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.

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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!

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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!

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As promised, there are going to be some more screenings of the fantastic locally made doco Making it Handmade.  So those of you who missed out at MIFF, or did see it and want to see it again, should quickly grab your tickets before they sell out again – and they’re selling quick!  Even better this screening is also going to have a craft market! If you’re a maker and want to be part of the market, check out the submission details.

Tons of people have been asking about where it can be seen elsewhere and rest assured there are plans afoot!  Your best bet is to go like the Facebook Page to keep in the loop.

This screening is a total DIY gig and we’re asking the fabulous Melbourne craft community to help us spread the word about the screening.  Please RSVP to the event here and invite your friends!

Yay!

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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

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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)

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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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I have installed four pieces of work around the streets now and planning a fair few more.  For those of you in Melbourne, put October 16-18 in your diary as the weekend where all the artists will be hitting the streets for performances, tours, installations and other creative bits and pieces.

Two of the four pieces have already been on here:

And here’s some pics of the latest couple.

You might recognise the last piece from here.

For this show us artists were asked to consider urban space: how it’s built, how we relate to it, how others relate to it.  And for me it is very much about questions of ownership, access, power and control.  My experiences of Melbourne’s CBD have been quite varied; as a worker, an activist, a resident, a mother, a pregnant woman, a public transport user, a cyclist, a pedestrian.  None of those experiences have meant much control in the space so I’ve managed to experience quite varied forms of discrimination in that space.

I’m also very aware of the access issues other people face.  Those in wheelchairs is a prime example.  It’s hard enough getting around with a pram sometimes, but even harder with a wheel chair.  You learn a whole different path of navigation around the city that able bodied people just don’t ever need to consider.  Another example is the elderly.  I do know people who live in Melbourne who haven’t visited the CBD in over a decade because it’s just too hard and intimidating.  They prefer the relative safety of the suburbs where they can get everything they need without the (media driven) fear of the city space. And there’s of course other reasons, language especially.

This all means that there is a large amount of people who are simply excluded from that space, they are invisible.

I got wondering just how many other people thought about these issues and I figured probably not too many.  Discrimination tends not to be something you think about until you experience it, and spatial experience is something that even those that experience it, aren’t necessarily aware of.  The idea that our cities and buildings are designed by and for able-bodied white guys is such a given that considerations for other needs are rarely made.

I always find department stores pretty amazing in their design.  If you stop and look at actually who uses a department store, women are by far the majority.  Yet even their designs rarely accommodate their needs.  If it’s a multi story building you will almost always find the baby wares department above or beyond ground level.  So a woman with a pram is going to need to negotiate at least one floor change to get there.  And given you aren’t supposed to use an escalator with a pram it can sometimes take longer to get to the department you want than to find the actual item you’re looking for once your there.  And that’s if you can get through the aisles.  It’s astonishing how many shops selling baby things I have been into with a pram that have aisles narrower than the average pram..

So a lot of the pieces I’m doing are talking about different peoples’ relationships with space.  And also the stuff that moves through the space.  Especially given a fair chunk of the urban space is dedicated to the peddling of stuff.

The piece above on the rubbish bin is one such piece.  Very much geared towards encouraging people to consider how easily and flippantly we throw things away.  Rather than focussing on whether you can recycle something or not, I’m more interested in people thinking about why they needed this throw away thing in the first place.  It seems that so many people still believe that the solutions to climate change and the rampant abuse of our planet are decisions to be made by politicians and CEOs.  While those people certainly have a role, the role of the consumer in changing their own behaviour is just as, if not more important.  In a country with the highest per capita emissions in the world, we really need to start thinking about why we invest so much energy in making things just to have a short, uninteresting interaction with the thing and then throw it away.  There’s got to more to life.

So these are just some of the issues that I think about when engaging with the urban fabric.  And I am sure these are completely different to the issues the other artists consider.  I urge you to visit the website and visit the gallery and check them all out.

And most importantly, I urge you to grab a map from the gallery and get out into the city and consider your own relationships with the spaces within and what opportunities you see for artistic practice and engagement.  Then head back to the gallery and share your ideas with the rest of us!

And now for some pics of the opening.  Thanks to all who came it was a great night!

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“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. We are just about to touch down in Melbourne, where the local temperature is…….wait for it……..are you ready….eight degrees (groans and murmurs of passengers). We hope you enjoyed your time in Sydney, where eye contact only happens via reflective surfaces in bars, people like Bill Granger and Baz Lurhmann are heterosexual and it never rains. Stay warm.”

And hell, our craft shops and markets kick ass. Just to prove it

It’s a new blog from Pip and Gemma and it’s pretty damn cool.  You can search by suburb which is great if you want to go on a crafty weekend expedition.  Unfortunately searching Braybrook won’t give you very much.  But I say YET!  I will get my cool little craft shop in the old spice shop on Churchill Ave someday.  I’ll show you all!

Back to Craft City, if I was you, I’d stick it in your feed reader right next to Underground Melbourne (which has gone strangely quiet but will hopefully be back soon).  I can tell it’s gonna be full of gems!

Thanks Boo for the landing announcement!

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Underground Melbourne is a blog that will keep you up to date with the best shops, bars and happenings.  They were lovely enough to feature the Craft Cartel!

A blog homage to the hidden corners and less-traversed beauties of Melbourne. Covering food, shopping, architecture, subcultures, events and whatever other small pockets of oddity seem endearing and exciting. This blog will be an evergrowing ode to all that is small scale, passionate, uncompromising and even challenging about Melbourne – and defines it as the city I love.

So send their rss the way of your favourite feeder now!

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