By Alex Davis
Merry Yarnmas
Yarnmas came early this year! The Colchester Yarn Bomb has found itself a new home in The Minories Art Gallery Christmas shop. To celebrate. Our resident craft club Stitch & Bitch created a book about all the things we’ve done and held a little Christmas Party at the Waiting Room. They crafted, laughed and played Megan Fowler’s Tassel Challenge, and made Christmas decorations.
S&B - Alex, Amy and Meg would like to thank everyone that came along, supported the book, the club, the yarn bomb, and has continued to craft with them during 2014. Have a very crafty Christmas and textile-tastic new year.
Photos: Justjaq
Christmas with Stitch & Bitch
This month we want you to help us spread some textile themed Christmas cheer with Stitch & Bitch - our resident craft club on Wednesday 10th December starting at the Minories Gallery from 6pm & moving onto the Waiting Room at 7.30pm.
It’s a small world
Mr Alan Brignull of the Hedgehog Press in Wivenhoe joined us to talk about small type letterpress printing for the St Botolph’s Letterpress Takeover on Wednesday 26th November.
Alan is a staunch hobby printer, strictly non-commercial, and unlike most letterpress fanatics who hunt for ever larger machines and wood type, he is a fan of the smaller end of the type scale. Creating his own range of stamps that are both intelligently designed and elegantly produced, we’re very lucky to have him so close by. He gave us a look at the world of the hobby printer, through old journals, annuals, snatches of historical fact and perhaps even the odd apocryphal tale. We also printed beermats from our (newly acquired) Adana 8×5. The next Takeover is on Wednesday 28th January. Save the date and see you there for more letterpress & type inspiration for anyone with a passion for print.
Chockablock Printing
On Saturday 22nd November we held an Open Day for the public to view and experience our evolving Hack / Maker Space at the Waiting Room. We had four different printing workshops with local creatives & members of the space.
We had block shape Fabric Printing with our Stitch & Bitch co-host and Hack Space co-ordinator Alex Davis. Badge Making with Jack Brigg-Miller who looks after our The Coffee Darkroom. Custom Screen Printing with Tom Armstrong, a painter and man about our who also looks Print space. Plus two types of Letterpress Printing. First up, Paul and Rob from the St Botolph’s Letterpress Studio set their Adana printer to create branded beer mats. Second up, T Y P O R E T U M aka Justin Knopp who runs a letterpress printing & design studio based in Coggeshall. He brought along a proofing press for folks to try with gloruoys G.F Smith Colorplan papers.
We’d like to thank all our workshops hosts. The event supported by the Craft Council‘s Make:Shift:Do - A programme of public events to experience hands on making - and G.F Smith.
Plenty of Print
On Saturday 22nd November we’re hosting an Open Day for the public to view and experience our evolving Hack / Maker Space at the Waiting Room. Meet some of the people and members involved with the space and try out various FREE printing workshops with local artists. The event is part of the Craft Council‘s Make:Shift:Do - A programme of public events to experience hands on making.
You can drop in from 11am - 4pm. On the day we have:
Patchwork Party
As the colder months draw in, we decided to give patchworking a go at the Stitch & Bitch Maker Wednesday. Local crafter Polly Hardy lent her patchwork skills showcasing the traditional process using paper and hexagon shapes on fabric. We had a lovely crowd come along to patchwork, craft, stitch and bitch.
Hacking @ Dorkbot
We’re hosting a Hacking themed Dorkbot on Wednesday 19th November.
‘A hacker is a person who enjoys exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness…. Hackers are those who modify hardware (not limited to computers) to expand capabilities’ via wiki.
If you’ve never been to Dorkbot before, we’re offering the first 50 newcomers a free drink. Come along on the night and tell the bar staff: “I’m a Dorkbot virgin” and we’ll offer you a free beer or glass of wine. Better be quick though, it’s first come first serve.
Drawing Big
Here are some photos that capture the mark making antics from our Big Draw event we held on Wednesday 22nd October at the Waiting Room. Read more about the what we got up to in Polly’s Blog - Shall we Begin? The Big Draw. You can also view the photos on facebook.
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- Come on in for the Big Draw!
