Hackn'een!

Halloween is amazing (and a little scary). Hackney is amazing (and a little scary). Put them together and you get our Hackn'een party (which was straight up amazing). The house was filled with a wild mix of church-going African ladies, junkies, pound stores, gentrifiers - even a 38 bus! I celebrated my old Dalston days by flexing my costume muscle and going as a chalk outline. Which meant I spent a fair bit of the night lying face down on the floor. But it was worth it.

***Yes, to everyone who was actually at that party, we both know it was actually last year. But don't tell anyone.***

Visas suck

The only problem with not being born in England is trying to live here when you're a grown up. Staying for a few months is easy. But after that, you have to leap through flaming hoops for nine (yes NINE) years before you get a passport to call your own.

So in the spirit of visas sucking, two sisters (one who's just had her application rejected, and another who's finally had hers accepted) held a Visas Suck Party for the last weekend they were both going to be legal residents in London. And they asked me to help out. Which, of course, I did.

The theme was 'non EU'. So we had a Columbian drug mule, a New Zealand sheep and a bit of Russian new money floating around. Alice (the sister with the visa) and I (a bona fide passport holder) were border patrol. We spent the night interrogating all the dirty foreigners arriving at the party, then stamping their invites (custom made passports) with 'ACCEPTED' or 'REJECTED' stamps. It was awesome.


No party is complete without a bit of dance-floor accessories. So we had a giant visa, complete with mug-shot hole. One side was stamped ACCEPTED - hooray!, the other side REJECTED - boooo!

Pick me! Pick me!

Just a quick note, I've made a little album of all the different fabrics I'll be using for the dressing gowns and pajamas. They're so good! But there'll only be one or two sets made from each fabric, so if you see something you like, email me at chrisking80@gmail.com by Wednesday 23rd September and I'll make sure I get your size made. Otherwise, the sample sale invite will be gracing these pages soon. Gowns are £29, men's PJ trousers will be £16 and the women's £14. Check out the pics here. Woohoo!

Bearcraft Part V

I know, I know, I should have posted this ages ago. But here's the fruits of our Bearcraft labours. Which, considering we had no money, little time and zero expertise, has turned out pretty well. Hooray for collaborations!

Pimp my paddle

Berlin is so great. Summer is so great. Table tennis is so great. But my table tennis game on the outdoor tables in Berlin...not so great. So I compensated by doing some quick customisation on our bats. One side with a manly, grrrrr-inducing tasch. The other side with a set of luscious lips. Then let the in-between-hits fun commence.

Man Knitting

I don't know what it's like in other places, but in London, you can't really buy anything when you actually need it. So by the time summer arrives, you can't buy swimming trunks. And in winter, all the warm coats have sold out. So I should have known better when I tried to buy a hammock in August. And when I asked in a shop, the assistant did that half-laugh/half-snort-of-disgust thing and proceeded to wearily tell the airspace just above my head that I'd NEVER find a hammock now - but perhaps I could try an outlet store on the edge of town?

To cut a long and slightly bitter story short, I wanted one because my friend Manu was having his 30th in his family's holiday home outside of Madrid. The place is completely idyllic - apart from the fact that it didn't have hammocks. And the small village nearby came up with nothing. So I took matters into my own hands and wiled away a couple of the afternoons knotting one myself. I love hammocks anyway, but this was my favourite one ever. Everything was I used was super-local. The string came from the village shop. The wood for the supports was from the forest nearby. And I used some old washers I found behind the log pile for the ring things. (The instructions I used are here - I spent ages staring at them in disbelief, but if you persevere they do actually make sense)


Sadly, there's no really quick way to do this. Other than going into a shop in winter and buying one.

Then we had to get a bit MacGyver to get a few things ready for the party. First we fixed a leaky inflatable pool using only things we found at the supermarket. Then I got rivet happy and made some sun shades. Throw it all together in a forest your grandfather planted and instant fiesta.

Audrey Roger at Way East

I live in Hackney Wick in London. Which, if I'm honest, is a bit of a dump. But the rent is super-cheap. And as a result, it has more artists per square meter than anywhere else in Europe. Which completely makes up for it. Anyway, I'm in a slightly rambling mood today so I'll cut to the chase and say that once a year, Hackney Wick is sort of transformed into a weekend-long art opening/street party for Hackney Wicked. And this year, I curated a show for it at Way East, which is a space my boyf ran regularly from our house last year, and revived for the festival. The show was a collection of large-scale screen prints and origami by the awesome Audrey Roger - you can see the details and the full art-wank I wrote on the Way East website. Anyway, it was a great weekend, the opening was rammed and I got to meet some incredible people. My pictures don't really do the work justice - it really is amazing. But if you like what you see, there are still some hand-printed geometrics available. They're 100cm x 100cm, £200 each, and are both editions of 8 with two artist proofs. The origami is a one-off, and is £250.