I tried stamp col­lect­ing when I was younger. It end­ed some­what dis­as­trous­ly when I got bored with the gummed hinges used to afix stamps to the album pages and instead switched to PVA glue. My grand­fa­ther would not have been so proud of me.

And it’s anoth­er phi­lat­el­ic pop­pa that’s at the cen­tre of Cir­ca The­atre’s new play Mau­ri­tius. It tells the tale of New York half-sis­ters Jack­ie (Danielle Mason) and Mary (Lyn­dee-Jane Ruther­ford) and the stamp col­lec­tion that belonged to Mary’s grand­fa­ther. And in that stamp col­lec­tion is the extreme­ly rare and extreme­ly valu­able Mau­ri­tius “Post Office” stamps.

Here at the Welling­ton­ista we’d like to think we have a fair­ly diverse range of read­ers, but per­haps we don’t cov­er enough of the real­ly pop side of pop cul­ture. Luck­i­ly, oth­ers do so now we’re going to tell you what anoth­er web­site is up to.

This Fri­day July 9, AaronandAndy.com, along with ZM is hav­ing a par­ty with Kylie at the Gar­den Club (Appar­ent­ly she’s now just a one-word-won­der now though, so don’t be drop­ping the M word too loud­ly). 

Come along and cel­e­brate the release of Kylie’s hot new album Aphrodite. We’ll be giv­ing away Kylie posters, copies of Aphrodite, signed copies of X, and what­ev­er oth­er good­ies we can get our hands on!

It promis­es to be a fun-filled night — and don’t wor­ry, we won’t just be play­ing Kylie! — we’ve even got the country’s lead­ing Kylie imper­son­ator on hand to add to the fes­tiv­i­ties, and she’s still look­ing for some hot dancers if you’re keen!

Fri­day 9 July 2010
9pm til late
The Gar­den Club, 13 Dixon St, Welling­ton
$10 on the door, or find a fly­er for free entry 

Since loca­tion-based social media web­site Foursquare became avail­able in here in Novem­ber last year, iWelling­to­ni­ans have tak­en to it with enthu­si­asm.

But, you may find your­self won­der­ing, with all the check­ing-in going on, just where it is that all these iPhone-wield­ing hip­ster geeks are going?

Well, web­site Map.pr is able to cal­cu­late a list of the top 20 Welling­ton loca­tions, based on high­est num­bers of Foursquare check­ins:

Te Radar’s show Eat­ing The Dog has the hypoth­e­sis that New Zealand’s his­to­ry and nation­al char­ac­ter have been shaped by all the crazy fools out there, hav­ing ill-fat­ed adven­tures, mak­ing things that don’t quite work, and gen­er­al­ly get­ting a bit car­ried away.

Eat­ing The Dog is a slideshow at heart, but the selec­tion of sub­jects and Te Radar’s enthu­si­as­tic deliv­ery make it more than just a bunch of old pho­tos. It’s like vis­it­ing a provin­cial muse­um and get­ting a guid­ed tour from a fel­low who shows you all the weird objects out the back and tells you all the good sto­ries.

And I get the feel­ing that a show like this would­n’t be pos­si­ble with­out the excel­lent online col­lec­tions avail­able via the Nation­al Library. In fact, I’d love to see more inter­est­ing pho­tos and sto­ries from the archives pre­sent­ed in such an inter­est­ing way.

About halfway through the show, I was hit with a sud­den real­i­sa­tion — there are no women in Te Radar’s sto­ries. A few wives are men­tioned, but all the main char­ac­ters are men.

Te Radar did address this. He swears he looked for some inter­est­ing wom­en’s sto­ries to include in the show, but it turned out that all the peo­ple doing bloody stu­pid stuff in the old­en days were men. Or, at least that’s how his­to­ry records it.

But based on the wide range of bloody stu­pid con­tem­po­rary hand­crafts show­cased on com­e­dy web­site Regret­sy, I sus­pect that look­ing back at the hand­crafts of New Zealand’s pio­neer women would reveal a com­e­dy gold­mine.

We’re indebt­ed to the Archi­tec­tur­al Cen­tre for point­ing out this fas­ci­nat­ing archi­tec­tur­al time cap­sule at NZ On Screen. David Mitchell (the archi­tect, not the poet, nov­el­ist or come­di­an) talks us through the debat­able delights of Welling­ton’s 1984 streets in this episode of his series The Ele­gant Shed.

