The Knitta Please posse could be considered the militant arm of the indie craft revolution. While the Houston-based taggers are a small but attention-grabbing faction, the vast majority of this movement is law-abiding, community-spirited and only occasionally political. What separates so-called indie craft from traditional craft is a blatant disregard for patterns, a preference for recovered materials and a sense of the ironic. Not wanting to replicate what’s already been done and eschewing mass-produced in favour of handmade, indie crafters are people with something to say and they’re using the nearly-lost domestic skills of their grandmothers to say it.

Though this crafty corruption of the ‘feminine arts’ is happening around the globe, it seems Kiwi crafties are particularly good at it.

Heather Barnes is the founder of alternative craft market Craftwerk, where she sometimes sells knitted, anatomically-correct hearts and little pink vaginas. Craftwerk started in Wellington, but in September did a tour of the country that included Auckland, Christchurch, Hamilton and Dunedin. Wellington band collective A Low Hum travelled with the show. Barnes calls the works in her shows “crazy crafts” and believes the trend is a modern adaptation of traditional crafts that blurs the lines between art, craft and fashion.

There’s no economy in crafts anymore. People motivated by price will shop exclusively at The Warehouse. So craft has a new role in the modern household: to provide relief from mass-produced sameness.

More than 2,000 people came through the doors for the last Craft2.0 market at TheNewDowse gallery in Wellington. Co-organiser Sue Tyler says she and Martha Craig have been blown away by the popularity of the events. Craft2.0 grew out of Craftwerk and was developed when the Dowse approached Tyler and Craig to put on a craft fair for the gallery’s re-opening in March. It was so successful that the Dowse has agreed to host the event several times a year. “It works really well with what’s on at the Dowse,” says Tyler, “because they are often exploring how people make things and how people are being creative.”

It’s craft, but not as your grandmother knew it

There’s never enough space for the number of crafters who apply for tables at Craft2.0. The criterion is that everything sold has to be handmade. It’s not a money-maker, says Tyler, who organises the event without pay and sells her own laser-cut jewellery.

“Most crafters are like me and we don’t break even. But I don’t mind. I do it because it’s fun and it makes me happy. In the New Zealand movement there’s a real sense of community.

“A lot of us make money so that we can buy other people’s stuff. Crafting is not competitive. There is a sense of not being greedy about grabbing every single cent you can from something.”

That’s not to say the crafters don’t have commercial ambitions. Esther Lamb is hoping to make a living fromToggle.co.nz, the website she started with friend Shelley Simpson. Toggle is an international online sales portal for handmade New Zealand goods, and Lamb says it helps “augment the domestic economy”.

A former lawyer and restaurateur, Lamb is a lifetime crafter. After her third child was born, she was looking for somewhere to sell her felt bags and quickly realised that the retail environment was punishing for those selling handmade goods. The obvious answer was to do something online. Unlike Trade Me or US-based craft site Etsy.com, the goods at Toggle are curated. Although Lamb struggles with the ‘indie craft’ label, she says the work you’ll find on Toggle often has an ethic of recycling. It’s original and often unusual.

“It’s finding these traditional practices but kind of perverting them or distorting them and making them into something that is unique and individual and very ‘now’,” she says.

Traditional craft enthusiast Rosemary McLeod has criticised the indie craft movement, accusing it of taking the piss. “I think she’s wrong,” says Lamb. “It’s done with a great deal of humour and there is a wit to it, but I think it’s a reaffirmation of those traditional forms. I see it as a sort of celebration of those things, an acknowledgement in a way.”

The indie craft movement may be about to explode. With a healthy appreciation for retro, a sense of humour rooted firmly in irony, a DIY ethos and a strong musical and cultural identity, New Zealand is fertile ground for such a revolution. Inspiration is contagious, so prepare to be conscripted to the cause.

From Idealog online:http://idealog.co.nz/magazine/13/rebel-knits

The climate campaigner warns that only drastic measures will save the planet.But there’s no mention in the film about the impact of air travel – despite some contentions that flying is the most damaging thing an individual can do to the planet.

A UK Royal Commission study conducted by York University calls air transport “the most heavily polluting form of transport on Earth”.

