Sticky Insti­tute

Sticky Insti­tute is a Melbourne insti­tu­tion- a zine shop in the base­ment of Flinders Street train station that’s been there since 2001

Fanzine Ynfytyn 27- Solitude Stand­ing digit­al version

In 2016 I left London to house sit in the small town where my grand­par­ents had lived. After a sequence of unfor­tu­nate events involving elec­tri­cians and train strikes I ended up spend­ing the whole summer pretty much alone in a town full of old people, where I knew no-one and there was very little to do, and I had very little in-person contact with other people. A situ­ation a lot of other people can relate to at the moment I think.

Japan Zine- digit­al edition

A couple of years ago I won some plane tick­ets to Japan, and went inter-rail­ing around West­ern Japan with my friend Vicky. The whole trip was short notice and on a very low budget, but we had fun. When I came back I made a zine about the trip. The paper edition is still avail­able here, but for the fore­see­able future I can only send phys­ic­al copies to the UK. So I’ve made a digit­al edition for people to read.

Ichi-go ichi-e

This was my April 2014 piece for Story­board , a writ­ing site with monthly prompts run by a friend. I couldn’t think of a story idea, so I wrote a kind of essay instead.The theme that month was “Ichi-go ichi-e”: a never again moment. I couldn’t think of a story, so I decided to talk a little about ways other writers have handled the theme. I suppose you could call this a casu­al essay. I’m afraid it won’t be closely argued or metic­u­lously foot­noted, and it is quite loosely put togeth­er, but maybe it will give people some good recom­mend­a­tions of things to read

Diana Wynne Jones zine- digit­al edition

A few years back I made a zine with articles about writer Diana Wynne Jones (prob­ably best known for writ­ing Howl’s Moving Castle), and an inter­view I conduc­ted with her before she sadly died. The paper edition is still avail­able here, but for the fore­see­able future I can only send phys­ic­al copies to the UK. So I’ve made a digit­al edition for people to read.

There Are No More Art Museums to Guard

Two 24 page 1/​4 sized perz­ines on purple paper about work­ing in Museums. Avail­able for £3.50 here in the shop. UK post­age free, inter­na­tion­al calcu­lated by weight.

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Caecili­us est in Horto

If you study Latin in the UK, there’s a very good chance you will use the Cambridge Latin books from the 1970s. Although they’re forty years old, they’re still in print (and also on the Apple Store), and have a special place in people’s hearts. 

Special Zine Deal

A pack of seven zines and a post­card (cacti not included) avail­able here for £5 in the UK, and around €10 or $12 USD/$18 AUD. All prices include post­age.

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Fanzine Ynfytyn 27

I’ve done a new zine about that time in 2006 I acci­dent­ally spent a whole summer alone in Bognor Regis. For £2.50 you get both the zine and the mini zine I made at the time for the 24 hour zine chal­lenge. Find them here.

Cake Explod­ing

I had a dream that Cake Explod­ing was a popu­lar hobby, with world cham­pi­on­ships and dedic­ated YouTube chan­nels. Here’s the comic version. Avail­able from the shop for £1.75

Halloween Sale- 25% discount

I’ve got a Halloween sale running until the 1st of Novem­ber. 25% off anything with code PUMPKIN. That’s zines, stick­ers, patches, pins, anything.

Check out what I have avail­able here.

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Categorised as Crafts, Zines

Margate Zine Club

I moved house last week back to back with coming back from Germany, and am exhausted, but here I am organ­ising events. A little zine meet up in a lovely local cafe/​record shop/​yoga studio- plenty of vegan and gluten-free options. Free entry, and step-free, but sadly no disabled toilet (the toilets are upstairs).

August Zines-25% off

I’m back in the UK until Weds, and able to send out zines again. However I can only do the small selec­tion I have already prin­ted up- new print runs will have to wait until my perman­ent return in Septem­ber. With a bonus 25% off. Here’s what I’ve got:

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Zine orders close for summer 21st May

I’m going to be away a lot over the summer, so I’ll be clos­ing my online shop down (until prob­ably Septem­ber) next Wednes­day the 21st of May at 3pm GMT. This means that if you want some zines you need to order this week or wait sever­al months. It also means I can only really do trades with­in the UK. As well as zines I’ve also got vari­ous badges, patches, prints, lengths of vintage ribbon etc. You can find the shop here. There are also whole­sale prices avail­able for distros.

