Author: Sue Tyler

The end of Craft as we know it.

Open now and on for the next few weeks is Nan­aged­don at ROAR! gal­lery.  Nan­aged­don is the end of craft as we know it and its not-for-the-faint­hearted 😉

Many of the of the artists involved learnt how to craft from their nanas and using those skills they are trans­form­ing craft into art.

 

This isn’t tea cosies with a twist or styl­ish scarves (both of which we love) but a re-take on tra­di­tion­al craft meth­ods, giv­ing us anoth­er way at look­ing at and using craft.

 

Nanan­aged­don releases craft from it’s nor­mal, com­mon and accep­ted uses draw­ing it into the realms of con­cep­tu­ally driv­en art.

 

Some of today’s edgy, and rad­ic­al thinkers are part of Nan­aged­don and they are also shar­ing their skills with you at two pub­lic work­shops:

 

- On Sat­urday August 29th take a fam­ily pho­to­graph along to ROAR! and trans­form it using some embroid­ery tech­niques.

 

- the fol­low­ing Sat­urday – Septem­ber 5th take along some old plastic bags and you’ll learn how to trans­form them into jan­dals.

Both work­shops are by gold coin dona­tion

 

So get your craft on or just head along to ROAR! above Real Groovy Records in Upper Cuba Street from now until Septem­ber 12th

check out the web­site for open­ing hours

3 day CraftWeekend

We’ve already told you about

• The hand­made nation screen­ings on Monday
• The out­door knit tag­ging action planed for Sunday
• Sat­urday pick for Crafty­ness is.….

.…. The Island Bay Craft Vil­lage!

It’s  show­cas­ing a gor­geous range of bags, jew­ellery, chocol­ate, cup­cakes, clothes, pho­tos, toys, brooches, scarfs, pot­tery, ceram­ics and more.

Head along to the Pres­by­teri­an Church at 88 The Parade in Island Bay from 10am till 4pm on Sat­urday 8 August to sup­port NZ busi­nesses and be part of the bust­ling atmo­sphere.

If you can’t make it this week­end, don’t des­pair – the Island Bay Craft Vil­lage hap­pens on the second Sat­urday of every month!

Fence action

Right now you can check out the start of the Out­door Knit fence action on the cnr of Vivi­an and Bute Streets.

As lovely as 3 hearts are, that fence is still pretty ugly. Fences as a gen­er­al rule are. So in an attempt to make some­thing awe­some out of some­thing that is a big fat waste of land at the moment, Out­door Knit are get­ting their craft on this Sunday, and every­one is wel­come to join in.
 
Head your­self over to the fence on the corner of Vivi­an and Bute St in Wel­ling­ton, and join stiX in weav­ing hearts of all sorts of col­ours into the fence, all the way along the Vivi­an St side of the fence.

You totally don’t need to know how to knit. And Out­door Knit are sup­ply­ing the yarn. All you need is fin­gers.

Check out the event planned for this Sunday over at Out­door knit.

Handmade Nation

Trav­el­ing across the world to sold out crowds, it is Wellington’s turn to check out Hand­made Nation!

Hand­made Nation is screen­ing twice at The Para­mount theatre on Monday August 10th. Each screen­ing will fea­ture guest speak­ers, and a spe­cial Craft Show­case of loc­al vendors.

Vis­it the Wel­ling­ton Cre­at­ive Web­site for full details.

fabric, fabric , everywhere

After a bril­liant launch in April, Fabr ic-a-brac is back!

Here’s your chance to pick up fab­ulous vin­tage, unusu­al and mod­ern fab­ric, but­tons & pat­terns. Fab­ric-a-brac prom­ises  a huge range of fab­ric styles – from offcuts of uphol­stery fab­ric, to style‑y leath­er and tons of vin­tage

So head over to Brook­lyn Com­munity Centre this Sat­urday from 12 noon till 3pm. We rec­comend get­ting there bang on noon as we know from last time the early bird does score the best fab­ric haul.

Fab­ric-a-brac also fea­tures a stall rais­ing money for Mary Pot­ter Hos­pice. Any­one can donate for the table just pop along to any of the places lis­ted on the web­site.

Now park­ing is pretty tight so con­sider catch­ing the bus and since you are up that way drop into the pent­house and catch some film fest­iv­al screen­ings.

When: 12noon – 3pm, Sat­urday 18 July
Where: Brook­lyn Com­munity Centre, 18 Har­ris­on St, Brook­lyn

More info head over to the Fab­ric-a-brac web­site.

The big freeze

This Fri­day June 5 is World Envir­on­ment Day, and in our fairy cap­it­al city, and in oth­er spots around the coutry hun­dreds of people will “freeze” togeth­er to show united action for cli­mate change.

The Freeze is set to kick off at 1pm for just five minutes.

Right now the loc­a­tion is all secret squir­rel, but stay tuned

Nick Pot­ter, Per­son­al Assist­ant to Mr Freeze and lead co-ordin­at­or of a team of volun­teers, says

“If there was ever a time for you to get involved – it’s now. 2009 is a cru­cial year of action and in Decem­ber, a new glob­al cli­mate treaty will be nego­ti­ated in Copen­ha­gen. We need to come togeth­er and send the mes­sage that glob­al agree­ment is essen­tial and that bold and urgent action is needed.”

And look you can even check out last year’s freeze, on the you tube.

I’m think­ing stand­ing in the middle of the road is not the most ideal place to freeze, so as the girl guides used to say, be pre­pared.

People can join the Freeze and find out more at www.freezenz.wordpress.com

It’s funny season in the City

It’s Com­edy fest­iv­al time in the Cap­it­al.

Per­son­ally I think the tim­ing is always quite impec­cable as winter has just hit and with it comes the winter blues. There are loads of amaz­ing loc­al acts and also some bril­liant inter­na­tion­als.

Now nor­mally the inter­na­tion­al acts like to include a little loc­al con­tent to make the crowd love them more. Often it’s lim­ited to jokes about wind, jaf­fas and Aus­trali­ans. Sammy J is clearly the excep­tion to the rule, and to prove it he’s even been mak­ing some extremly cute videos.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQG1pRpTF‑c]

You can catch him at Down­stage from tonight.

My hot loc­al tip is the The Comedi­ettes.  Emma, Jim and Sarah were amaz­ing at the fringe fest­iv­al with their stand up show. Sarah’s been win­ning a few com­edy com­pet­i­tions lately, so you now she’s going to bring the giggles.

YAY for fabric!

There’s a fab­ric fair/market on tomor­row in Welly called Fab­ric-a-brac – come along to buy or to hock your too-big stash of fab­rics off to someone else.

Or just come for the cof­fee!

Email Josie for info about regis­ter­ing for a stall, or check out the blog.

Hope to see you there, it should be fun! The idea is that people take a table at the event, and sell all that cool vin­tage fab­ric, those but­tons, pat­terns and sew­ing-related items that they are just nev­er going to get around to using.

Some people get some cash, oth­ers get some great fab­ric at bar­gain prices. Hey presto!

12noon – 4pm,  Sat­urday 18 April

Brook­lyn Com­munity Centre, 18 Har­ris­on St, Wel­ling­ton