Yet, in terms of fuel consumption, air travel is not inefficient. According to figures from Landcare Research, each passenger’s share of the carbon dioxide emissions on an average domestic flight in New Zealand is 180g per kilometre, which is quite good compared to a two-litre car with just one passenger, which emits 370g per kilometre.

On the other hand, if you choose an average-sized diesel car and pile in the whole whanau, that’s only a modest 35g per kilometre.

One person’s share of the carbon dioxide emitted in a round trip to London is 5062kg. You’d have to drive more than 20,000km (by yourself) in a two-litre car to match that on the road.

So why do the New Zealand transport emissions statistics show that motor vehicles are responsible for 92% of carbon dioxide emissions but air travel is 3%?

This is because most countries don’t include international flights in their statistics. Air New Zealand environment manager Martin Fryer says, “The reason international flight data is not included in state carbon-emission statistics is that, under Kyoto, international aviation is exempt until 2012. To try to include aviation was seen as extremely complex.”

Although it gets the most attention, carbon dioxide is just one of several greenhouse gases. The other bits coming out of the back end of a Boeing include nitrogen oxides, sulphate, soot and water vapour.

Richard McKenzie, an atmospheric scientist at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), began looking at the atmospheric effects of aeroplane emissions in the 1980s, when a study was commissioned to explore the potential effects of a new supersonic aircraft. This research helped scientists to better understand the complex chemical reactions that happen in the flightpath.

Most jets fly in the upper troposphere (between 10-13km up) where the thinner atmosphere makes their path more efficient. In this cold, clear air, the water vapour from jet engines forms into ice crystals. These vapour trails trap heat and warm the Earth’s surface. At the same time, the nitrogen oxides are interacting with ozone. The chemical reactions taking place increase ozone production. This extra ozone in the the troposphere is actually a greenhouse gas that traps heat. McKenzie believes that jet engines contribute more to global warming than a simple carbon dioxide calculation reveals.

In a 1999 special report, “Aviation and the Global Atmosphere”, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the overall warming effect of aviation is 2.7 times greater than the effect of its carbon dioxide emissions alone. New research from the UK indicates that aviation will account for 5% of the world’s CO2 emissions by 2050. But the percentage that flying contributes to global warming may be much higher.

There is some good news. Improved aircraft engine design has resulted in a 70% decrease in carbon emissions from 1976 levels. Nitrogen oxide emission is forecast to fall by 80% by 2030. But fuel and pollution savings are being eclipsed as almost half a million new passengers take to the skies every year and another 13,500 heavy jetliners are scheduled to enter service by 2017.

Gore buys carbon credits to offset his flights. Using websites like www.carbonzero.co.nz, anyone can do this. (These credits go towards New Zealand native forest regeneration projects administered under the EBEX21 project.)

Planting trees is a good thing, McKenzie says, but not a true solution. “Planting trees is really only a stopgap solution. Eventually the trees die and then they release their carbon back to the atmosphere.”

Jet emissions linger in the stratosphere, modifying Earth’s atmosphere for about 100 times longer than when released near the ground. The carbon calculators don’t take this into account. Plus, it’s hard for trees on the ground to absorb carbon 13km up.

The only sure way to reduce the global warming contribution caused by aeroplanes is to stop flying.

There are other good reasons to avoid jet travel. Airports are a toxic source of noise and chemical pollution for people who live nearby. Every four hours, passengers on high-altitude flights are exposed to radiation equivalent to one chest x-ray.

Gore’s impact in raising awareness of climate change may justify his jet-setting contribution to the issue, but the rest of us are faced with a moral dilemma. It’s summed up with a concept that Guardian columnist, and author of Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning (published by Allen Lane), George Monbiot calls “love miles”, or the distance between you and the people you love.
“If your sister-in-law is getting married in Buenos Aires,” he writes in Heat, “it is both immoral to travel there – because of climate change – and immoral not to, because of the offence it causes. In that decision we find two valid moral codes in irreconcilable antagonism. Who could be surprised to discover that ‘ethical’ people are in denial about the impacts of flying?”

Monbiot admits that his environmental consciousness has been shaped by travel abroad and says this partly explains the gap between good intentions and damaging actions. “While it is easy for us to pour scorn on the drivers of sports utility vehicles, whose politics generally differ from ours, it is harder to contemplate a world in which our own freedoms are curtailed, especially the freedoms which shaped us.”

