keep whales in the ground

When my dad was a young hippy dude in the 70s he wore two badges to his science lectures religiously: "keep uranium in the ground" and "save the whales". For the sake of brevity one of his lecturers suggested he combine the two into "keep whales in the ground". Tee hee. The badges have since been retired, but before becoming a washed up baby-boomer my dad didn't fail to pass on his passion for the environment to me. This year has been a big year for me doing hippy things, and while I'm not that into wearing 1-inch badges, I am into chronicling my exploits through the medium of sequential narrative. Yes that's right, I made a mini-comic about my year as a freshly minted activist. Its called Spirit Fingers and very soon I will make some more and take them to place where they may be exchanged for coins or swappage.

dreams of another...

silly season

This year N and I decided that after being christmas-shopping-zombies last year, running round trying to find salad servers, a whipper-snipper and explorer socks, this year we would MAKE everyone presents. I know, crazy right?
We started in earnest last week, and this weekend we're putting the finishing touches on all our little hand-made goodies. I was lucky enough to be gifted the Zakka craft book for my birthday, so I've had plenty of ideas for little things to make. Today, however, N surpassed all my efforts with these super-sweet hand-made wooden buttons! Yes, he made them! With his own two hands! I can't get over them, they're sooo sickly adorable Japanese shabby chic!

freedom

There have been a few kinda scary uses of the word "freedom" this week in the pokies debate and occupy thingies. Maybe I'm getting old and cycnical, but I distinctly remember the saying went
"liberté, égalité, fraternité".

So many words, so little time...

Just over 1 year ago I went up to Brisvegas for the inaugural Allen & Unwin / Queensland Writers Centre mentorship for Children's Literature. After a week of talking with editors, publishers, booksellers and other amazing writers, the idea was that I would go home, finish off my manuscript and resubmit. Well, at least that was the plan! Then I overloaded with uni, got an extra day's work, got involved in a campaign to end coal power in Victoria and lo and behold it was October again, and I still hadn't finished!
I had loadsa drawings, ideas and words, but I'd yet to sit down and finish piecing the darned thing together.
Then, amazingly, I sat down at a desk and finished it off. I know. Crazy. I just sat down and wrote. After doing 'plot-plans', brainstorming, drawing and boring my boyfriend to death about it, I worked out the suprising fact that writing is the way that books are written.
Huh. Who would have thought?

road trip!

This weekend is going to be all about my boy, my bike and my book. We're road tripping up to Castlemaine, courtesy of V-Line, before hopping on our bikes and heading south to Daylesford where the weekend will be spent. Although, the prospects aren't looking promising as I write this, with rain pouring down, and N on the veranda, cursing, with my bike in pieces. Fingers crossed we make it!

awoooo

Ever since my true-love bought me Pablo Holmberg's delightful Edén back from the USA earlier this year I have been percolating, slowly, softly, some ideas about a strange place all of my own, constructed only in sets of four square panels.

bon temps!

N and I just returned on the o'ernight train from Newcastle: sleepy, stiff and satisfied. From the moment we stepped into the home of Newie's finest activists we were made to feel welcome, and it was a shame we didn't get to spend more time hanging out at their inner-suburban californian bungalow compound-cum-activist lair. But there was a festival to enjoy, and a city full of grand broken-down buildings to explore and grumpy service-people to annoy!
Despite warnings from some locals we actually managed to enjoy our time at TINA - though some of the events we went to were pretty average, there were many that were simply stellar, and made the long journey worth it. The zine fair too exceeded expectations (mine were pretty low to start with, after being billed $20 for a stall). To help justify the cost I decided I would lower myself as a zine-maker and do some 'crafts' to sell... I made these super-twee mushroom chains, and someone actually bought one!

who am i kidding?

In less than 2 weeks I will be a qualified Librarian. As well as making comics, I'm finding cooking elaborate dinners is an effective way of distracting myself from my studies.

safety first

Tomorrow is Moving Planet day and I'm facing the dilemma of what to wear! Every time I get on my bike I feel the weight of this responsibility: try hard to look normal or try hard not to die? It usually ends as a compromise between the two. Tomorrow I'm lucky enough to be on team Bikezilla, which is pretty much where its at as far as pedal-powered travel goes. So's... I guess I'd better look my best. Who said lycra can't be attractive?

wound up

I gotta new wind-up radio last week (yes, it has a little handle!) So, I've been tuning into 3CR, which is Melbourne's coolest radio station in case you didn't know, and getting an education (it has a comics show, need I say any more?) I was lucky enough to catch a broadcast earlier in the week by Karen Healey, speaking at the Tights & Tiaras conference at Monash Uni this month. You should definately listen to it, even if you hate super hero comics (like me!) And if that gets you going you could read Karen's now defunct (but archived none the less) blog: Girls Read Comics & They're Pissed.
Who knows... maybe I'll even try reading Wonder Woman?

forest place

At the weekend we went up to Toolangi, to witness the shameful logging that has been ripping right through the heart of this gorgeous wet rainforest. Some of the brave folk who have been risking their lives to stop the logging going on briefed us on the woeful situation. Toolangi, which missed the brunt of the Black Saturday fires by a hairs breadth, forms some of the only remaining habitat for the now critically endangered Leadbeater's possum. Volunteer surveyors have found two live leadbeaters nests within the coupes, but due to the absurdity of the Government's guidelines it is their habitat which is protected, not the actual possums themselves. And "habitat" according to government guidelines must cover an area at least 3 hectares - the coupes conveniently cover only 2.

