We’ve always known that Wel­ling­ton is a warm glow­ing love­fest of pinko lib­er­al lefties. And no mat­ter what your feel­ings are on the ambigu­ously worded opin­ion poll cit­izens-ini­ti­ated ref­er­en­dum on kid-hit­ting, look­ing at the spe­cif­ic res­ults of the Wel­ling­ton elect­or­ates is pretty inter­est­ing.

As it hap­pens, as of Fri­day night, the top two elect­or­ates in New Zea­l­and with the highest per­cent­age of ‘yes’ votes are Wel­ling­ton Cent­ral (35.9%) and Ron­go­tai (29.22%), and Ohariu isn’t too far behind with 19.73%.

The oth­er big pock­ets of ‘yes’ are found in Auck­land Cent­ral (28.84%) and Mt Albert (22.67%).

So if you’re feel­ing a little let down by the over­all ref­er­en­dum res­ult, a little com­fort can be found in know­ing that Wel­ling­ton is still ace.

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

Here’s just a quick remind­er that the Smarten your Snap­per com­pet­i­tion closes in a week’s time, on Thursday 27th August.

This means there’s still time for you to get busy on an entry. Check out the Craft 2.0 blog for some inspir­a­tion, or, think about this…

The new Green Snap­per cards have been released for sale in Wel­ling­ton this week. This means there will soon be thou­sands of school-age kids out there need­ing help to look after a hard-to-handle object that is val­ued (by their par­ents, at least). There’s got to be oppor­tun­it­ies there for some inspired, and poten­tially reward­ing, craft­ing!

For example, this Wel­ling­tonista would queue, just behind his daugh­ters, to help buy them a couple of robust and pretty hold­ers on a lan­yard at the next Craft 2.0…

(In which we let you eat cake)

Ekeltus Inc are going for baroque with a lav­ish event this Sat­urday – The Affair of the Dia­mond Neck­lace: an even­ing with Mar­ie Ant­oinette in the Gar­dens of Ver­sailles – a din­ner, ball and theatre exper­i­ence all joined togeth­er in one sump­tu­ous affair. It sounds rather excel­lent, and we can heart­ily recom­mend dress­ing up as Mar­ie Ant­oinette, so per­haps you should find out more right now, oui? 

If you’ve vis­ited Akaroa, you’ll know how the li’l Can­ter­bury vil­lage prides itself on its French­ness. See, it was foun­ded by the French.

Dave Arm­strong’s new play “Le Sud” takes the idea of the French in Aotearoa a few steps fur­ther – ce qui si le français avait col­on­isé l’Île du Sud?

Uh, I mean, what if the French col­on­ised the South Island?

The com­edy is set at a polit­ic­al meet­ing, with the Kiwi-as North Zeal­anders pay­ing a vis­it to their Gal­lic south­ern neigh­bours to see about buy­ing some of that elec­tri­city they have an abund­ance of.

We meet the sleazy South Zea­l­and prime min­is­ter, his les­bio­nique deputy, and their min­is­ter of nat­ive affairs, who’ll do any­thing for a dol­lar. Or a franc. And if you’ve learned a bit of French in school, you’ll be able to feel clev­er through­out their open­ing dia­logue en français.

The North Zea­l­and team are lead by the good ol’ Kiwi bloke PM, and his coali­tion part­ners – a very left-wing Maori woman and a very ACT-like young dude.

The story man­ages to be quite naughty at times – much more naughty than you’d get on the telly – and the cast are bril­liant with both the verbal and phys­ic­al com­edy.

I will also praise the bold, effect­ive cos­tumes by Nic Smil­lie. It’s kind of nice know­ing that New Zea­l­and polit­ic­al cul­ture can be summed up in three well chosen suits.

And when all this comes togeth­er, Dave Arm­strong’s pen of lolz man­ages to skew­er French, Kiwi, Maori and polit­ic­al cul­ture, throw in a bit of sex farce (Oh-haw-haw! Baguette!), and pro­duce a really fun, funny play.

“Le Sud” plays at Down­stage until August 22.

We’ve reviewed Roxy before, but hav­ing had the exper­i­ence of being the only people din­ing there at 7.30pm on a Thursday night, we thought it was pretty import­ant that we review them again. Espe­cially since we saw that now (like many oth­er places we really should round up) they’re offer­ing BYO on Mondays and Tues­days.

First up, I should say that my opin­ion of their break­fast has changed con­sid­er­ably since I left that last com­ment. I’ve been there for break­fast many times with the brunch club, and they’re always deli­cious, quick with the cof­fee which is sorely needed on Sat­urday morn­ings, and oh my stars, those hash browns – wow. In fact, they were nom­in­ated for Best Break­fast in the 2007 AWAs.

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!

Although Wel­ling­ton’s been turn­ing on some stun­ning days recently, win­ter­’s still offi­cially here for a little while longer…

To warm your wee souls, espe­cially for those suf­fer­ing from Film Fest­iv­al with­draw­al, the Film Archive (corner of Tarana­ki and Ghuznee Sts) has come up with a great Soup & A Seat concept.

It’s cinema con­densed to fit into your hour-long lunch­break. Each screen­ing starts at 12:15pm on Fri­days until 18 Septem­ber.

And you get a film screen­ing, includ­ing a hil­ari­ous range of docos, short films, even a Flight of the Conchords epis­ode, and a cup of homemade soup FOR EIGHT BUCKS! 

What a beauty. First screen­ing today at 12:15pm is the plucky 1975 doco Lost in the Garden of the World, which fea­tures, among oth­ers, Wern­er Herzog, Mar­tin Scorsese and Dustin Hoff­man, in fine 70s form.