much craft community

Last night I went to the Craft Cartel's inaugural Flock and Flog Market, which was a sort of semi-spontaneous flash mob market. Turn up, hock your wares and vanish back into the night. You can read more about the mentality behind it on their website, but it was a sort of squatters market, instead of going through all the red tape and exorbitant fees of getting a council to approve a street market, the Craft Cartel decided to bypass it all and just hold one. I think it's a great idea.

There wern't many stall holders there (it's an inaugural event after all), but a busker was singing some atmospheric songs (as I left he was playing some Janis Joplin) and they echoed nicely around the alley's walls. There was a stall selling cross stitch and cross stitch patterns that I recognised - Kakariki's Radical Cross Stitch. I went up and introduced myself to the stall holder, she's one of my artists from Totem, although I never met her personally. We had a general chat about craft and politics and I bought one of her kits, a cute cross stitch with a bike symbol. Since the Road/Rode exhibition, I've got a thing for the bike symbol. Babushka's and the bike symbol. Well, you gotta have a hobby.

I also got a pretty card of an interesting design of circles from another stall holder - Meliors Simms. So all in all it was a good experience.

This morning I find in my inbox an email from Kakariki, with these two photos attached-





MUCH better than my crappy phone camera one. And I love the view from the side, it gives a much better impression of the 3d quality to the craft. she also snapped them in September (she thinks) and thus her photos have the missing letter in them. Thanks so much Kakariki!