Fringe Festival Fun and Happy Bus Winner

Congratulations Carol, for winning the June Giveaway. Carol, you need to contact me with your details so I can send you your Happy Bus, as I can't find an email addy for you anywhere! All the rest of you, please don't feel you have to miss out on the Happy Bus. You can get one on Etsy, at Auteur House or Browsers in Hamilton, or email me directly to buy or swap (I will exchange Happy Buses for zines or good chocolate now that I am back on the sugar bus).

Inside the Happy Bus

It looks like my earlier reticence about sharing dental stories was misplaced as that post got plenty of comments! You'll all be pleased to know that I went back to the dentist for more root canal work and with only a local anaesthetic I remained calm throughout the procedure. After the anaesthesia awareness debacle I decided to try hypnotherapy to help with my tendency to panic in the dental chair, and it certainly seems to be working.

Distracting and debilitating as that whole experience has been, I have managed to have a great Ignition Fringe Festival so far. Thursday night I went to the Performance Cafe and saw a mixed bag of short performances. The highlights included great girl guitarists, a hilarious singer (I wish I could play you his E-Stalker song to the tune of Tom Petty's Free Falling) and dancers in pink bunny ears. Fringe Festivals are exciting precisely because they are full of unknown artists but I'm afraid I lost my generosity and left when the heavy metal/ traditional Chinese instrument band came on.

I spend Friday installing Membranes in main street windows . First I had to build a couple of devices for hanging the curtains from. Thankfully the installation is in the CityHeart office which is brimming with friendly, helpful engineers. John Pearman, the man who is in charge of ripping up Victoria Street and turning it into a pretty, pedestrian and bike friendly thoroughfare, enthusiastically applied his engineering know-how to my installation and came up with a brilliant design, easy enough for me to make by myself.

After a few hours of measuring, sawing, drilling, and screwing in lots of hooks and eyes, I was well ready to take up the more meditative task of ironing each panel before hanging it in the window. I love ironing anyway, but I particularly enjoyed doing it in such an incongruous situation. The guys were busy ripping up the road directly outside the office, and there was a steady stream of blokes in orange safety vests and muddy boots coming past me and my gradually expanding work of ethereal femininity, joking about getting me to iron their shirts.

Looking out across the ironing board, through Membranes to the road works

It took a bit more than four hours to get the whole thing installed and looking good enough, a very pleasant days work. By the time I finished my flatmate Adrienne Grant was installing her Fringe contribution in an empty shop front directly across the ripped up road. Since I already had a sack full of cleaning rags I helped with washing her windows too. Her installation is part of the Monopoly Project, which is a commentary on the recession's manifestation in the form of empty shopfronts taking over the middle of town.* And on Saturday night I joined a tour of all the Monopoly Project installations, where each of the artists spoke about their work as we progressed around the board.

Saturday night was also the poetry reading, An Ashtray Full of Shotgun Shells, at Browsers. There was a good turnout, and some good poets. I read Cold Sailing, in honour of the swine flu, and a selection of my rainforest poems. I love it when complete strangers introduce themselves to me as readers of this blog, hi Cally (not Kelly)!

There's another week of Fringe Festival events ahead... I'm particularly looking forward to Stitch Oddity, where crafters make music with their sewing machines.

*The irony of the "CityHeart" project to beautify the main street even as it empties of commercial tenants is lost on no-one. I think its wonderful that both the CityHeart team and the commercial landlords are letting us artists play with these ideas in their spaces this week.

June Giveaway and Weird True Story

Paper engineering with a suitably toothy quality

I'm in a post-completion slump having finished a number of major projects all in the space of two weeks, including the two book-making courses I was teaching. I remember this state from after opening my solo exhibition. I'm someone who is happiest when charging off down the road to a new destination, but once I've arrived I am disappointed to feel so aimless, even though I am too tired to throw myself wholeheartedly down the next path just yet. It's not pretty, and this time my lethargy and lack of focus are exacerbated by new developments in my never-ending saga of dental-trauma.