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Diana Wynne Jones zine

I have a zine of articles about children’s writer Diana Wynne Jones (of Howl’s Moving Castle et al) I wrote this zine in 2011, also managing to inter­view her before she sadly died (you can also read the inter­view online here). The origin­al edition was 1/​6 of an A3 sheet, made on a Riso­graph machine. This was great when I still had access to an A3 Riso machine, but after I didn’t it was very expens­ive and diffi­cult to reprint, so it went out of print. Recently I did a new edition, with all-new illus­tra­tions, in a much more conveni­ent stand­ard A6 size

Zine cata­logue

I have updated and created an online cata­logue of my zine projects- both the current ones, and the out of print ones. It can be found at http://www.ynfytyn.co.uk. If you have ever wondered why my zine is called that, you can also find out here.

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Polly’s read­ing list

Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, based on the folk tale Tam Lin and Eliot’s Four Quar­tets, is one of my all-time favour­ite books. The gifts of clas­sic books that the prot­ag­on­ist Polly receives from Tom, the other main char­ac­ter, are an import­ant part of the plot, but not listed anywhere in the novel. I made this read­ing list of the books for the zine of essays about Diana Wynne Jones that I made.

The Best of Fanzine Ynfytyn 1-13

I’ve been doing my zine for around 10 years now. I’ve got a lot of back issues that are no longer in print for vari­ous reas­ons. I didn’t want to reprint the whole issues, but it seemed a shame to have them completely languish­ing in a folder, so I’ve made a compil­a­tion issue with articles from the first 13 issues. 40 pages, 30 articles, 12000 words for £3.50

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Hello again

So I haven’t updated here for over a month, and updates have been thin on the ground all year. That’s mainly because I spent most of Janu­ary and Febru­ary work­ing in Austria, most of March in Japan without a computer, and have been busy since I returned just over a week ago.

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Zines! Zines! Zines!

I return to the UK from Austria for just under a week this week­end, so I’ve re-opened my online shop for zine orders until Tues­day the 7th of March. All orders will be sent out by Weds the 8th of March. The shop then closes again while I’m in Japan, until further notice, so this is your chance. All prices include UK post­age. Inter­na­tion­al post­age is extra, and auto­mat­ic­ally calcu­lated by weight.

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Fanzine Ynfytyn 24

I’ve got a new zine out. This one’s prob­ably only of interest to those with a uter­us. About getting a Mirena coil when you already have endocrine/​autoimmune prob­lems and have to take Pred­nisone.

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Colour­ing Book

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been draw­ing artwork for a colour­ing book zine, and here it is. It’s an A5 colour­ing book with 15 differ­ent images to colour and comes with a free pack­et of cray­ons. Post­age is free with­in the UK, and calcu­lated by weight for the rest of the world.

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Colour me in

Lately I’ve been draw­ing much more, and writ­ing a lot less. I’ve been prepar­ing artwork for a colour­ing book, which I need to get finished by the 12th of Novem­ber, to have ready in print for the Rose Tinted Zine Spec­tac­u­lar in Brighton on the 19th of Novem­ber. So there’s been a lot of 8 hour draw­ing sessions and high levels of caffeine consump­tion.

Fanzine Ynfytyn 26

This one is about the exper­i­ence of grow­ing up holi­day­ing in a cara­van at French camp­sites. A typic­al holi­day for Brit­ish people, but prob­ably weird and exot­ic for those from further away. Avail­able for £2 from my shop (includes UK post­age- inter­na­tion­al extra)

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Fanzine Ynfytyn 23.5

I have two new zines avail­able this month. This is a mini zine I made for the 24 hour zine project, which runs every July. You have to write and layout 24 pages with­in 24 hours. No pre-prepar­a­tion is allowed. It’s a fun chal­lenge. Avail­able from my shop for £1 (includ­ing UK post­age).