Mar­vel at the sparkling mir­ror-glass tow­ers! Admire Ian Ath­field­’s funk­tas­tic inte­ri­ors and dash­ing scarf! Won­der at Roger Walk­er’s round win­dows and even rounder bouf­fant! Delight in the crisp dar­ing lines of Massey House and Futu­na Chapel! Be astound­ed by the “urban­i­ty and dri­ve” of mid-Eight­ies Welling­ton, when even the Oaks Arcade looked fresh and entic­ing!

Knack Craft mar­ket is Welling­ton’s bou­tique style mar­ket. It’s become so pop­u­lar that it’s moved from its orig­i­nal home at beram­phore school,  to the much big­ger South Welling­ton Inter­me­di­ate School Hall, which you can find in Rin­toul Street, (next to Wake­field Hos­pi­tal), New­town.

Knack is where many of Welling­ton’s up-and-com­ing crafters take their first steps in sell­ing to the pub­lic. If you like new dis­cov­er­ies,  Knack is defi­nate­ly your kind of mar­ket, but please rem­ber to be gen­tle on the crafters. Hours of love, thought and pas­sion go into each item you’ll find at Knack (and any hand­made mar­ket) so things like bar­ter­ing or ask­ing for spe­cial deals is a lit­tle bit uncool.

At Knack you’ll also find tasty warm treats like hot soup, stuffed baked pota­toes, samosas and Thai cui­sine all per­fect­ly made to keep you warm for win­ter or occu­pied while your small peo­ple hang out at the kids’ craft­ing table.

Knack is crammed for of love­ly win­ter things for kids and adults, so if knit­ting or sewing is not your thing, stock up on warm win­ter woolies and clothes and some styl­ish aces­sories to match. Also if you see some­thing you like but need it in anoth­er size, colour.… you can ask the crafter in per­son if they do cus­tom orders. Most do and that’s the advan­tage of hand­made. Peo­ple make clothes, jew­ellery and aces­sories that work, and if you need extra tweek­ing it’s total­ly pos­si­ble.

There was a bit of a ruckus on Vic­to­ria Street yes­ter­day, when anti-Man­ners Street, pro-Man­ners Mall pro­test­er Ben­jamin Eas­t­on start­ed smash­ing up the road with a sledge­ham­mer.

The inci­dent drew a large crowd, who watched as the police arrest­ed him. One of the bystanders — a Dom­Post reporter — filmed the inci­dent, and the video is avail­able to view on Stuff.

Watch as police­men with shields and a police­manette with a Taser do their best to dis­arm the self-described “polit­i­cal busker”.

The busi­fi­ca­tion of Man­ners Mall is prov­ing to be good enter­tain­ment val­ue.

If you haven’t recov­ered from Craft2.0 last week­end, make sure you do by Sat­ur­day becuase it’s Fab­ric-a-brac time again.

The event is being held at St Anne’s Hall in New­town on Sat­ur­day 19 June from 9am – 12noon. It’s all put togeth­er by the amaz­ing Josie who who describes Fab­ric-a-brac as  “bring­ing togeth­er fab­ric-lovers, who have too much fab­ric, with oth­ers look­ing for a unique bar­gain”.

Fab­ric-a-brac is a dream won­der­land of awe­some for crafters, sew­ers, and mak­ers. It’s full of fab­ric, but­tons, notions, sup­plies and any­thing your crafty heart can dream of.

There are some excit­ing new stall­hold­ers at Fab­ric-a-brac, includ­ing:

• Stitch­bird fab­rics, who right now is run­ning a mar­velous auc­tion to raise funds for Mary Pot­ter Hos­pice over on her blog.
• Absolute Sewing are com­ing to the res­cue of all crafters with blunt scis­sors, which is most of us. They are offer­ing scis­sor sharp­en­ing, and since Fab­ric-a-brac is not NZ Cus­toms, you can bring your scis­sors alsong to the fair for sharp­en­ing.

If that does­n’t bring joy to your life, next week­end is Knack Craft Fair. They’ve got a new venue as well, Welling­ton South Inter­me­di­ate Hall. But more on all things Knack next week.