I do try to avoid sullying Bibliophilia with too much personal information, especially involving dentists, but really, this latest incident is so very weird that I'm gonna tell all. If like me, you have no tolerance for other people's dentist stories, feel free to skip ahead to the June Giveaway details at the end of the post, with the Happy Bus photo.

Weird dental story begins here

Despite the fact that just before leaving for Australia in April last year, my dentist thoroughly checked my mouth and declared it free from any impending problems, within six months I was in root canal agony in the rainforest. Six months later, I am in the middle of another root canal and seven, yes 7, cavities. How did I go from clean bill of dental health to a mouthful of decay and disaster in only one year? That's the first unsolved mystery. I'm reluctantly wondering if drinking pristine mountain spring water instead of fluoridated town supply might be implicated, since nothing else was different in terms of my vigilant dental hygiene and sugary snacking habits.

So, onto the second and far more intriguing mystery. Two days ago I placed my mouth in (or rather around) the hands of my fifth(!) dentist in 14 months. This dentist, despite his scary handlebar moustache, has won me over by being altruistic in his pricing policies and proactive with painkillers. At our first meeting, while I explained my increasing penchant for panic attacks while under the drill, he grabbed my arm, pushed up my sleeve and started prodding the inside of my elbow. I don't recall any other dentist ever offering me a general anaesthetic, because surely I would have taken it as eagerly as I did this one.

I remember the needle going in and then the next thing I know, I'm sobbing as I hear him say, "take the needle out now". Apparently, after about 40 minutes and 4 1/2 fillings I started having a panic attack while unconscious. All attempts to calm me down failed, and I carried on like that for about half an hour until I came conscious and stopped crying and started babbling and eventually laughing.

Apparently anaesthesia awareness occurs in 0.01- 0.02% of cases and when it does "about 94% experience panic/anxiety." But why me? Why a panic attack? As well as the general, I'd been thoroughly numbed with local anaesthetics so it seems unlikely that I felt any pain (I certainly don't remember feeling any). All I can think is that recently reading about anaesthesia awareness must have lodged the idea in my subconscious mind, along with my oft-repeated self-description as someone prone to uncontrolled panic attacks in the dental chair. (I don't tend to have panic attacks anywhere else).

It's all very strange and discomforting. Not to mention frustrating that I still have considerable work left to be done, including the root canal which has started throbbing again. And, the lingering effects of the not-so-effective anaesthesia have left me, 48 hours later, still weak, shaky and foggy-headed. I'm hoping that unloading this strange story onto my innocent reading public (I know you didn't come here to read about teeth) will help me to move on, and reclaim some of the focus and energy I miss.

(Dental story over, you can start reading again)

Luckily I have lots of copies of Happy Bus, my zine, to cheer me up. Happy Bus is a potpourri of writing, drawing and paper engineering, mostly by me, along with a few friends. In it you will find: how the Dalai Lama got Western scientists to study happiness; a guided meditation and a journalling project, a playlist of happy songs (including many suggested by Bibliophilia readers), a poem about small town living (written in upstate New York and illustrated in Far North Queensland), an article about laughter yoga, a list of happiness inducing email newsletters and an origami envelope of stickers including some homemade gold elephants.

You can go in the draw to win a copy of Happy Bus by commenting on this post before 9am 22 June (NZ time). If you don't want to wait that long, go straight to my Etsy shop and buy one for only $5! Please buy one anyway, I need the money to help pay the dental bills...

May's winner and my week

And the winner of the May Giveaway is Robert Frazier from the Science Fiction Poetry Association in the USA. Congratulations Robert, who won a copy of Non-Linear Time, the book of the film. Non-Linear Time is available for only $10 in my Etsy shop.

Thank you everyone who entered by commenting on the May Giveaway post, there was a record number of entries (and comments) for this blog to date. Watch out for the announcement of the Giveaway for June soon.

