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.