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Godless heathenry

The next issue of Being Edit­ors will be about C.S.Lewis and Phil­lip Pull­man. As a sneak preview, and to give contrib­ut­ors an idea of what my own reli­gious (or more to the point, non-reli­gious) back­ground  is, here is the article I wrote which leads in to anoth­er about why That Hideous Strength is a guilty pleas­ure- if you’d like to contrib­ute, find out more here

That Hideous Strength has always been a weird guilty pleas­ure. I’m not a Chris­ti­an, never have been, and didn’t grow up in a reli­gious envir­on­ment. People enjoy the Narnia books because they’re good children’s books and writ­ten with charm and wit, and they don’t Jesus you too hard (except for the last one). That Hideous Strength is noth­ing like that, the plot is weirdly cobbled togeth­er, and it’s full of rail­ing against every single one of C.S.Lewis’ person­al bugbears as a sexist old Chris­ti­an univer­sity don of the 1950s, and he doesn’t both­er to hide it. The relent­less sexism, homo­pho­bia and evan­gel­ising makes me want to throw the book against the wall as the godless hell-bound pinko lefty I am, but it’s just so glee­fully bizarre that I actu­ally quite enjoy it and have re-read it count­less times.

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Categorised as Books, Zines

Two new zines

I’ve got two new zines out- Fanzine Ynfytyn 23 & 25 (21 and 24 are still in the works). If you’re new to my zine, and are curi­ous about the name, the explan­a­tion is here. Both zines are £2 includ­ing UK post­age (inter­na­tion­al post­age extra), avail­able here.

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Roll up, roll up

I’ve been very busy this week. On Wednes­day I moved all my stuff out of London and into stor­age until the end of May, and visited my dad, then took the train up to Shef­field to see friends and table at the Shef­field Zine Fest. I had a great time, but I was exhausted and fell asleep at 7pm on Saturday! I’m going back to York­shire this week­end for a friend’s wedding, and then Italy the follow­ing week (ridicu­lously, it was cheap­er to go on holi­day to Lake Garda, hardly the cheapest region of Italy, than it was to extend my tenancy a week in London. Let that one sink in… ). When I come back towards the end of May, I’ll then go to Sussex to house-sit for the summer.

Blogs -vs- zines

People who don’t make or read them much them­selves some­times ask me why I still make zines, even though the inter­net exists, and the world is becom­ing more and more digit­ally-focused, and I have this blog. In short, the answer is for the same reas­on I still have hundreds of records and books, and devel­op black and white film at home, even though I have an ipod, spoti­fy subscrip­tion, e-read­er and two digit­al camer­as, and I’m far from a luddite: I feel the phys­ic­al medi­um offers me some­thing that I don’t get from the digit­al version.

Manchester: North­w­est Zine­fest 2015

Last week­end I went up to Manchester to do a stall and run a Zine 101 work­shop at the first North­w­est Zine­fest. I had the luxury of a day off work, and enough money to take the train rather than coach, and stay at a bed and break­fast. The last time I was in Manchester was well over a decade ago, and it was nice to have a whole week­end rather than rush to and from the event.

Fanzine Ynfytyn

My zine, Fanzine Ynfytyn, is named after a song by Welsh language post-punk band Datbly­gu (“Devel­op”). The name could be construed as either “Fanzine Idiot”, “Idiot Fanzine” or “Idiot’s Fanzine”. People either look at the name with baffle­ment, go “uh, is it Welsh in some way?” or are pleased because they know the song (those people get a free copy). In some ways I regret giving it a name that so many people struggle to pronounce or under­stand, but I’m on issue 22 now, so they’ll just have to get used to it. When I star­ted it, I only expec­ted to give a few copies to some friends who were already famil­i­ar with the song, so it wasn’t really a concern (I also had a mini collage zine called “Pobble Eh Come?” like a really mis-spelt version of the soap opera). Seeing as one of those people was a fellow language student penfriend who I had a running joke with of us mangling Welsh and German togeth­er to make one über­bendi­gedich language, I wasn’t too worried about the palat­ab­il­ity of the name. I was never expect­ing to get to issue 22, and have sold or traded hundreds of copies of some of the back issues and have them in librar­ies and academ­ic collec­tions. I was surprised I got to more than a couple of issues to be honest.