But he concludes: “If you fly, you destroy other people’s lives.”

In the UK, where a Ryanair flight from London to Rome can be just 50p, some conscientious travellers are vowing to give up the air-travel habit. Websites like FlightPledge.org.uk encourage citizens to swear off it.

In January, Mark Ellingham, founder of travel-publishing company Rough Guides, announced that he would fly less and vacation in Britain. He is spreading a new message: travel less and stay longer.

“We have all mastered the art of beginning and ending a narrative at the points which suit us,” says Monbiot. Unless the story can be rewritten, a happy ending to the climate crisis will require us to fly less. The end of cheap oil could make the choice easy. Or Richard Branson, and his $3 billion commitment to developing alternative energy sources, will find a sustainable option.

In the meantime, maybe New Zealand should focus on its sailing industry instead of brokering its clear skies to bring an international aircraft test facility to Christchurch. Climate change wasn’t a factor in the decision to keep the Overlander running, but maybe it will be. A University of York report found that if journeys of less than 400 miles are undertaken by train rather than plane, 45% of all flights could be eliminated.

Air New Zealand ads say, “being there is everything”, but organisations like NIWA are trying to replace some flights with videoconferencing.

This could be the most inconvenient truth of them all. I don’t blame Gore for leaving it out.

From the Listener magazine:http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3470/features/7452/the_inconvenient_truth_about_airline_travel,1.html;jsessionid=AA3386B23A3C97BDD178EAC53759EBBA

“The details are tricky. We still don’t know how it really works,” said a South Pole winter scientist Nicholas Tothill from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
This process of how they form could answer a lot of questions about stars themselves: why are they as big and heavy as they are? Why are there more light stars than heavy stars and more red stars than blue stars?
“That is determined by what goes on in the galaxy – by molecular clouds,” Tothill said.
“Stars are fairly well understood,” he said. “But the gas – where they come from and where they go to – we have to understand this stuff.”
At the South Pole a 1.7mm telescope named AST/RO (Antarctic Submillimeter Telescope and Remote Observatory) has been measuring galactic gas clouds since 1995.
Other, similar telescopes operate 16,000 feet high in the Chilean desert and from aircraft and satellite, but the dry air over the South Pole makes the best land-based viewing site in the world.
“In submillimeter astronomy, light gets absorbed by atmospheric water vapor so cold, dry air is very good stuff,” Tothill said.
AST/RO picks up submillimeter-wave radiation emitted by dense gas and dust between the stars.
These areas seem black to the human eye but the gas molecules actually emit a non-visible light. The wavelengths of that light can be picked up by submillimeter telescopes like AST/RO.
Concentrating on the wavelengths given off by highly excited carbon monoxide molecules, AST/RO can locate star-forming cores and study the structure and movement of molecular clouds and how the other elements in the galaxy affect them.
Winter is the prime observation time for AST/RO, when the water vapor concentration is lowest so summers are mostly dedicated to maintenance, repair and development work.
The researchers want to minimize the chance of something going wrong during the isolation of winter.
Last year, a new laser-driven receiver was installed. Tothill said the new receiver would provide a higher, more stable frequency for the telescope.
It is the highest-frequency radio astronomy receiver in the world. The lower frequency receivers, were only a few centimeters in size but a larger and heavier device is needed to operate at frequencies of 1400 gigahertz.
“Basically, we’ve replaced something that weighed a few ounces with something that weighs 3,000 pounds (1,360 kg). The only place we could do that is from the ground.”
The two-meter long receiver, which was fine tuned by technicians over summer, will be mounted to the ceiling in the cramped building 800 meters from the geographic South Pole.
The actual telescope is on the roof of the building. It sends the radiated light to the receiver through a series of mirrors.
The project is headed by Antony Stark of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. AST/RO works as a consortium, with participants from several universities and accepts research proposals from the wider scientific community.

