Author: Sue Tyler

Craft2.0 is all about the Free

We all know Craft2.0 is very much a shop­ping mecca for those who love hand­made.

But Craft2.0 is not just anoth­er craft fair, it’s also an all-day craft­ing party. Thanks to Hutt Val­ley Com­munity Arts you can unleash your inner crafter with an entire ded­ic­ated space set aside for free­style mak­ing. Share your ideas and learn from oth­ers in a laid­back and relaxed envir­on­ment that’s 100% free.

Turn up at 10am and you might be one of the lucky 100 people to win a free Cafe Reka Gift bag. Inside are tasty treats from Cafe Reka and a heaps of crafty and yummy extras.

But don’t worry if you miss out on a gift bag – until 2pm you can enter the prize draw to win loads of beau­ti­ful things from the Craft2.0 Crafters, The­New­Dowse, World Sweet World and Felt. Added up it comes to about $100 worth of crafty good­ies.

There will also be free face paint­ing!

So get your shop­ping shoes ready and come along for a stress-free day of loc­al craft and fun activ­it­ies. All stalls accept cash, or Craft­Cash is avail­able on the day. Remem­ber to check out The­New­Dowse exhib­i­tions while you’re here, and stim­u­late your own cre­at­ive impulses. See www.craft2.org for crafter pro­files and blog updates.

Crafty Waitangi

Can­’t wait till Craft2.0 in april to get your shop­ping groove on?

Well no wor­ries, becuase for those of you in Wel­ling­ton this is a week­end of crafty awe­som­ness…

First up on Wait­angi Day itself, why not head out to Pataka and cel­eb­rate Wait­angi Day and the Fest­iv­al of the Ele­ments with a spot of crafty shop­ping.

The Fest­iv­al of the Ele­ments is  being held at Te Rauparaha Park & Te Rauparaha Arena. The day starts with an  open­ing cere­mony at 11am, with a wide range of arts and enter­tain­ment pro­grammes con­tinu­ing through until 7pm.

The fest­iv­al uses the arts to cel­eb­rate the cul­tur­al diversity of Pori­rua, made pos­sible by the Treaty of Wait­angi.  The ele­ments of Earth and Air, Fire and Water embrace con­cepts of sig­ni­fic­ance to all cul­tures, con­cepts around which we can all unite.  Tangata When­ua and Tangata Tir­iti rejoice togeth­er on Wait­angi Day by way of the arts.

Pataka is once again host­ing a wide and won­der­ful range of qual­ity crafts includ­ing jew­ellery, baby­wear, clothes, beads, lamps, cush­ions and much much more! You’ll be guar­an­teed to find some­thing funky, cool, styl­ish that is made with ‘crafty’ lov­ing care. Everything at Craft­ing is craf­ted in NZ and it’s a great chance to meet the per­son who cre­ated whatever you buy.

On Sat­urday head over the hill to Mar­tin­bor­ough where the annu­al fair is being held. While some of Mar­tin­bor­ough Fair is very much focused on impor­ted stuff that might be cheap and break in a month, you’ll also find some really lovely and ori­gin­al hand­made cre­ations, many from lovely Craft2.0 crafters.

So have a fun week­end of crafts.

One more sleep till Craft2.0

Craft2.0 springs into the shop­ping sea­son by return­ing to The­New­Dowse on Octo­ber 11th with a Craf­tast­ic Craf­tacu­lar

(don’t ask us what that means, but pretty much bey­ond fab­ulous is a good defin­i­tion)

There are over 60 crafters this time round and as always there is a mix of return­ing favour­ite crafters and brand shiny new ones.

We guar­an­tee you’ll find presents for all the fam­ily, and more import­antly some spe­cial treats for your­self. Plus you can feel good about spend­ing money on 100% ori­gin­al NZ made hand craf­ted cre­ations instead of impor­ted mass pro­duced stuff.

Everything sold at Craft2.0 is 100% New Zea­l­and made.
Everything sold at Craft2.0 is made by the per­son selling it.
Most items are unique one-off or lim­ited edi­tion cre­ations.

This time round there are free mak­ing activi­tites. In asso­ci­ation with Hutt Val­ley Com­munity Arts, kids little and small young and old can cre­ate flor­al bou­quets from but­tons, card­board and pipe clean­ers.

everything is sup­plied all you need is your cre­ativ­ity. this is a great activ­ity for all the fam­ily, but we warn you it is addict­ive.

Spe­cial Treats
the most awe­some gift bag ever in the his­tory of craft2.0 , cour­tesy of those amaz­ing folks at Cafe reka are being handed out at 10am.
inside you’ll find, badges, crafty things, fudge and some oth­er treats that we are keep­ing secret for now, but will prob­ably gush about on the web­site www.craft2.org/blog the night before the fair.

Because we know that every­one loves Crafts so much we also have a prize draw, where you can win over $200 of Crafty cre­ations and oth­er spe­cial things.

Books, books, books, books…

and more books

wel­ling­ton’s biggest book­sale starts tomor­row. There are over 60,000 books being stacked as we speak for the Down­town Com­munity Min­istry Book­fair tomor­row.

It’s all being held at TSB area, entry is free, But the books, jig­saw puzzles, magazines, records, CDs and DVDs are not. how­ever the prices are just the right size for any­one want­ing to stock up on read­ing for the sum­mer

as a mad keen col­lect­or, my favor­ite stop is the chil­dren’s book area. How­ever i will also be spend­ing qual­ity time in the Sci­ence Fic­tion (usaully all sells out by about 2pm Sat­urday) DVD and vinyl sec­tions. I also plan to pick up a truck load of magazines, hope­fully a years sup­ply of the new york­er.