Ignition programme with Membranes listing

My energy this week has been veering between beginnings and completions. I am working on proposals and planning new projects, as well as preparing for installing Membranes, my giant book, in the city for Hamilton's Ignition Fringe Festival mid-June. But mostly I am in a harvest glut at the moment with the equivalent of a table covered in tomatoes and zucchini that have to be dealt with right now, even while I enjoy the fruits of my labours.

Hand sewn, with a tricky centre-fold and an envelope of hand painted stickers, I don't do anything easy

Stacks of the Happy Bus zine are in various stages of paper engineering and assembly. A few have started their road trip already: if you are in Hamilton you can get Happy Bus at Auteur House. If you are anywhere else come to my Etsy shop, or if you prefer, contact me directly.

The front cover is very nice, but I love the back of Voyagers best.

My contributors copy of Voyagers arrived in the mail today. Lovely to be part of another beautifully designed book, and in such esteemed company. I blush to see my name in the contents with great poets I have admired from afar for so long, and delight to read what old friends have written. Voyagers can be had from Amazon, or the publishers.

A beautifully designed perfect bound book.

The still-nameless coral piece is rushing into the final stages. I have laced the crocheted reef onto its board, next is lacing the embroidery. I am ridiculously fond of the back of my embroidery which is about to disappear from sight forever more.

Embroidered bleached coral from behind

A frustrating shopping trip today did provide one happy find, the ideal frame for a piece of embroidered coral that was originally a test for my brain coral stitching (not the design I ended up using though), and then practice for lacing onto boards. I'm pleased with the result and with the perfect frame, have sorted out Sarah's birthday present for tomorrow (I hope she isn't reading this yet, but if you are, Happy Birthday dear!).

Photocopy Love

The winner of April's giveaway didn't have a lot of competition when it came to pulling names out of the hat. Perhaps it was an unappealingly geeky skill question (should I change my giveaway entry terms to accepting any comment, like most bloggers do? Comment on this post to have your say). The question was about your favourite invention of the past thousand years. E nominated the soap-filled dishbrush, which I thought was brilliant, but the randomly selected winner is....

Sandy who won the 'Leonardo Da Vinci mirror writing kit'. In her winning comment Sandy said, "I was just doing some photocopying, and thinking what a wonder of engineering the machine was. All those little parts that keep working AND it collates, staples, and hole-punches. It's a mystery and a miracle."

Congratulations Sandy, I hope you and your daughter enjoy the mirror writing!

I wanted to link this post to the Shrine of the Photocopier, but when I went to look for it, the page no longer exists. However, the Sticky Institute in Melbourne (whose site once included the now lost Shrine) promises a Festival of the Photocopier in 2010. The Sticky Institute is home to their newly leased docucenter III C3100 copier, a typewriter pool, badge machines, staplers, and zine love. Their Facebook posts about all the wonders of their new photocopier makes them one of my favourite FB friends at the moment.

I appreciate photocopiers too, especially now that I don't have access to a letterpress printing press (or indeed even a digital printer for my laptop). Many of my book-related ideas these days are photocopier-friendly, since that's the most available technology. However, a good photocopier has been remarkably hard to find in Hamilton. The free or cheap copying I've had access to has all been of such appalling quality that I despaired of ever finishing Happy Bus, my almost-ready-to-print zine. But a few days ago I discovered that as a teacher at WSA I can access a perfectly lovely copier at discounted rates for my personal use! Hooray!

600 posts and we have a winner

It snuck up on me! I just noticed that the previous post, Hermes Baby was my 600th post on Bibliophilia. I noted the blog's fourth anniversary very recently in a post, but here's another milestone to celebrate.

The March giveaway winner is Kay who said this about songs that make her happy:

• I always feel happy when I hear Cliff Richard singing 'Summer Holiday'; because it brings back happy childhood memories; The Beach Boys singing 'Good Vibrations' because it brings back that 13-year old feeling of being on the brink of something good (independence maybe?) and 'A Case of You' by Joni Mitchell because I've learnt the words and can sing along!

