RADICALCROSSSTITCH

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

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).

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)