Author: Sue Tyler

sounds like shopping

You can try and deny it, but the sea­son for shop­ping is upon us.

If your plan this year is to shop loc­al and/or shop hand­made, then tomor­row night is the answer to all your plans.

The­New­Dowse pre-Christ­mas combo has  space rock­ers Sparta­cus R and the first-ever Craft 2.0 Twi­light Delight.

Music + shop­ping + art

= a multi-sens­ory treat to cel­eb­rate the fest­ive sea­son

Craft2.0 kicks off at 6pm and runs till 9pm.

All the gal­ler­ies, bars and cafe are also open till 9pm.

Zinefest Saturday

Zine­fest is approach­ing fast!

It’s this Sat­urday Novem­ber 21st from noon till 5pm at Mighty Mighty, home to oth­er such great events as the Annu­al Wel­ling­tonista Awards

So if spend­ing a day sur­roun­ded by Zines, brows­ing the Stonk­ingly awe­some Wel­ling­ton City Lib­rar­ies Zine col­lec­tion or tak­ing a work­shop, tun­ing into a talk or pan­el dis­cus­sion sounds like you, well you know where to go.
 

There will be a zine swap box which is a great way to get new zines that you have nev­er seen before! And of course at  some point dur­ing the day  the trophy for the Zine-of-the-Fest  will be handed out.

You will also be able to pick up exclus­ive Zine­fest Schwag includ­ing Wel­ling­ton Zine­fest T Shirts 2009 edi­tion.

Fabric Frenzy descends on Brooklyn

This is cer­tainly a Wel­ling­ton week­end for every­one! I’m sure oth­er Wel­ling­tonis­tas have more to say about the soc­cer, the Santa Parade, the poten­tial All Whites parade and the Kirk’s Christ­mas win­dows.

But for me the week­end is all about fab­ric, craft­ing sup­plies, and adding to my craft stash.

My eyes and wal­let are all pre­pared for Fab­ric-a- brac at the Brookylyn Com­munity Cen­ter this Sat­urday from 12 noon till 3pm. 

Wel­ling­ton’s crafters have gone through their craft stashes and are selling them off.

At Fab­ric-a-brac you’ll  see mod­ern fab­ric, vin­tage fab­ric, threads, but­tons, pat­terns, trims, notions and so much more.

There is also a fab­ric fun­drais­ing table for Mary Pot­ter Hos­pice, which means spend­ing money and doing good thigs all at the same time, YAY!

There will be cof­fee, tea and sweet treats all day long. So you can shop, take a breath­er and then shop some more. As any good bar­gin hunter knows often the most prized items in a crafter­’s stash don’t hit the tables till near the end of the fair.

Remem­ber to bring cash, it’s the only cur­rency accep­ted at Fab­ric-a-brac.

Fundraising event at the Paramount featuring Guilliermo Del Toro

Tonight at the Par­mount you can sit down for two hours with Guil­li­ermo Del Toro.

He’ll be talk­ing about his life in film, and includes clips from films he’s worked on, like “Pans Labyrinth” and “Hell­boy”. Plus it’s a ques­tion and answer ses­sion, so if any­one finds out who is play­ing Bilbo, please report back.

This is a fund-rais­ing event, so it’s $45 a tick­et! Money riased tonight will go towards Wel­ling­ton pro­du­cer Bon­nie Slater and dir­ect­or Sam Kelly’s first fea­ture film, “One for the Road”.

And don’t for­get the Para­moun­t’s movie quiz night on Thursday nights, start­ing at 9 o’c­lock sharp.

So if Guil­li­ermo Del Toro is not your thing, quiz prob­ably is. And if both are, I think the choice is obvi­ous: you’ll be spend­ing every night at the Paz.

The Smartest Snapper

Voted by you the pub­lic as win­ner in the Smarten Your Snap­per com­pet­i­tion is Wave by Yana from Chro­ma­to­phobic.

Yana wins a Snap­per loaded with $100 and a free table at Craft2.0 this Sat­urday.

One of the great things about this cov­er is its see-through nature, espe­cially use­ful with both red and green Snap­per cards out in the wild.

Yana designed the cov­er and then using the Laser cut­ter at ponoko she whipped this nifty cov­er up using 0.3mm polypro­pyl­ene – and you thought polypro­pyl­ene was just for warm clothes!

Vot­ing was extremly close so we awar­ded a prize to the run­ner-up Amy from Bad Anim­als and her Pir­ate Patch. Amy will receive a free table at Craft2.0 this sat­urday.

1 sleep till Craft2.0

Think shop­ping, hand­made, free treats, free mak­ing and out­door knit­ting, plus cup­cakes and craft – loads and loads and loads of craft – and you have Craft2.0.

It’s being held at the­New­Dowse this Sat­urday Octo­ber 24th from 11am till 3pm.

