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.