North­w­est Zine­fest 2015

I’ll be tabling and running a zine­mak­ing 101 work­shop at the inaug­ur­al North­w­est Zine­fest in Manchester on the 29th of May at the Star and Garter, and having a nice mini-break in MCR and seeing friends. Check out the Face­book event and the website.

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Shef­field Zine Fest 2015

I went up to Shef­field again a few weeks ago for the zine­fest, organ­ised by my friends Bettie and Chella, and stay­ing at Rebecca’s with Tukru. I think there must be some­thing around Shef­field in the Spring that I’m horribly aller­gic to. Whenev­er I go up in March or April I have some kind of horrible reac­tion, yet when I’ve been up in the Autumn, no prob­lem. Once when the bus went past Chester­field, a nearby town, my whole face puffed up like a hamster and no amount of anti-histam­ines would deflate it, and was that way the whole week­end, spon­tan­eously deflat­ing again once I was clear of Derby­shire on the way home. I had no hamster face this time, but sinus pain and a nasty rash on my shoulders and naus­ea. Perhaps I’m aller­gic to steel. Nowhere else in the region seems to give me this prob­lem. (It’s also sad because the zine­fest venue has a slide, and I’ve never been able to go on it in any of the years I’ve been, it not being a good idea when you’re pukey or suffer­ing from balance prob­lems due to a giant swollen face and glands.)

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Two new zines

I had two never-before-seen zines to bring with me to the Shef­field Zine Fest (photos of the fest­iv­al coming later in the week). Issue 22 was new, where­as issue 14 has a bit of a history. I made no. 14 a few years ago, mislaid the pages, found them again last year and finished some bits off, made a few copies, mislaid them again moving house and then found them again recently. Now they’re safe in a folder with all my other master copies, scanned to a pdf, and avail­able to print whenev­er I want.

Shef­field Zine Fest this Saturday

This week­end I’m going up to York­shire to run a table and work­shop at the Shef­field Zine Fest (Face­book event here) and see friends. I’ll have lots of issues of zines from both myself and Char­lotte Richard­son Andrews and some other good­ies, and I’ll be running a work­shop on getting star­ted with zine-making (and my good pal Tukru will be running a hands-on miniz­ine session).

Fanzine Ynftyn 14- jo, frei­lich, die gnädige Frau Magister Emma ist nach Öster­reich gekom­men

I used to go to Austria quite a lot to run work­shops in schools, trav­el­ling from school to school each week. I star­ted writ­ing this zine after my first trip to Vienna in 2010, didn’t finish it, and then finished it off a couple of years later. I made a few copies at the time, but then mislaid the pages again when moving house, so barely anyone has read it. I recently found them again, and scanned them, so people can order it now!

How to design and make a skirt in any size

I wanted to learn how to make things for ipads, so I’ve rejigged an old zine of mine with improved instruc­tions and colour diagrams. It has step by step instruc­tions and diagrams for draft­ing a skirt pattern to your own person­al size, whatever that may be, and then making the skirt. For anyone really who would like to have skirts, but struggles to find any they like or that fit, and who would like some help with sewing.

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Fanzine Ynfytyn 20

I made this zine last year, but it hasn’t been in print since Christ­mas, because I sold all the copies, and couldn’t find the masters. I found them again today though, so it’s back in print!

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New zines, after a bit of a break

I’ve got two, count ’em, two (it’s not very diffi­cult count­ing) new zines for you, that took a while to get finished. One with the usual fluff, the other about Vienna. Each is 24 pages, 1/​4 sized, and costs £1 + post­age from my website shop. I also have quite a lot of back issues on there for 80p + post­age at the moment, when they’re gone, they’re gone.

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Answer­ing for myself

David Hogan, a media student in Ireland, inter­viewed me about zines for his disser­ta­tion. I’ve answered quite a lot of people’s ques­tions for media disser­ta­tions over the years, but I’ve never really kept track of it very well. I was in some Dutch docu­ment­ary about zines too, but again I didn’t both­er to find out exactly what it was, so I have never seen it (although I really hate seeing or hear­ing any record­ings of myself). Here’s my attempt to keep better track of this stuff.

