Happy festive season, good people. I have just spent this rainy afternoon adding a few things to the catalogue – two issues of Telegram Ma’am (#20 and 22), the latest Disposable Camera (all about Melbourne this time, featuring Vanessa’s most ambitious mind map to date) and the truly epic 4 disc making of YOU DVD box set. You’ll find that last one on the ‘other things to buy’ page.

Meanwhile, I have been busy working on a new Take Care Zine Distro Zine/Newsletter. It’ll be out as soon as I can get to Officeworks – by the end of the week, hopefully. Within it you will find a round-up of the year 2011 from our perspective, perched up here in the not so mountainous Blue Mountains above venal old Sydney Town.

The more observant among you – or those that have cared enough to pay attention (don’t worry if you didn’t – I hardly remembered myself, and last year I totally forgot) will note that the 1st of January marks Take Care’s second anniversary. Two years! How come we haven’t taken over the world yet? Ah, who cares. Anyway, we thought we should actually acknowledge this important acheivement in some way, so we have decided to do this thing we’ve heard rumours that people are into, we’ve decided to have a SALE, starting from the 1st of January. The rules of the sale are as follows, beneath the attention grabbing heading:

ZINE SALE!

In the month of January with every $10 of zines you order you may nominate an additional zine to be added to your order, free of charge. (Orders over $20 get two, over $30 get three, you see the pattern.) Simply write the title of the zine you’d like in the ‘note to merchant’ field when checking out of paypal. Please list a couple of alternatives in case your first preference sells out. (If we happen to sell out of all your prefs we’ll pick a random zine for you – first in, first served.) Remember that the sale begins on the first of January, so keep yr hats on till then!

Also, in January I’m gonna be hosting a couple of zine workshops at Blacktown City Libraries. Here are the details:

Jan 10 – Stanhope Gardens library

Jan 12 – Mt Druitt library

and on Jan 18 Vanessa Berry will be hosting a workshop at Blacktown library

All workshops are from 1-3pm and are for 13 to 18 year olds, but if you’re a year of two older – or younger – you’re welcome to come too, but you must book by calling the relevent library. Check out the Blacktown Library website for more info.

The structure of the workshops that I’m doing will be a brief lowdown on what zines are and then an ideas brainstorming/zine making session – you can bring along stuff you’re already working on or try to make something from scratch (typewriter, collage materials, scissors, glue and photocopier provided) or just hang out and read some cool zines from my collection! To coincide with this I think they’re tying to organise a zine display in the library, too, but I’ll get back to you on that.

xE D

NEW ZINES, in no particular order:

Veganistan

Juggling the Rainbow *

Love Like Pop #8

Owlzine #1 *

Owlzine #2 *

Motor City Kitty #16/Culture Slut #24

Tutu Mocha #1 *

Tutu Mocha #2 *

(A Part of) My Life in Lists *

To Praise is the Thing *

Songs of Protest #4 *

Scribbler #3 *

Chasing Hot Air Balloons #7 *

A Week in Review *

That’s 14 new zines in the catalogue. The ones marked with an asterisk (most of them, that is) were sent to us for the Absent Zinester Table at the Snapdragon zine fair back in Spetember. Thanks for sending us your zines guys!

Also, BACK IN STOCK we have:

Briefly, Birds

House (both also sent for the Snapdragon fair, thanks Tamara!)

Love Like Pop #6

And DESCRIPTIONS (finally) ADDED:

Virgin #1

Virgin #2

For Strentgh & Valour

Here. In My Head. #9

Pieces #6

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

In The Flesh

Licking Stars of Ceilings #15/Watch Him Bleed #3

Watch Him Bleed #1

In total, I make that 26 zines that have been either added or had their details updated in the catalogue. I’m going to reward myself with an ice-cream now.

No wait – we have MORE ZINES (n things) COMING, too:

Telegram Ma’am #20

Telegram Ma’am #22

The making of YOU zine four disc DVD

And more, in all probability, given the rate of submissions we’re getting. If you have sent us a submission in the past week or two or three or more, please bear with us – I’m starting a new part time job that will involve training for two weeks full time, so we’re gonna be a extra busy for the next fortnight or so.

But keep ordering zines. Thank you.

