Dear Swab-bottom! ;)

If you're my swap partner and you're stressed or running late, remember we all came here to have fun. No one joined swap-bot in order to encounter humourless strangers who find human foibles like delays a moral outrage! (Trust me, I've encountered them.) Generally speaking, disputes about craft tend to border on the ridiculous. So if you're running late, just PM me! Openness is key on swap-bot, and I'd much rather know if something was arriving late than wonder if it was happening at all. Life can trip you up on the way to the post office, and so be it. That happens to me, too, and whenever I've told people they've been great.

I NEVER FLAKE.

If you haven't received something from me, even granted that it's coming from as far away as Australia, please PM me before rating me a '1', so I can set it to rights.

I definitely want to make sure you're happy with what you get from me! It's what I'm here for. It's what you're here for. To exchange cool items, swap a few postcards, do a bit of craft, and to generally have fun!

One last thing:

Australian Quarantine can be strict in an effort to ward off blights/mites from overseas that we don't already have on our wondrous island nation. One of the upsides: There's no rabies here! One of the downsides: I cannot lawfully accept presents of raccoons. :(

Australian Quarantine: http://www.daff.gov.au/aqis

Australia Post: http://www1.auspost.com.au/international/index.asp

-- Philippa --

Interests

• Paper
• Swimming
• Books
• Zakka
• Typewriters
• Flowers that grow right out of the ground, not just on a shrub. And trees where grass grows right up to the trunk.
• Lists
• Piano
• Cats
• Dogs
• Colour (My favourite colour is yellow. Think buttercups + egg yolk. Not citrus or banana.)
• Writing
• Art
• Animal welfare
• Gardening
• TV (esp. non-commercial)
• Peace and quiet
• My dog wagging his tail
• Music
• Letters on paper
• Envelope art
• Clay
• Independent comics
• Rescuing things. Animals and plants esp.
• Non-sharpened pencils
• Sharpening pencils
• Lifestyle choice
• Cotton
• Wrapping presents
• Walking in Autumn
• Travelling
• Films

Where do I begin?

• Punk!
• Powerpop!
• Folk music! But only good folk music!
• AM-radio Golden Oldies!

Also:

• Musicals! Broadway!
• '50s music! Most types!
• '60s! Almost everything (but not everything)!
• Traditional Japanese! Koto? Yes!
• Classical! But not all!
• C&W! But not most!
• Alt-country! So-called! Some!
• The right HM at the right time! And that's rare! But good!
• Pop!
• Delta Blues!
• Bush Ballads!?

• sketching
• painting
• screenprinting
• woodcut printing
• whittling sticks
• very spare + minimalist collage
• typography
• comics
• lo-fi zines
• tapestry
• cross-stitch on occasion
• jewellery making
• mosaic
• photography
• sticking paper things to other paper things
• handmade envelopes
• decorating snail mail
• just about everything except scrapbooking.

I abhor modern scrapbooking!

I adore Victorian scrapbooking!

Crafts I want to learn include:

woodworking/carpentry/joinery, etching, pottery (we were given my mum's potting wheel today!), silversmithing, stone masonry. Many more too. One craft I can't ever remember how to do is knitting. I find it tedious but I'm sure it's not once you get good. I'd also quite like to crochet but suspect I'd be well over it before I finished my first piece. Oh, patchwork quilting - can't forget that. I love cotton fabrics with beautiful, fine printing on them. Never finished a quilt yet, but I started a Millennium Quilt (Grandmother's Flower Garden with hexagons ambitiously small) during the change in millennium.

Gardening Australia -- The Daily Show -- Australian + World News -- Collectors -- Australian Story -- Media Watch -- Can We Help? -- Rage -- The Colbert Report -- Chelsea Lately -- RocKwiz -- Late Night with Jimmy Fallon -- Fame -- The Brady Bunch -- Skippy (The Bush Kangaroo) -- Summer Heights High -- We Can Be Heroes -- Lano and Woodley -- The Sarah Silverman Program -- Q & A -- The Graham Norton Show -- QI -- Four Corners -- The Soup -- That Mitchell & Webb Look -- Peep Show -- Late Night With David Letterman -- NYC Prep (yeah!)

