if you’re in the hood and planning a visit, let us know, we might just see you there.
xox
Craft City Melbourne Award!
I juts wanted to say a big hi! to all the people visiting radical cross stitch from the Craft City Melbourne site. Please come in and make yourselves at home!
The lovely people at CCM just gave me a citizenship award which has made me feel very special. So a SUPER BIG thanks to them for that 
I’ve said before how cool the site is, if you’re based in Melbourne or looking for good reasons to move to Melbourne, you should definitely check it out!
Happy Solstice
The only way is up! baby!
A Crapper of a Wedding Expo
I had to share this one. Now anyone who knows me, knows I’m not really a huge fan of the institution of marriage. I find it a lot more constructive to decide every day that I want to spend the rest of my live with my beloved (awww).
So I was pretty amused by this competition they had at the Christchurch Wedding Expo. The brief was to design a wedding dress with the equivalent of up to 16 rolls of toilet paper. I’m not sure if this was intentional satire or not, but I thought it worked really well in that regard.
Here’s the winner
Random Acts of Danceness
One of my favourite friends who seems to be addicted to random acts of public craziness dressed in pink lycra has struck again for the Dare You to Dance There competition.
Basically you get someone to film you breaking out in to some random public dancing, upload it the website and then the best voted entry gets a trip to London as well as the opportunity to perform their dance on stage at Ministry of Sound.
Sounds terribly frightful to me, but obviously not to my crazy friend.
Go to the website, head to the gallery and then enter the number 0424790747 then be prepared to be wowed by pink lycra, Prince and some mullets. But MOST IMPORTANTLY give them five stars!
Come to the Dark Side
I’m never one to be ashamed of a bit of geek pride and I am screaming from the rooftops how much I love this dude.
MC Storm Troopa hails from the mighty crafty town of Hamiltron (naturally) and is absolutely brilliant, or should I say, fully sick mate!
I never would have thought that I’d find myself groovin out to a track called Empire Pride.
It’s nerdcore to the baddest and not only is it clever but it’s all extremely well produced. You could very easily drop any of these tracks into a party and noone would really notice. Mind you your friends might look at you funny if you played the You and Me Padme track…
Check out his Myspace and Virb and there’s tons of tracks on his Facebook page. Check out the very cleverly titled EP. The downloads are free due to some copyright thing. But if you like it you might like to find a way of flicking him some coin.