Ho ho ho... Here's the ugliest Christmas image I could find... Got a better/worse one? Post as comment below.
It has recently come to my attention that the horrible abomination of shopping discomfort known as Christmas is pretty much upon us. You remember it, right?… jingles, plastic trees and too much food. I want to make it known universally (or internet-ly, really!) that as many gifts I give this year as possible will be handmade by me!
There’s a few exceptions. My mum wants some motivational sports-related biography (ugh! boring!) and step father wants money to buy a new BBQ. But rest assured, the rest of you amazing friends of mine are getting something handmade.
I totally and utterly implore you to do the same. And if you happen to lack inspiration you need only step into our jolly undecorated store. 100a King Street, Newcastle – ho ho ho. Come to Bird and talk to whoever is in the shop. They’ll be making something, surely. This last week I’ve been making copies of all of my zines to send down to the cuties at Blackbird Corner who stock my stuff. Here’s our worktable during the messy collation process:
Bird in the Hand worktable!
We’ve also been getting really nifty parcels from lovely zinesters! (We’ll have Jackie’s awesome zine up to buy soon!)
Jackie Bos - www.iheartthearctic.com
Dave Roche sent us all these zines through Microcosm. What a wonderful nearly-Christmas present!
Tomorrow we’ll be making up the Christmas card that Bird in the Hand’s wonderful friends will get and sending out the hoardes of orders that keep flowing in from the online store.
We’re pretty sure that, while some people have time to hand make their Christmas gifts, most people are busy at this time of year so we have decided to start gift wrapping our grab bags. We’ve just started selling these little gift packs and they’re flying out the door. We’ll giftwrap them in brown paper wrap and scoot them over to you or your chosen person – just leave a note in the checkout! Here’s a little squizzo about the grab bags:
$20 Grab Bag: You’ll get a random mix of at least twenty dollars worth of zines from around Australia and the world. You’ll also get some ‘You’ or other free zines we have available. You don’t even need to leave your couch (or work desk…sneaky sneaky!).
They also come in $10 and $50 denominations. Find them here.
Bird in the Hand will be bringing zines from our stock and are keen to meet & chat!
Date: Saturday, 12 December 2009
Time: 3pm – 9pm
Facebook: event
ZOMG ZOTW!
Zine of the Week!
21-28 November 2009
“Newcastle, Australia”
Trevor Dickinson
Bird in the Hand will be hosting its first Letter Writing Club on Friday, December 4 and we’d love it if you came.
To give you a quick rundown on what will occur:
We welcome you in through our bright red front door and you find a comfy place to sit down for a little while. You gather some supplies: a pen, some paper, a typewriter, a cup of tea, a biscuit. You write a friend or a relative or your crush a letter using that somewhat anachronistic art of letterwriting. You probably have fond memories of using this skill a little when you were younger and maybe you haven’t used it in awhile. Writing some a personalised letter is one of the most heartwarming, communicative experiences & we’d like to get you back into the routine of letterwriting (it’s way funner if you’re part of a club!). Please come to this first meeting of the Letter Writing Club…
Feel free to disseminate this flyer to anyone who might be interested. If you’d like more information or have a press enquiry, please email zineshop@gmail.com
P.S Our shop is part of the Renew Newcastle project, which aims to reactivate disused buildings in Newcastle’s CBD with exciting creative projects. We have this wonderful event on the first Friday of each month where all of the shops, spaces and galleries stay open later than usual to host launches and other cool events. This Letter Writing Club is part of the First Fridays. In the coming days you’ll be able to find out what each project is offering this month via http://renewnewcastle.org/ so please head over there to get the news!
Tonight I joined Marcus & Marni of Renew Newcastle at the City of Newcastle community awards ‘ceremony’. Renew have been recognised for their Community Service in setting up a dynamic urban revitalisation project.
I’m really proud to say I’m a part of Renew Newcastle and look forward to working with Renew and Marcus & Marni into the future. If you see either of these guys around the traps make sure to congratulate them on this great recognition!
If you’re from out of town and wondering what our zine shop looks like, I’ve made a little (very lofi!) video spanning most of the shop. You might catch a glimpse of your zine or someone you knows! We’ll try to get more of this kind of stuff if anyone is keen to see it… pop a comment below!
I’m supposed to be writing away at my business plan and some specific arts funding applications tonight but hells bells./ I’m Greading and listening to My Morning Jacket instead. I came across something pretty interesting on the ol’ Google Reader. Herein lies an interesting blog post:
Zine Swap is located in London but accepts zines from all around the world. You, as a contributor send in 3 copies of one of your zines and they send you back 3 other people’s zines. They send out one copy of your zine to another contributor and keep the other two of archival and exhibition purposes. If you’d like to check out the form and send in some zines, here’s the form.
Sometimes you wish for something so hard that it comes true. Emma D of Flying Machine (brilliant) distro fame & her friend Tim are setting up a new distro in Sydney-town called Take Care. Pop ‘em an email for more information on how you can stock your lovely zines with them: takecarezine(at)gmail(dot)com
In a wonderfully horrid twist of fate, Bird in the Hand’s computing facilities have been thieved. Yes, you heard it right. Over the weekend we were robbed (during the day!) of our Macbook, iPod, some cash, our internet dongle thingo, and our backpack (to carry the booty in, I’m sure!).
I should be still annoyed but the truth is, I’m sitting here chuckling at the thought of some filthy burglar enjoying Million Dead’s best track “I am the party” or sifting through my boring boring financial information. They might learn a thing or two about ‘business’. They probably know more than I’ll ever know.
There’s a few reasons behind this message to you:
- If you’re expecting a reply to an email, then give me but a few days more to reply.
- If you’ve been wanting to buy some new zines, there’s plenty of new ones, which juuust arrived from Microcosm Publishing. You’ll help us pay all that great insurance excess. Get a look-in at our new stock at http://www.zines.bigcartel.com
- If you want to help out, which some people have said they want to, the best way is to buy some zines.
- If you see a silver Macbook (with a This is Not Art sticker on the top) and reckon it’s stolen, stealth it back for me okay?
- If you want to help, but don’t really want to get new zines then you could send some spare change via paypal to susy.pow@gmail.com but I’d really prefer you do the above things instead!
Well, look after yourselves & your things. If a thief goes to the effort of opening a gate, climbing onto the roof, breaking in through a window and through two doors to find your goodies then maybe it’s worth checking your security before you lose stuff too!
x Susy
Bird in the Hand Zine Shop
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