Oh, and did you know we have a Facebook page? If you’re into that kinda thing, you should ‘like’ us…

xEmma

Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which contains a series of text messages that document a love affair;

In the Flesh, ‘a story in which the central figure is my anus. My lovely anus, both anatomical and sexual…’;

Pieces #6, a zine from the States about commuting. It’s nice and long and wordy, which would actually make it very good company on a long commute;

Here. In My Head. #9, a perzine from the UK about feminism, technology, theology and more;

For Strentgh & Valour, a Melbourne zine full of photocopied diary entry style writing about zines, art, Survivor etc! (22/9/11 Edit: ‘Strength’ changed to ‘Strentgh’, with apologies to the zine’s author for missing the Mekonsesque joke in their title.)

Coming soon we have a stack of zines left over from the Snapdragon Zine Fair Absent Zinesters Table…

Those who love libraries as much as we do will be pleased to know that there’s a mini-zine fair at Manly Library this Saturday in conjunction with the Manly Arts Festival. There will also be a free zine workshop with Vanessa Berry. Call the library for details. We’ll be there too!

Second Library

If that wasn’t enough, Black Rose have kindly agreed to share a selection of their amazing zine library with those coming to the Snapdragon Zine Fair. I wonder how many folks who make zines are already aware of Black Rose? Well, if you don’t know, the various incarnations of the Black Rose collective have been operating a volunteer run library for over 25 years. During this time they have  amassed what is probably one of Australia’s largest accessible  zine collections. If you have an interest in zines and want to learn more about them you should come and say hello on Sunday.

Join us at the Jurassic Lounge at the Australian Museum on August 23 (next Tues) from 5:30 for a zine workshop. Cost of entry to the museum is $15, but that includes a free drink and opportunity to engage in all the Jurassic Lounge activities. We’ll be making tiny zines for the Snapdragon Zine Pinata! More info here. Thanks to Clare from The Bower for inviting us to host the workshop!

For some reason, when we mark a zine ‘last copy’ people don’t buy it. Why is that? Rather than speculate, we’ve decided to put some of our lonely ‘last copy’ zines on sale. Some of them have been hanging around for a while. They’re all in perfect condition, but you can now get the following for up to (and in a couple of cases, more than) half price:

Briefly, Birds

Chiaroscuro #4 (fabric and paper edition)

The Department of Forgiving

I am my Cat’s Keeper #1

House

Mining

Ker-Bloom #51

But get in quick, cuz as we say, there’s only one copy of each of these zines!

We finally got the internet working at our new house and had a spare day to sit down and add some things to the catalogue. Descriptions to come (yep, as usual), but check out all this new stuff:

The Church of Hysteria‘s ‘Unmastered’ CD!

New issue (#7) of Plastic Knife zine!

Three (#8, 9 & 10) great issues of Miss Helen’s excellent Fly Away Bird!

March Eighteen, in which Paul and Jessie spend a day at the Marrickville Metro and record the goings on thereof!

If Destroyed Still True, an excellent new zine about travelling in ‘Iraqi Kurdistan’ by Nine of Sex Industry Apologist fame!

I Know Everything, a zine providing documentary evidence of the daring but doomed scheme to remove Luke’s Big Chair from the Sticky Institute!

The first two issues of Virgin, a zine about…well, you can probably guess by the title. Issue#1 is the author’s own story and #2 is a compilation!

And finally, we have Watch Him Bleed #1 back in stock, plus issue #2 & 3. The latter is a split with Licking Stars off Ceilings #15!

Enough with the exclamation marks!?!

So, in other news, we now live a rather inconvenient 2 hours away from old faithful PO Box 4, but we’re not changing our address, as we’ll more than likely be back in the city in 6 months. But it is lovely up here in the Mountains, with all the stars and mist and parrots and the cafe owned by a cult and everything.

In more other news, as we’ve mentioned already, Tim, Vanessa and I are organising a zine fair, called the Snapdragon Zine Fair, which will be at the Red Rattler, 6 Faversham St Marrickville, on the 4th of September. Stalls are all booked out, but if you’d like to send zines for the Absent Zinesters table, or participate in the world’s first zine pinata (zinata), check out snapdragonzinefair.wordpress.com.