Doors open at 9am on Sat­urday (clos­ing at 5pm) and at 10am on Sunday (clos­ing at 4pm).

Plus the best part every bit of money you pay for all those books, jig­saw puzzles, magazines, records, CDs and DVDs goes toward help­ing wel­ling­ton’s most in need people.

it’s shop­ping and help­ing save the world all at the same time 😀

Crafting at Pataka

Tomor­row why not pop out to the very lovely PATAKA in Pori­rua for the Day.

Because as well as their very lovely Japan­ese garden you can have a bit of a shop and a browse at all sort of Crafty goods.

Why? Well it just so hap­pens that from 10am till 2pm Craft­ing is being held.

Think fun, funky, unique and you’ve got an idea of the range of crafty things for sale at CRAFTING.

There will be jew­ellery, crochet, dolls, stuffed toys, cush­ion, clothes, badges, bags Rus­si­an dolls, and all sorts great things for sale from a bunch of crafty types from around the wel­ling­ton region.

You can find PATAKA on the corner of Nor­rie and Par­u­moana St, Pori­rua.

And heck I bet if noth­ing else you’ll find some great inspir­a­tion for enter­ing our com­pet­i­tion to win a phone from Voda­fone.

knit one, purl the other

Sat­urday 14th of June 2008 is World­wide Knit In Pub­lic Day. As we all know knit­ting is not a crime, but very much an activ­ity people mostly do on their own.

In Wel­ling­ton why not fully embrace the out­doors and head along to the Buck­et Foun­tain in Cuba Mall where the lovely Tash will be from 2pm with her needles (or at the South­ern Cross if it’s rain­ing).

Yay for knit­ting in pub­lic!

And speak­ing of knit­ting in pub­lic, how much are we all lov­ing, lov­ing, lov­ing the urb­an knit­ting that is appear­ing around town. Finally Wel­ling­ton is exper­i­en­cing a fash­ion renais­sance of the woolen vari­ety. Every day I keep hear­ing and see­ing reports of sub­vers­ive knitty­ness around the city, and hon­estly I don’t think Wel­ling­ton has ever looked more beau­ti­ful.

Sadly someone dis­agrees as noth­ing seems to stay up for too long.

Which makes me won­der, if you could see sub­vers­ive knit­ting any­where, where would it be?

books, books, books.…

Col­lec­tions for Down­town Com­munity Min­istry’s annu­al Book Fair Fun­draiser are under­way. I love the book fair, because you name a book and you’ll most prob­ably find it there. Plus you get to go shop­ping and know that all you money is going to a good cause – like address­ing home­less­ness in Wel­ling­ton.

Scattered around town are wheel­ie bins for people to donate their unwanted books. Some of the cur­rent loc­a­tions are:

• St John’s Wil­lis St
• Wes­ley Wel­ling­ton (Tarana­ki St)
• St Paul’s Cathed­ral (Moles­worth St)
• Cent­ral Baptist Church (Boul­cott St)
• Aro Val­ley Com­munity Centre
• New­town Com­munity Centre
• Kil­birnie CAB

If you’ve got a pile of books, DCM come and col­lect from Wel­ling­ton loc­a­tions, so why not have a mini book col­lec­tion in your office?

DCM also col­lect DVDs, CDs and vinyl records as well. I can con­firm their vinyl bins are always treas­ure trove of magic­al dis­cov­er­ies.

The book fair is one of the biggest in the coun­try. It will be held on the 6th and 7th of Septem­ber in the TSB Arena on the water­front.

ooo shiny

There is noth­ing this girl loves more than check­ing out jew­elry, because hello, it’s mostly sparkly and shiny.

Cel­eb­rat­ing that very fact is Shine, a jew­elry exhib­i­tion with a bit of a twist. Instead of your stand­ard hanging from the walls and encased in boxes exhib­it, Shine is a a per­form­ance exhib­i­tion where con­tem­por­ary and bur­lesque dan­cers, act­ors and cir­cus per­formers will all be adorned by the cre­ations of six women jew­el­ers from around New Zea­l­and.

In their own words:

“It will be quite unlike any jew­ellery exhib­i­tion you’ve seen; glow­ing, lumin­ous works will be presen­ted in con­text, close to the skin, mov­ing, in con­ver­sa­tion with its human envir­on­ment in a glor­i­ous even­ing of bur­lesque dance. Streams of pearls, gleam­ing sil­ver chain-links quiv­er­ing on skin; feath­ers tick­ling just under­neath a chin… this is a per­form­ance that glor­i­fies beauty, and wel­comes the human form in all its shapes.”

When: Thursday, Fri­day, Sat­urday, 29 – 31st May, 9pm

Book at the Para­mount 04 384 4080

Tick­ets:
* $30 Adult
* $20 Groups 10+
* $15 Con­ces­sion

web: http://www.myspace.com/shinejewellery

PechaKucha 2

On May 28th – that’s this Wed­nes­day night – PechaK­ucha returns to Wel­ling­ton for it’s second Wel­ling­ton out­ing.

All you need to do for a great night out is head out to The­New­Dowse at 45 Laings Rd in Lower Hutt.

PechaK­ucha Night is an event in which presenters give brief present­a­tions about a top­ic of their choos­ing accom­pan­ied by 20 images, each of which is shown for 20 seconds – giv­ing a total present­a­tion time of 6 minutes 40 seconds.

Doors open at 7.30 pm and the whole thing kicks off at 8.20pm. The bar is run­ning all night, so you get to hang with great people, hear about some inspir­a­tion­al stuff and have some fun, all at the same time.

After the jump is the list of lovely speak­ers they’ve lined up for Wel­ling­ton.