For five years, Hannah and her younger sister were subject to weekly sessions of abuse by their father. "I can remember being relieved when he picked my sister instead of me. And that's a terrible thing to think but I just didn't want it to be me."
To keep the sisters quiet, Hannah's father threatened them. He drove a wedge between the sisters and warned them that their mother was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and if they told her of his actions, it would surely send her over the edge.
When she was 14, Hannah was raped by a family friend. The man asked their father to take the kids skiing. When they arrived at the ski area, he paid for the others to go skiing but held Hannah back. "I want to take you for a drive," he told her. Hannah guessed what this man's intentions were but was helpless to fight. He drove her part way down the hill and then forced himself on her in the car. He told there was no point fighting - he knew she wasn't a virgin. Hannah guessed her father had been bragging to his friend.
Finally, at the age of 15, Hannah threatened to go to the police if her father did not let her leave home. He acquiesced.
Once a promising student with ambitions to be a commercial artist, Hannah left school with no qualifications and headed out on her own.
But years of emotional isolation and an unhealthy understanding of love and sex left Hannah ill-equipped to face the real world.
Despite the fact that she was extremely scared of men and frightfully shy to speak to them, Hannah became very promiscuous - looking for love through sex. Then, at the age of 17, she fell pregnant and married the father of her child.
"My husband was controlling. He was just like my father. He was even kinky like my father and played around."
Eventually Hannah though she would "go around the twist" and so - with two young children - she left her husband at the age of 21.
After the split, Hannah returned to her promiscuous ways."I had a lot of relationships. I picked men that were weak in some way."
Gradually Hannah forced herself through her shyness - working her way into a career as a fashion designer and eventually running her own company.
In 1992, Hannah felt ready to face her past in order to move forward. She started counselling and received lump-sum compensation from ACC. Through counselling, she learned to deal better with issues about sex, relationships, self-esteem and parenting.
The parenting problems were the most unexpected. When her daughters reached the age of 10 - the age when Hannah's abuse had begun - she found herself recoiling from their affection."It's not that I didn't want to, it's just that I couldn't bring myself to give them affection. It took me years to deal with that one but it has improved."
Even after leaving home, Hannah's father had a heavy influence in her life. Finally, one day she decided it wasn't worth it. She didn't want to have to prove herself any more. So she stopped ringing her parents and no communication passed between them for several years.
Her parents moved to Australia. Then one day her father rang. "We haven't heard from you for a while," he said. "Your mother wants to know why and I don't know what to tell her." Hannah didn't know what to say.
He told her: "When I look in the mirror, I see an arsehole. I'm sorry for what I did to you but it happened to me as well." He also said that if Hannah's mother ever found out about his abuse, he would kill himself.
This phone call was devastating for Hannah. All the pain that she'd pushed out of her mind came flooding back, fuelled by a new sense of anger and hurt that - after all these years - her father still held her in the grasp of his threats.
The stress from this re-introduction of her father's presence triggered a decline in Hannah's psychological well-being."I thought I'd dealt with it but he forced his way back in."
Hannah's work suffered. She became depressed and even broke out into boils. To make things worse, her father rang again to say they were considering moving back to New Zealand. Hannah's business failed, her husband became ill and they were on the verge of bankruptcy. As she found herself sinking lower than ever, Hannah went back to ACC for further entitlements.
Hannah was warned by both her GP and ACC that her claim was likely to be rejected but she was willing to fight. She had worked hard to overcome the handicaps of being a sexual abuse survivor. This wasn't a greedy hunt for money. It was an honest appeal for financial assistance when she had nowhere else to turn.
ACC commissioned a psychologist to assess Hannah and after speaking with her for two hours, determined that only 55 per cent of her current depressive episode could be attributed to the abuse.
ACC refused her claim so Hannah sought the advice of a solicitor. Another psychological report was done and that one attributed 80 per cent of the problem to childhood abuse.
The information was re-submitted to ACC and at the review, the ACC representative announced that the corporation had decided to retract its decision to refuse Hannah's claim.
Hannah had the will and the strength to battle ACC but she believes that many like her would not have the confidence to take on the corporation.
Although her strength and determination are remarkable, her case is by no means unique. Christchurch lawyer Matthew Shepherd says people approaching ACC with sensitive claims are rarely given a full description of their entitlements. "It's a common situation. People suffer tragic abuse then go in for counselling and approach ACC. They're told they're not eligible and so they get representation.
"Any time you go to battle against a huge organisation like ACC, many people need help. The law in that area is complex. You're dealing with things which are not straightforward."
His company, and others like it, counsel clients on what they are entitled to and then makes sure that they receive these entitlements.
Auckland Lawyer Lorraine Smith also deals with sensitive claims to ACC. She says people who come to her are frightened. "ACC gives very little information out. They are a big, faceless organisation."
For its part, ACC says it does brief its clients on what entitlements they are eligible for. But if they are still not clear, an ACC spokesperson suggests people look for help from other organisations such as the Rape Crisis Centre, Community Law Centres or an organisation called Combined Beneficiaries in Auckland.
Today Hannah is working full-time again and continuing with counselling. She is determined to overcome what remains of the psychological detritus left over from her abuse so that she can achieve a normal, healthy life for the future. She plans to write a book about her experiences to help others gain the courage to heal.