It costs noth­ing to turn up and if you are one of the first 100 people through the door at 11am  you score a FREE good­ie bag from Craftrun­ner chock full of treats, includ­ing good­ies from felt.co.nz, Cafe Reka, Teza iced tea, Super­very, Emma Makes and more. Plus there is tons of to-die-for swag from the Craft2.0 raffle and so much more. 

Typ­ic­ally over 60 booths are present selling everything from glit­ter­ing uni­corn pins to hand prin­ted t‑shirts. If you are a fan of indie fash­ion, then you’ve found your DIY para­dise. The best part is meet­ing the crafters behind the styles and see­ing how some of their cre­ations came to life.

What kinds of crafts will you find? Well, you won’t find any of that mass pro­duced or impor­ted stuff here, no sir­ee! There’ll be sur­prises galore includ­ing recon­struc­ted cloth­ing, punk rock baby clothes for that little Sid or Nancy, hand­craf­ted jew­ellery, whim­sic­al and demen­ted plush toys, hand-spun yarn, screen-print­ing, avant-garde art and much more.

Best of all, Craft2.0 is more than just shop­ping. Kids of all ages can design and cre­ate their own magic­al masks. Wheth­er you’re a bird lov­er or are just look­ing for some­thing exot­ic, feath­er masks are a great craft pro­ject. These beau­ti­ful cre­ations work well as cos­tume pieces or dec­or­a­tions. and it’s free. 

a tiki tour of craft fairs

There must be some­thing about spring, and craft fairs as this sat­urday has 3 craft­ing events on in our fine city.

Make your first Craft des­tin­a­tion Ber­ham­pore school from 9.30am, it’s home to wel­ling­ton’s pop­u­lar sea­son­al fair, knack. Knack­’s been run­ning since 2007 and there are 3  things I truly love about Knack:

• Knack is run as a fun­draiser for ber­ham­pore school
• Knack is often where you will see some of Wellington’s emer­ging Crafters show cas­ing their crafts for the first time
• There is a lovely laid back vibe at every knack, which makes it a lovely des­tin­a­tion for some crafty cul­ture.

Once you’ve checked out spring knack in Ber­ham­pore head fur­ther down the road and you’ll hit Craft Vil­lage in Island Bay.

Home  to about 50 Crafters, Craft vil­lage is a monthly mar­ket fea­tur­ing loc­al crafters like Kate Bur­gess of Stitch Lips whose quirky cre­ations are fea­tured on the Craft Vil­lage Posters.

Rest up overnight and then head out to the long estab­lished Annu­al Pine­haven Arts and Crafts Fair  at Pine­haven School Hall, Pine­haven Road, Upper Hutt.

It is not a ‘sit at your stall’ type of fair more like a gal­lery where, everything is set out on walls, and dis­play tables. The school hall looks very unas­sum­ing from the out­side but once you get in it’s an eye open­er. The event is a fun­draiser for Pine­haven School, so just like spring knack you can do some shop­ping and feel like you are help­ing make the world a bet­ter place.

Books, books, books as far as your eye can see

Tomor­row sees the start of Wel­ling­ton’s most favour­ite book event, the Down­town Com­munity Min­istry Book­fair, which is being held at the TSB Arena on Sat­urday and Sunday.

Thou­sands of books have been sor­ted by volun­teers for months all ready to make book shop­ping easi­er on the week­end.

My hot tips…

• Set a buy­ing budget
• Get there early on Sat­urday to get the books you really really, REALLY want.
• Pop back on Sunday and take advange of the hourly spe­cials for books, vinyl and magazines you mostly want.
• Don’t haggle at an event like this. All the prices are cheap­er than at second hand book stores and every cent go towards help­ing those most at need in our city.

How good is this event? In the words of one of our favour­ite Wel­ling­ton blog­gers 

The event itself is so awe­some that even if  they told me that they used the money to crush kit­tens, I’d still attend. Okay, maybe not … but still – it’s fab­ulous.

And this year’s book fair is all about Twit­ter. Fol­low the #dcm­book­fair tag for updates over both days of the Book­Fair. Simply Tweet about your Book­Fair exper­i­ence and include #dcm­book­fair to let oth­ers fol­low the fun.

DCM Events Coordin­at­or Dav­id Cross says…

The Book­Fair provides an ideal event for people on Twit­ter and oth­er social net­works. I’m excited to see how it all unfolds. Per­haps we’ll get people tweet­ing about find­ing the per­fect book or that long lost vinyl record, who knows

The Book­Fair hours are from 9am – 5pm on Sat­urday 4th and 10am – 4pm Sunday 5th of Septem­ber. Money raised from the Book­Fair goes towards Down­town Com­munity Ministry’s work amongst people in need in the city.