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- All lit up for an evening of mark making
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- On the menu tonight
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- Our event in full swing
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- Bag portraits with Mandy Roberts
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- Bag portraits with Mandy Roberts
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- Bag portraits with Mandy Roberts
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- Green & Blue - Bag portraits with Mandy Roberts
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- Gemma gets her station ready - ‘Shrinky-dinks’ with Gemma Golland
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- Gemma gets her station ready - ‘Shrinky-dinks’ with Gemma Golland
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- Heat up that oven! Gemma gets her station ready - ‘Shrinky-dinks’ with Gemma Golland
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- BEFORE - Gemma gets her station ready - ‘Shrinky-dinks’ with Gemma Golland
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- Pop it in for a few mins (can you see it curling up? - Gemma gets her station ready - ‘Shrinky-dinks’ with Gemma Golland
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- AFTER - Gemma gets her station ready - ‘Shrinky-dinks’ with Gemma Golland
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- “kyaaa’ Gemma gets her station ready - ‘Shrinky-dinks’ with Gemma Golland
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- Gemma explains the process - Gemma gets her station ready - ‘Shrinky-dinks’ with Gemma Golland
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- Sumi Ink Club with Rob Lock
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- You start by grabbing a brush and pouring some ink - Sumi Ink Club with Rob Lock
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- Sumi Ink Club with Rob Lock
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- Sumi Ink Club with Rob Lock
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- it’s developing - Sumi Ink Club with Rob Lock
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- Sumi Ink Club with Rob Lock
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- The finishing touches
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- A completed Sumi Ink Club
New types of play
We held a special gaming themed Dorkbot for Maker Wednesday on the 15th October. From pervasive gaming and ‘playable cities’ – to consoles and the latest craze of crowd funded Role Players.
Our main speaker was Holly Gramazio formerly of the renowned Hide & Seek agency tasked with inventing new kinds of play. Now an independent game designer, Holly likes writing and talking about games, making work for public spaces, and exploring the intersection of game design and other cultural forms. She talked us through the history of ‘play’ and new types of games today that explore group play and using new technologies.
Ben Wenham showcased crowd funding sites and what they are doing to dictate/develop new types of computer games and podcasts. Plus we held a Pac-man Tournament with Alex’s Atari.
Draw the world
We’ve hosting a free Big Draw event for Maker Wednesday on the 22nd October. Drop in from 7.30 - 9.30pm. We’re inviting families, adults, and big kids to draw with us.
The Big Draw runs from 1 October to 2 November all over the UK and in twenty other countries. Over 280,000 will be attending over 1000+ events. This year’s theme is It’s Our World, a celebration of our environment - of urban, rural and coastal landscapes. We’re taking inspiration from St Botolph’s and the area around us including Colchester and Essex.
Bring along your own projects or try out free informal activities hosted by three local illustrators and artists. Find out more about our hosts below:
Mandy Roberts is an associate artist at firstsite. She’s a performance artist from Norwich and confident mark maker in various mediums. She taught a popular alternative drawing classes at the Minories with Clare Illes earlier in the year. She’ll be encouraging attenders to draw self portraits of themselves or others on hessian bags.
Rob Lock is an illustrator with a strong style similar to the popular children’s TV show Adventure Time, creating bizarre monsters, creatures and people. He is hosting the Sumi Ink Club - a free form drawing session with one massive piece of paper, Japanese ‘sumi’ ink, and lots of brushes. Simply grab a brush, pour some ink and make a collaborative illustration.
Gemma Golland is an illustrator / artist with an amazing passion and skill for drawing animals and creatures. She is the Creative Director for an online gaming site called Subeta (similar to Neopets) and creates new monsters, landscapes and products for the site each week. Gemma invites you to try out ‘Shrinky Dinks’ a popular hobby craft drawing on a plastic surface that shrinks.
This event is FREE, and all are welcome. Don’t worry if you ‘can’t draw’, everyone can. Come and make a mark, find out more about Maker Wednesday and meet like minded souls.
The Big Draw
Wednesday 22nd October from 7.30pm
The Waiting Room
The Street with No Name, (off Queen Street), Colchester, Essex, CO1 2PQ