A New Zealand study of 3000 women found that sexual abuse within the family occurred for 12 per cent of those sampled, or one in eight women. Survivors of incest are less likely to report their abuse to the police than people who are raped by a stranger. Incest often remains a secret. The abuse survivor expects to be blamed, feels embarrassed or doesn't want to upset anyone. They may be protecting the abuser or fearing the abuser.
Possible long term effects of incest include problems with sex (physical, emotional and mental), problems with close relationships, depression, self-destructive behaviours, difficulty parenting and eating difficulties.
Is Sexual Abuse on the increase?
It is very difficult to tell, says Sexual Abuse Help crisis co-ordinator Janice Giles.
"Our incident calls are way up since 1994. We get two and a half times more callouts now but that doesn't necessarily mean there are more incidents."
She says the increase in reporting could be due to people feeling more comfortable about coming forward.
According to NZ Police statistics, Sexual crimes account for .7 per cent of all crime.

"The left don’t like me because I run a successful business and the right don’t like me because they think I’m just spouting off all this left-wing stuff."
But Anita makes no apologies. She took to the streets in Seattle to protest against the WTO in 1999 and she has just released a book, Take it Personally, which is a call to action for people to take a stand against globalisation.
A self-professed hippie, Anita never expected to be the head of an international company anyway.
"I would have slit my wrists if I’d have known. It wasn’t meant to be that big. It was just meant to be a livelihood. It was just supposed to get my by until my husband got back from riding a horse across South America and then we were going to move to Australia and start a pineapple plantation. It wasn’t meant to last.
"Then I realised I could use the shops to project and promote issues that we all cared about."
From the very start, the Body Shop has had its ideals of activism and social responsibility written into its legal documents.
"The purpose of being was to promote human rights and environmental issues."
In the business world, Anita is greatly frustrated by the principal of "profits before people".
"Up your bum to that," she says. "Nobody was put on this planet to increase profit margins. We were put here to be caring citizens, good mums and dads. The profit and loss line does not include justice."
Take it Personally, is a collection of essays from some the world’s leading globalisation authorities and activists.
Anita was motivated to write the book after she attended the protests at the Seattle WTO conference. Through the hail of batons and rubber bullets, when the fog of the teargas cleared, what Anita and others there determined the movement needed was to become more populous. It needed to get out of academia and into the hands of the ordinary people, and out to people who are part of the vigilante consumer movement.
So Anita wrote Take it Personally to get the message about globalisation into the hands of the public.
She says she’s aimed the book at students and young people – which is evident by the trendy, pictorial based design.
"So much of what is out there is just words, words, words. I knew we had to use graphics if we were going to get people’s attention."
Anita describes the anti-globalisation movement as the biggest movement since the civil rights movement. She thinks the universities are being energised to take it up.
"Up to two years ago the only energy in universities was snoring in the library. But there are many planks in this platform – child labour, sweatshops, injustice."
Thing that angers Anita most is injustice. "Trade injustice the shaving away of empathy for the human condition."
But who is she to complain? Part of the problem with globalisation is the development of a global monoculture, where the proliferation of chain stores wipes out regional individuality. So doesn’t Anita sometimes feel the contradiction between her success and her principles?
"Not really, because we do things in a different way – we’ve got a whole initiative called community trade. We go to the place where our products are sourced and buy them directly. We don’t buy through the commodities markets. A lot of our ideas come from local places and the way we purchase is really interesting. If you go to the Caribbean stores, they are full of rasta colours. I have fought very hard against having to homogenised a brand and fought to keep it idiosyncratic."
If people could take just one thing away from her latest book, Anita hopes it would be the message, "Get active!"
"Ask questions and know what conditions the products you buy are made under because the consumer does have power and shopping is a political activity."