Katy Klein Has a Chat

Lats night a good friend and I attended Melbourne Craft Cartels’ Dye Pretty at the Newton Workers’ Club.  I was kind of expecting a small group of ladies with a penchant for crochet huddled in a corner. Instead we walked into a pub absolutely packed full of hip young things all grabbing at craft materials and working wonders with glue stick. 

Turns out it pays to get in early (doors open at 5.30 pm) to get the best craft picks and a seat.  As I qualified as a ’starving artist’ (AKA unemployed) it was a great value $4 (otherwise $8 for ‘workers’). I was handed my Go-Go bag with the mission for the night being to create an anti-swine flu face mask. 

I really felt like I was back in my Grade 6 art class which was awesome.  Unfortunately it turns out that I haven’t really got any more creative in my old age. I stuck pieces of gold paper, tinsel and a ballon hopefully onto my face mask which produced something that resembled a bedazzled boob.

It is worth a mention that the lemon, lime and bitters at the Worker’s Club is stupendous, somehow managing to taste like a Cuban mojito.  For those of you attempting Semi-Dry-July, this is fairly significant.  The urge to get myself a glass of vino as I sprinkled glitter was almost overpowering.

The vino would have probably helped me to gather the courage to take my nipple decorated face mask up on the catwalk for judging.  Seeing it in the cold light of day today however, it’s quite possible that Semi-Dry-July saved me from a certain level of embarrassment considering that there was some amazing talent on display.  The judges awarded the winning prize to a mask complete with floppy eared pig with (S)wine glass hand decoration which was my personal favourite.

Next time I am definitely going to think about what I will create before I start sticking anything on.  Heck I may even bring my own sewing basket. After all Semi-Dry-July will be over by then and winning a slab of beer would ease me back into Piss-Up-August quite nicely.

Check out www.craftcartel.com, for the next craft night and I may see you there. My goal next month is to make it up the catwalk with a craft item that doesn’t look like a 5-year-old made it, but should you see one that does, I’d really appreciate a sympathetic round of applause!