I’m sure most of you have checked out the handmade internet sensation regretsy.com – it’s a hilarious site and has quite the cult following these days. I was very proud to have not one, but TWO products featured on there! First off (and not that surprisingly) was the embroidery porn piece I did for the Craft Cartel Trashbag Rehab workshop earlier in the year. It sold within hours of being posted on regretsy and I’ve had tons of custom orders. It’s been quite surreal.

What was then even more surreal was the email I got from Regretsy asking if I’d be keen to be part of a card series they were planning. Yeah why the hell not?

So you too can own your own piece of embroidered gay anime porn, and even better – share the love with your friends and family!

That’s mine discretely being censored by the others..  You can buy 8 of one design or a set of two of each.  And at $10 a set, that’s quite the bargain.

And in other regretsy news, they’ve managed to sign a book deal with Random House.  I’m thinking the porn might not pass their censorship standards.  But luckily I have another product on regretsy’s site – the legendary Plug Rugs!  Which have, of course, now sold out.  These also popped up on the salon.com story about regretsy.  So hopefully they get in the book.

The other rad thing I’ve been meaning to post for ages is the pdf of the Interventionist Guide zine!  If you go to the website and click on Guides, mine is about halfway down.  The zine features a whole lot of my thoughts about urban spaces and how we relate to them as humans.  As well as the tutorial on how to cross stitch a heart on a bicycle basket.

Finally, have you checked out the London-based Craftivist Collective yet?  They’re getting up to some seriously ace stuff.  This latest pic popped up on Facebook and I reckon it’s a big bucket of brilliant.  They’ve got tons of things going on so if you want to join in go join them on FB.

xox

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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.

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This weekend is the Interventionist Guide to Melbourne weekend of interventions.  The artists will be out and about on the streets creatively intervening with the city.  Or as the Craft Cartel blog puts it: an interactive artistic wake-up call to confront all that is predictable and boring in our city.

Initially I was gonna keep mine to sneaking about putting bits and pieces up in strange places for people to find.  But I got convinced that it would be much more fun to do something where other people can join in.

So…

The Melbourne Bicycle Beautification Society in association with Radical Cross Stitch and the Interventionist Guide to Melbourne are on a pilgrimage to reward Melbourne’s cyclist for their contribution to leisure, saving the planet, looking good and stopping oil wars.

In an effort to encourage spontaneous and uncontrolled acts of creativity, we invite participants to learn the art of bicycle basket cross stitch.

Materials and instructions will be provided during this casual afternoon of direct action against the pervasive boring of everyday life.

Participants need only turn up to Flinders Lane near the corner of Degraves Lane any time from 2pm until about 4.

This free event is part of the Interventionist Guide to Melbourne intervention weekend. Artists will be out and about from the 17-18th of October encouraging and even inciting random acts of public creativity. For details on other artists and how to engage in their interventions visit http://interventionistguide.org

Not brought to you by any government department or arts funding organisation.

RSVP on Facebook

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We’ve also been pretty busy with the Craft Cartel summer market series.  We had the first market (in the cold!) on Sunday at the Bicycle Film Festival B.est F.riends F.orever Street Party and it was an extreme amount of fun!  Great to meet some new cartel members and awesome to see some mad bike fun going on.  The Craft Cartel was sponsoring the market, Art Jam, the Bike Beauty Pageant (which I got to judge!) and the Bicycle Mating Project.  Here’s some pics:

This is Dan from Nearly Road Kill with his best bad-ass face on.  His belts made from old bike tyres were a serious hit with the BMX kids.  This market was made for Dan!

My lovely wee stall set up on a plastic kids table which we grabbed from Savers on the way there!

They had Bike Polo too.  It was mental.  I actually thought it could be a bit more violent.  But they tried their best.  And I did admire the sticker on the bike in the foreground of this pic which read ‘One Less Horse’.  Nice.  If you find the thought of riding around on a bike while chasing a plastic ball to be your ultimate idea of thrillseeking, check their website for training and playing times.

(note the blue skies in that photo for all you who stayed home ’cause of the ‘rain’)

Some of the Craft Cartel crew have been busy over the last couple of weeks attaching gorgeous crafty valentines to bikes all over town.  If you found one on your bike and also managed to find it’s matching pair, you could come claim a prize.  These two bikes found each other and decided to come to the street party on a date.  It got a bit risque…

There’s more pics on our Facewank group if you’re wanting more.

So while the cool kids of Melbourne have been celebrating all the different fossil fuel-free ways to get around and have fun, some crafty Iraq War vets have been bringing attention to the human costs of filling up your car.  Called Operation W.A.N.T. (We Are Not Toys), this ace crew went and did an installation at their local gas station to show people just how many US soldiers have been buried during this state sponsored corporate resource grab.

Awesome pics by Jonas Lara

Props Groundswell

So now all my winter business has passed and my summer business is beginning I should be posting a lot more stuff on here.  And we’ll be doing more work on the Craft Cartel site so you should get on the mailing list!

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You might remember a while back we put up this pattern designed by Katie Lee and the profits have been going to the super awesome people who run the Austin Yellow Bike Project. We’ve sold quite a few of these patterns and it’s nice to think we’re helping get Texans out of their cars and onto bikes.

I really wanted to stitch it at some point and when I got this old school fluro sweatshirt, I knew this was perfect. It’s been produced especially for the first Craft Cartel market of the summer, which is a bike-themed market we’re running at the Bicycle Film Festival Street Party on Nov 23rd. So if you MUST HAVE this sweatshirt you better get along. I probably won’t put this online for sale.

I just adore the shininess of old clothing labels.

I’m also planning on producing some little kits for the market of this pattern. I’ll be donating half of the proceeds to Austin and half to a local bike recycling project. Although I haven’t decided which one yet, anyone got any tips? If you can’t wait to get a pattern or don’t need all the thread, fabric, needles etc, you can get an electronic one here.

And stay tuned for some very exciting new craft cartel news!

xox

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