Kay is a writer and blogger. Check out her poetry on Monkey Puzzle Sunrise and personal blog Made for Weather. She's picked the strawberry book as her prize, and it will be in the post to her later today along with a few little bits and pieces.


Thank you to everyone who entered the competition and shared three songs that make them feel happy. It seems like it was a more challenging question than the last one. Songs that make you feel happy are not always the same as the ones you like best. I'll be publishing the complete playlist in Happy Bus, but if you want a sneak preview, check out the comments here and here. And watch out for another giveaway early in April.

• These YouTube links are my own choices

Hermes Baby

Making a zine is an excuse to use my Hermes Baby, the prettiest typewriter in the world. When I first learned to type nearly 30 years ago, I could touchtype on a manual typewriter. Now my fingers are weakened from decades of fluttering across computer keyboards. I no longer have the strength in any but thumb and index fingers to striking a blow that will take an impression from a faded old ribbon. The Hermes Baby reduces me to hunt and pecking.

It also does mysterious and eccentric things like occasionally, with no warning, refuse to go past the middle of the page. If I'm paying more attention to the keyboard than the paper on the platen (as I generally am with the Hermes) then I end up overtyping until there is a ragged black hole in the centre of of the page.

Its proving very difficult to get a new ribbon for the Hermes Baby. Not because its an unusual kind of spool. Unlike the pre-USB digital age of universal incompatibility, most manual typewriters all seem to be designed for the same universal ribbon spool. Its just that they aren't stocked anywhere, at least not in New Zealand.

Happy Bus (my soon-to-be-launched zine) is not entirely typewritten, otherwise publication would be a much more distant prospect than it is. The text will be a mixture of wordprocessing, typewriting and hand printing. There's a bit of paper engineering going on with it too. And these little gold elephant stickers, punched out of old labels picked up in an op shop.


Don't forget to enter this month's giveaway to win a handmade blank book. Tell me three songs that make you feel happy and you will go in the draw.

Win a Cute Book! Share more happiness!

Coptic binding practice

I've been making lots of books lately, which is ironic since not long ago I posted here about the apparent eclipse of my book creativity by textile inspiration. But as I'm going to be teaching some How-To Make Books evening classes at Arts Post next semester, I've been playing around with figuring what kinds of books to teach, and how to teach them. That means making all sorts of model books, mostly out of found papers. I scour op shops and sale bins for notepads, scrounge scrap paper off anyone I can and use cereal boxes and game boards for covers. The combination of less-than-perfect materials, and making-as-practice process, means these models are too flawed to try and sell on Etsy.

Yet two of the models to emerge from this exercise are quite delicious, with green coptic bindings on open spines. I've decided to offer one of them (winner's choice) as the prize in the March Give Away.

You can choose between the Yogi Bear A6 notebook with pale green and white pages and strawberries inside the cover boards:

Yogi Bear and Boo Boo Book

Or, the Pure Strawberry mini notebook, about the size of last year's cellphone, covered in strawberry printed Italian paper with intensely pink/orange/red pages:

Pure Strawberry

So, having whetted your appetite, how can you get your hands on one these yummy creations? All I want is for you to tell me the names of at least three of the songs that make you happy when you hear them. (Let me know the name of their singers too). Use the comments link at the end of this post and make sure you enter before midday, 10 March (NZ time). Please note that to be eligible for the draw, you have to name three (or more) of your happy songs, and simply commenting on this post will not qualify you to win.

Entries to the February give away led to a fantastic list of reader's favourite ways of getting in touch with their happiness. Your enthusiasm for the topic encouraged me to finally tackle another project I've been wanting to do for ages. I'm making a zine called Happy Bus, all about happiness. I'd like the zine to be able to include some of the comments you've sent in for both give aways (this one and February's). If you don't want me to reprint your comment in the zine, then please just let me know.

Inside Pure Strawberry

I'll be posting more about Happy Bus as it speeds towards publication, but for now, please send in your personal DJ Happy playlist

Inside Yogi Bear