Trivial pursuits...

THIS WEEK WAS ABOUT...


This week has all been about getting HML up and running. It's been a dream of ours to have a craft magazine that went some way in examining what was happening around us. Where renegade craft, fashion, design, history, cinema, community, technology, folk & DIY all came together as we hold up the mirror to our culture and tried to make sense of it all. With a new entry everyday we hope you make us a regular stop on your online journey.
We hope you love it as much as we love bringing you all the news from Handmade Life...

We also managed to attend a trivia night that has kicked off what is bound to be a very nasty addiction to publicly displaying our embarrasingly large pop cultural knowledge with other like minded nerds. I think we revealed our true colours when we asked if they needed not just the name of the film but the director and the year of the release. That being said we went home with nothing more than writers cramp and a sore throat.

Look our for the weekend edition of Handmade Life...

we're such a coupla squares.

WE MADE IT OURSELVES

BECK: So this week has been full of sittin' and knittin'... I've been making wee double 8ply squares that eventually will be made into a blanket to help keep me and my two favourite couch dwellers toasty during the nightly sabbaticals in front of the telly during the looming melbourne winter...

RAMONA: In a week that's been at the balmy end of summer it may seem a little loopy to start knitting with chunky weight wool. truth is I'm a lazy knitter so this scarf should be ready sometime around June.

mmmmm.... fruity

WEBSITE OF THE WEEK

Given the talk up of all things fashion this week, we thought we might send you on a kooky na-na tour of sartorial splendour. Welcome to the land of the rising sun and pasty gothic pirate nurse.

www.japanesestreets.com
enjoy your trip.

hoo are you?

CRAFT FIND OF THE WEEK


RAMONA:

I know that there is always a risk that we'll turn into the kind of women that collect owls - I think it's a risk we're willing to take. After all, it was the owls in the woods that warned Laura Palmer that Twin Peaks was a bad bad place to grow up in. Don't you get the feeling they know something we don't? This little owl was my Christmas present from Beck. It is in fact a money box. It currently hold $12 and the world record for longest stare...

OWL PHOTO BY BECK.

Fashion (turn to the left)

SHOW/S OF THE WEEK

Adventure is the theme of this years Loreal Melbourne Fashion Festival and there are 21 shows on around the traps that are sure to be more interesting than forking out $50 to see a runway show. We don't want to pay to look at clothes we can't afford or fit into.

Contrary to popular belief fashion is for everyone. Vivian Westwood, progenitor of punk and all things Nana once said "Fashion is very important." and we here at Handmade Life couldn't agree more. It is the artists and craftists of fashion that give us new ways of exploring, rediscovering and rethinking the ways in which swaddle ourselves as we move through the world. We're really very excited by the long list of exhibitions on offer, and fully expect to run ourselves ragged trying to see as much as we can while the fun lasts.

With this in mind here's three top picks to get you started.

Noble Rot examines an unseen history of fashion - the unfinished, the soiled, the discarded. The show includes work by dynamic design duo S!X who's continued tactile boundary pushing we just can't get enough of. Set in the genteel halls of Como House it'll be well worth the $12 entry fee. We may even stop for tea and scones.

The National Trust Australia (Vic) Como Historic House and Garden Cnr Williams Rd and Lechlade Ave South Yarra 16 Feburary-7 May Mon-Sun 12.30pm-3.00 pm Adult $12.00 Concession $9.00 Child $6.50 National Trust Members free

My Sisters Wardrodrobe. Ok so you have six great items of clothing that you cant bear the sight of anymore... but they're too good for the local oppy and you're too lazy to organise a stall at Camberwell Market. What to do? Why not take them to a party at the museum and exchange them for something new? It's such an insane idea it just might work! This exhibition/event gives a whole new meaning to the phrase Swap Meet - especially after a few glasses of champagne.

Handmade Life will be there alongside our failed fashionista brethren clutching our misguided purchases and hoping to find that perfect pre-loved Zambesi jacket or a pill free Westwood knitted hobble skirt under a pile of bad twinsets, asymetrical hems and the sad schmatte skeletons of the early 90's minimalist/utilitarian drum'n'base era.

Melbourne Museum, Nicholson Street, Carlton. Tele:13 11 02. Thurs 2 March 6.30pm – 9pm Admission $6 (Includes a complimentary drink on arrival - woo hoo)

Ulterior Modish. Handmade Life recommends this show purely on venue. Blindside never fails to present dynamic festival shows and is one of our fabvourite venues. We grabbed this bit from the Fashion Festival website - " Exploring the interstices of text and fashion, represented through the language of four local and international artists, Nick Currie (Berlin), Fiona Mcdonald (Melbourne), Susan Robb (Seattle) and Constanze Zikos (Melbourne). Expressed within the context of a culture that addresses a tactile urge, the virtual and the material are threaded together with the formalesque eye of the needle or the alloy-trace of the machine sewn."

Sounds pretty cool to us, even if they've used the word formalesque.

Blindside gallery, Level 7, Room 14, Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston Street 23 February - 11 March 2006 Thurs-Sat 12.00 pm-6.00 pm

Start planning your outfits now.