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Shef­field Zine Fest (redux)

I went up to Shef­field for the week­end with Tukru in tow (albeit on separ­ate cheap coaches), to visit Chella and Sarah and run a stall/​workshop at the Shef­field Zine Fest. I had a good time with my friends and meet­ing new people, but I think I’m aller­gic to Shef­field. My face and sinuses swelled up as soon as I got there, and by Sat after­noon my tongue felt so big I could hardly speak (not so great when you’re supposed to be giving a public talk), and I got no sleep Friday because there was so much pres­sure on my sinuses. In a photo of me I looked like the Pills­bury Dough Boy. I took some anti-histam­ines and decon­gest­ants, but it made no differ­ence. My sinuses and face suddenly deflated on the way back around Derby. I’m obvi­ously aller­gic to the North. Or possibly steel. I’ll have to use plastic cutlery forever.

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Shef­field Zine Fest

On Saturday I’m going up to Shef­field to visit my friends Chella and Sarah and also do a table/​talk at the Shef­field Zine Fest. It’s from 12-5 at the Elec­tric Works S1 2BJ. There will be around 30 differ­ent stalls, and a full sched­ule of free work­shops, includ­ing one from my friend Cath on femin­ism in zines.

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Saturday

On Saturday I did zine stalls at Brix­ton Record Fair and Bloody Icecream. I brought a film camera with me, and the film is at the lab still, but I took some (not fant­ast­ic) phone pics too.

New zines coming soon

I’ve got two zines I’m work­ing on right now and want to get finished soon. They’re about 75%-80% finished. I wanted to have them done for the week­end, when I did a stall, but I didn’t have time, and didn’t want to rush them. I didn’t want to rush them, and then I ran out of toner anyway. The one made of maps is about Vienna, issue 14 of Fanzine Ynfytyn. I actu­ally star­ted it in 2010 and mislaid the pages. Better late than never. The other one is issue 20 of the zine, it has the usual sort of stuff- this time Jeff Mangum, foxes, and North Korea. They will each be the usual 24 1/​4 sized page b&w zines for 80p.

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Record Fair

On Saturday I’m doing a zine stall with my friend Fliss Colli­er at the inaug­ur­al How Does it Feel to Be Loved Record Fair. As well as our own zines we’re bring­ing a selec­tion of music zines and stock from Vampire Sushi distro.There will be record stalls from Fortu­na POP!, Where It’s At Is Where You Are, Odd Box, Fika, How Does It Feel To Be Loved?, The Great Pop Supple­ment, Dirty Water Records, Enrap­tured, Cherry Red, and Lojinx and lots of second hand records. I will have to restrain myself from spend­ing any money, because I’m broke.

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And the winner of the golden envel­ope is . .

I have some golden envel­opes full of zines. You get three randomly picked issues of Fanzine Ynfytyn, prin­ted on white paper rather than coloured, for £1.50 + post­age. They’re avail­able in my shop.

Last week I had a little compet­i­tion to win one. I had a few more entries than I was expect­ing, which was nice. The winner is Jill­ian from Canada. Thank you to every­one else who took the time to enter as well.

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Golden envel­ope full of zines

I have some golden envel­opes full of zines. They’re not quite as good as a tick­et to Willy Wonka’s fact­ory, but what is? You get three randomly picked issues of Fanzine Ynfytyn, prin­ted on white paper rather than coloured, for £1.50 + post­age. They’re avail­able in my shop.  I’ve got one to give away. Just email me the answer to the ques­tion below. My favour­ite answer submit­ted by Monday the 28th of Janu­ary wins. Your inform­a­tion won’t be kept or sold, and I’ll only email the winner back. Ques­tion: What is your favour­ite Roald Dahl book, and why?

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Fanzine Ynfytyn 19

I’ve got a new zine! It’s been a bit of a break since the last one, because I was so busy. I’ve got 2 more that aren’t quite finished, but should be out soon too.