The situation is made all the more upsetting for those who braved the fires two years ago, because once the forest is logged it will be replanted with highly flammable eucalypt saplings, increasing fire risk in the future.

When the next fire comes, we'll know who to blame.

new zine deluxe

I was very excited this last week to sell-out (not in the bad sense) at Sticky once again. It does, in some ways, make me feel entitled to make zines instead of doing boring things like my homework or my share of the dishes. And that is what I have promptly done, with an old story and some old bits of fabric and my printer and my sewing machine. Adeline the Awful is a story I wrote a while back and drew some pictures for more recently, and it will be very soonly available for a reasonable price - and, I must add, in limited edition! The edgings have been hand cut and sewn, and with poor sewing skills like mine, its simply an offer that cannot last!

trunky

Sad news this week, with VicForests (the State Government's logging arm), smashing up pristine forest at Sylvia Creek, despite opposition from locals and greenies alike. Boo! What a bunch of meanies! I was in the mood for drawing trees this week, but this stinky news made it all the more pertinent.
The forest forms part of the ever-dwindling habitat of Australia's cutest marsupial and also Victoria's faunal emblem: the leadbeaters possum. VicForests bozos claim they have left a habitat "island" within the forest (in light of conservationists concerns, not their own black hearts), which they say will ensure any possums in the area survive (they also say there are no possums in the area, which may give you some insight into their skills of reason and analysis).
Anyway, I'd like to see how well folks here in Melbourne would survive if VicForests, say, smashed up a few hundred hectares of freeways. Starvation anyone? Rant ends here!

salty

Its been a while, so this afternoon I set aside for drawing and drinking steaming cups o' coffee. I think I forgot how nice it is to just draw, cut, ink for no reason and no purpose. With winter setting in I hope there will be more of it!

Beach babes

This is the gorgeous view from my desk at the Queenscliff Neighbourhood House, where I have been hanging out the last little while, drawing pictures and drinking copious amounts of peppermint tea (I have a cold).
The 'Cliff is my hometown, and I've been invited back as a part of the local council's Sea of Words. Being invited back home, and also, Queenscliff being a nautical town (as you might have guessed from its appropriately themed writers fest), I brought my copy of Dylan Horrocks' awesome Hicksville along for a read today... and simply couldn't help myself! There is a lighthouse outside my window!! If it wasn't located within the grounds of the local naval base I would be scrounging about there right now in search of some hidden treasures.

(apologies to Dylan Horrocks and people who like nicely photoshopped pictures)

mini zinesters

This is the amazing stash of zines I picked up today at Queenscliff Primary School. I've been at the school the last couple of days, introducing the kids to the concept of zines and running a mega-workshop on how to make them. Today we worked the photocopier and after lunch held a super zine swap! I have to say I was blown away by the talent - with titles like Angry Eggplant (grade prep), Splice Mice (grade six) and My Dad Smells (grade four) making it a very competitive swapping field!


(Angry Eggplant)

(Splice Mice)

(My Dad Smells)

montañas

Lately, I've been dreaming of the land of the long-white-cloud - reading too much Janet Frame and listening to way too many of N's old records. So cause we cancelled our trip there I'm all blue skys, and cumulus clouds and mountains doing suitable high altitude things (wearing scarves, feeling lonely).

Nano-test!

Can you make a better comic than me? I bet you can! Friends of the Earth will be releasing a super new report on the hygiene-gone-mad "silver nano" technology, and are looking for someone to do a bit of light comic relief. If you're keen the deadline is Monday at the latest- email me and I will send on a fact sheet on the serious issues you can convert into comedy gold... I mean silver!

**Update** Deadline is now Tuesday!

he's behind you

It's the last day of summer and how happy I am that it is a little chilly and I can already feel autumn coming on! The last week of summer (as in last week) was a busy one for me and my new HP Laserjet 1600. Together we achieved the creation of a total of almost 90 zines, most of which have found their way to Sticky with a small portion being posted off to Format in Adelaide, my first foray into that westerly state. Alongside a re-print of Flora there was a batch of Happy Crap, Sooky Cloud and Evil Mushroom as well as a new comic Dreamwalker, which has wasted most of my black toner. Props to Friends of the Earth for letting me use their super guillotine too!

try again!

Though I have been known to willingly (perhaps over-willingly) participate in Valentine's Day festivities in the past, this year I wish to commemorate the date with That Hurt!, a new zine of tattoo ideas for the broken hearted. Prototypes of TH sold out at Saturday's mega-zine fest, and this week I will be printing up a fresh new bunch which will promptly be available at Sticky for those in need of some needy-needled nymphs to cheer them up post-V's D.

In other exciting news, last week Hairy Bloke got its first review, it was so nice it made me blush.

shitty day

No I didn't stand in a poo, but today has been a really shitty day! Sticky Zine Fair is in less than one week and the (supposedly super) HP LaserJet 1600 my uncle gifted me has given me nothing but troubles. Halfway through printing a ream of Happy Crap and Sooky Cloud zines it has, ironically, decided to give up on life. Shitty printer = sooky girl.