PDX!!! zines!!!! fabric shopping!!!

i have totally neglected blogging about this! i came home, got super sick, and then quilt guild stuff took over my mind - now it's a month later, and i'm finally sitting down to write about my trip to portland the last weekend in august.

i went down to check out the portland zine symposium. i've been saying that i'm going to go for oh, about 10 years now, and never made it down, so this year (the 10th anniversary!) i was DETERMINED to go!

my original plans fell through, so i ended up going down by myself, and it was fabulous. i stayed with a household of awesome people, did some shopping, checked out a couple of my favourite stores, got incredibly lost in portland a multitude of times (thank god i'd bought a mapbook at powells!!), ate yummy st cupcake cupcakes, met awesome people at the zine symposium, several of whom i've been talking to online or via letters, but had never met in person, went to a couple of really interesting workshops, traded zines until i ran out, bought a million more, and then finished up my trip by spending a day with the amazing angie and her partner and son. i love them almost as much as i love angie! it was super awesome to see her and durin, and to finally meet warren!



i also finished a zine to take down with me. what was that? oh yeah, I FINISHED A ZINE! hell yeah.

despite compiling compilation zines, and having a large folder of stops and starts, i had yet to actually finish a perzine in my life, so this was very exciting!

look!!!




the covers are cardstock, with a lino print cover. i wasn't actually all that happy with the covers... i used that speedball easy carve stuff, and it was a royal pain in the ass! i get much better results just carving erasers.. but they still turned out cool.

the zine is 1/4 size (my favourite size for zines) and is 34 pages long. i added a pocket in the back to hold a mini zine, and sewed a sample of one of my favourite craft supplies onto one page, and the spine is sewn on my sewing machine.

some of the topics i wrote about...
- fear of the permanence of words
- honouring the journeys our lives take us on
- genderqueer identity
- femme identity
- chronic pain, dis/ability
- consciously choosing to live an honest life, authenticity
- a skirt reconstruction tutorial
- a favourite craft supply, along with a sample and instructions of how to use it
- hand embroidery
- a favourite recipe
- a list of things i love, my current favourite words, and least favourite words
- a mini zine written 6.5 years ago about gender, kinda like a issue #0.5 of this is where i'm at

there was SO MUCH more that i wanted to write about, if i'd just had more time. now i can't wait to make a second issue!



i drew little pictures for the tutorial, added some image transfers from an old issue of craphound, and glued a colour picture of the recipe into each one. i like the little details.

i'm alternating between being proud of it, and being really self conscious about it, but a dear friend of mine read it and insisted that i HAD to share it, and the amazing Amber (who i got to meet in person!!) from Hello Amber! wrote an awesome review of it, so i've been persuaded. it's up on my etsy, if you'd like to check out a copy in real life.

i also picked up a ton of zines in portland...



ha! i'm still working my way through them, but i finally got another zine shelf (it's the perfect size!), so i need to assemble it and then i'll be able to put them all away. most of them are still in the suitcase at the moment!

and of course, while i was in portland, i had to do some shopping... unfortunately, i completely forgot about my camera after my first stop, but oh well.

i went to bolt fabric boutique on alberta, which i adore, and bought some yummy fabrics.







and my goodies -




while i was on alberta, i wandered down to collage, and picked up some more goodies. i went downtown to powell's, of course, and checked out reading frenzy as well.

i tried to go to SCRAP, which i love, but they'd moved, and i didn't think to doublecheck their address before leaving for my trip. luckily, while i was driving to St Cupcake for my first visit of the trip, i drove right by SCRAP's new location! so i stopped, obviously. ;)

i didn't make it to Knittn' Kitten, or to Fabric Depot, but that was okay. on the way home i stopped in at the Sewer's Dream Fabric Outlet in Burlington (cotton quilt batting for $8/yd!!!), at a Target and at a Joannes. i was sad that target didn't have halloween stuff in yet - stupid back to school crap, i want skulls! i'll just have to make a quick trip down to the closest Target before halloween...