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How I Make my Zines

This is how I person­ally make my zines. There’s no right or wrong way (aside from doing things like acci­dent­ally making it unread­able once photo­copied or forget­ting about your margins and cutting off half the text). If you want a more in-depth guide to all things zine-related, I can recom­mend Stolen Sharpie Revolu­tion. You can see all the back issues of my zines on my website.

How to run a zine event

For 3 years I was part of the group that ran the Brighton Zine­fest. We star­ted just with the idea it would be fun to have a zine event in Brighton and managed to build a success­ful and fun event. Sadly we don’t run it any more because some of the origin­al organ­isers live in Brighton any more, the others were too busy, and nobody new appeared to take over, and so it just wasn’t prac­tic­al to hold anoth­er.

Girls Get Birth­day

So on Tues­day, me & Tukru went to the Girls Get Busy birth­day party at the Alibi in Dalston. Dalston is a bit of a pain in the arse to get to from mine, you have to walk about 20 mins to West Hamp­stead and then get the Over­ground (and two night buses back). It’s also full of Nath­an Barleys. There was Riot Grrrl karaoke, and cake, and Tukru and some other people I know djed, and over­all I had a good time and met some nice people, although it would have been better if the prick­ish men hanging out round the bar hadn’t been there.

Fanzine Ynfytyn 18

I’ve got a new zine out. It’s got:

* 80s video machines
* Giant list of small pleas­ures
* Really deli­cious lasagne recipe

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New zine time again

24-page b/​w quarter sized zine on pink paper made of marsh­mel­lows and happi­ness

What’s in this one:

* Why Mr Frosty sets are disap­point­ing as an adult
* Your Tears are Cheap: Special holi­day centre section of vitri­ol­ic negat­iv­ity
* Lists! Lots of lists.
* Extra J.Mascis and cats

This & That

I haven’t updated in a while. There’s a back­log running. I’ve just been busy work­ing all hours and doing univer­sity work. I’ve seen quite a few films recently tho.

Being Edit­ors #1- Diana Wynne Jones

So I’ve got the first issue of my children’s liter­at­ure zine done. The first issue is devoted to Diana Wynne Jones. There was a lot more I wanted to say on the topic, but it just kept grow­ing and grow­ing, so I cut it short at 60 pages, and I’ll prob­ably do anoth­er DWJ zine in the winter. (The next issue of this zine is about Oliv­er Post­g­ate). Thank you to the contrib­ut­ors.

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Trip to, heave ho

I’ve got two new zines out, they’re up on my shop along with some riso­graph prints. (If you don’t use payp­al or you want to trade, that’s fine as well, contact me and we can sort it out)

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New Colour Zine

Little Whis­per Smoke Signs That You’ll Never Get numero uno
16 page full colour 1/​4 sized perz­ine. £1.50 + pp

I thought I’d do a zine focus­ing more on images and what I’ve been up to and photo­graph­ing rather than articles.

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Saturday crafter­noon of a Janu­ary

Tukru came round and brought me some birth­day presents (shrinky-dinks, sweets, and patches) and we had a crafter­noon. She typed up zine bits on my type­writer, which has much smal­ler type than hers, but tends to get a jammed up ribbon, and I stuck some pictures from my moun­tain of magazine cutouts into scrap­books, and we listened to Nirvana and Neut­ral Milk Hotel and the Beatles and David Bowie and Simon and Garfunkel. We ate some tofu stir­fry, and the aldi version of Ben & Jerry’s which is exactly like normal icecream, and laughed at BRIAN BLESSED’s attempt at a Greek accent in My Family and Other Anim­als (sedate fun)

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Zines in unlucky numbers

I’ve got 2 new zines avail­able:

Issue 13 of Fanzine Ynfytyn- 50p/$1 + post­age

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Were Pigeon

I drew a werepi­geon for Tukru . It was a silly private joke, and she insisted I drew it. So I did. I don’t draw much. It’s for a halloween zine she’s putting togeth­er, you should make some­thing for it (details here). It’s prob­ably good that I gave her the draw­ing before it frus­trated me so much I threw it in the bin. This is what always happens when I draw stuff.

New issue

Here’s the zine I made for my second year of the 24hr zine chal­lenge (I did it early, because I’m going to be insanely busy in July). You have to make 24 pages in 24 hours, with no pre-plan­ning allowed. It’s about the best gigs I’ve ever been to, my best bargains at char­ity estate sales and cross­words.

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Brighton Zine­fest 2010

I just real­ised I forgot to put the photos from the 2010 Zine­fest on here. I’m going to write about it in more detail in issue 13 of my zine, but to summar­ise: It was good, lots of people came, the Bobby McGees were fant­ast­ic, I got the flu on Saturday, was tired and irrit­able.

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Fanzine Ynfytyn 10

Fanzine Ynfytyn 10
Ireland Special!

This one’s about my road/​rail/​boat trip to Co Cork in Ireland in the Septem­ber of 2009 with a 11 piece coun­try band called Dolly & the Clothespegs. Features midnight ferry rides, colcan­non and wonky Dolly Parton covers. 24 pages 1/​4 size b&w.

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New Mini Zine

I’ve done a free mini issue of Fanzine Ynfytyn about the fine city of Canter­bury. It’s free if you order any other of my zines, because char­ging inter­na­tion­al post­age for such a small zine is a bit point­less. 14 pages, 3″ x 4″. I’ll also be at the Alt Press Fair on Saturday in London.

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Zine­fest stuff

We had our zine social again at the Free­butt, not partic­u­larly heav­ily atten­ded, but then we didn’t promote it much. I was possibly the only person to ever bring a type­writer to the bar. It’s nice to type on it now I’ve finally got round to repla­cing the ribbon.

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So’ton Zine & Craft Fair

Yester­day I went to the Southamp­ton Zine & Craft Fair. It’s a 2 day event, and I was supposed to be there for two days, but I came home last night in the end. The event was very small anyway, and the weath­er in Southamp­ton was atro­cious with torren­tial rain­storms and gale force winds, so there weren’t many people there. I felt pretty awful from being under the weath­er anyway, and stay­ing up too late the night before cutting zines and baking panda cakes with Vicky, so the thought of sleep­ing on the organiser’s floor after battling through rain didn’t appeal at all.

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New zine issue

Fanzine Ynfytyn 9
A 24 page B&W zine meas­ur­ing 15cm x 11cm /​ 6″ x 4″, filled with assor­ted inter­est­ing rubbish

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Zine Night I

On Tues­day night we had our first ZIne Night at the Cowley Club. Hope­fully it’s going to be a monthly event. The first one was small and quiet, because we didn’t have time to organ­ise much, but it’s better to build ourselves up, than try to prom­ise the world from the outset. We had a table with zines from attendees for swap­ping or selling, a cake, and a bar, and read­ings.

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London Zine Symposi­um 2009

Sunday was the London Zine Symposi­um, and I had a stall with the other Brighton Zine­fest people. We went up togeth­er on the train, and that seemed to coun­ter­act the jinx that plagues me any time I try to go to a zine event in London which cancels/​seriously delays any known form of trans­port. I did forget to bring the “up for trades” badges though, and we had to make do with German ones (not that useful in an English-speak­ing event!). There were two rooms this year, about 2 million people I knew and it got very hot. I did a work­shop with Alex about Etsy, we basic­ally made it up as we went along.

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Müll­heim Swag

My friend/​BZF compadre Ed went to the Müll­heim Zine­fest, and I gave him some of my zines to either sell or trade for inter­est­ing stuff. He didn’t manage to sell anything, but brought me back a bag with a creepy clown on it full of all kinds of great stuff in German and English.

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Altern­at­ive Press Fair – London

I shared a stall at the Altern­at­ive Press Fair at the start of Feb with my friends Scott and Chris, and their friend Pete who I hadn’t met before. Thanks to Jimi and Peter for organ­ising such a great event.

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Women’s Zine­fest

At the end of Janu­ary I had a stall at the Zine Fest at the women’s library at London Met Uni in East London. I was horribly late, as it seemed almost every form of trans­port I could possibly use was closed for engin­eer­ing works that week­end, so I ended up having to walk from Monu­ment to Brick Lane to get there. I had a ridicu­lously huge table to myself in this cosy little library, and I made quite a good bit of money and did some shame­less promo­tion of the Brighton Zine­fest.

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