You'll notice I'm verbose, but what do you erase when everything's important!?

• At the beginning of the day and at the end of the night, I am, I always have been, and I always will be a PAPER FIEND! I was just born this way. Raw, smooth, cold-pressed, lain, pinstriped, graph, kraft, shiny.... Plain, patterned, lined, pretty, office-boring.... Giftwrap, stationery, notebook, memo, newsprint, packaging.... I have only two requests. (1) No musical scores. How can you cut up music? Are you insane? Send me the whole thing and I'll play it on the piano! (2) Scrapbooking paper. Some are appealing, 97% of them aren't, but all of them are 'prefab' in the worst sense: from the outset, they rob a person of their potential creativity and make for a more homogenous world, something I find anaesthetising. When it comes to art or craft, I'd much rather see your own designs and colour combinations, talented or talentless though you may think you are. Perfection isn't always particularly appealing, so kick back, get your art supplies out and have fun, knowing that I'm gonna love what you make no matter what your standard, and even if it makes you laugh because it doesn't quite 'work'. Truly!

• Rubber stamps: Cool stamps over scrapbook-style, if at all possible, as I'm finding them difficult to locate, even online.

• Stickers: with a special emphasis on - but certainly not limited to - Snoopy & co.

• Letter sets and note cards.

• Envelopes. Just envelopes! Air Mail ones are nice, patterned, kawaii, white, plain coloured, kraft, handmade (preferably not from scrapbooking paper), smaller, bigger... any kind of envelopes. For some reason unbeknownst even to me, I just love them.

• Zines.

• Zakka anything.

• Pictures you've cut out that I could use to stick on envelopes. While I'm mad for stickers, I also love, love, love the look of bits of paper stuck to other bits of paper. I'm a simple soul really.

• SHOPPING LISTS!!! Especially found shopping lists. If they're genuine, I collect 'em. I'm that bozo reaching into the empty shopping trolley in the carpark when I think I've spotted discarded shopping list treasure. It's a humbling but often rewarding practice! Seriously, if you find a shopping list out in public, in the carpark, on the floor of the supermarket itself, wherever, do your good deed for the day and pick it up and send it to me. :D !!! No matter how short, unkempt or mundane it appears to you, I can't tell you how much I'd love to receive it! My ultimate intention is to create a Found Shopping List zine. And you'll get a free copy!

A SIDE-NOTE....

As everyone knows, our world is bursting at the seams with tonnes and tonnes of pointless rubbish which is specifically produced to keep your spinning coin from falling flat.

Please don't send any of it to me!

Save your money.

If there are two good items in an entire $2 shop, that's a remarkable $2 shop. Everyone knows the crap they peddle is sleight of hand. It serves no one but the junk overlords who I'd imagine become pretty wealthy off the backs of the least fortunate. And that includes 'ironic artists' who aren't very clever sometimes because they think that shit is funny, all the while perfectly pleased to flush their money down the same drain. (I was one of those fools.) The crap the distributors get away with (legally!) selling just amazes me. Their only intention seems to be that you, the customer, suspend disbelief long enough to pick it off the shelf and swap your hard-earned cash for it. What a bum deal! {Rant terminates here, but it was fun.}

As far as swap-bot goes, I'd definitely rather receive one item of reasonable quality than swagfuls of cheap crap. And don't feel you ever have to spend money you can ill-afford to satisfy any swap I'm your partner for. In fact, I'd prefer not to get anything than to get earth-choking plastics, or lovely things you can't spare the dosh for. Just write me a letter in your pretty handwriting. Or draw me a picture! I'd much rather have that! :D

• Scrapbooking embellishments.
• Random food items. Especially organic matter such as teabags.
• Religious 'encouragement'. No Bible verses for me, thanks! I do like the odd piece of religious paraphernalia, but usually for its kitschness, not for the reasons you might be hoping...
• Animal or human hair stuck to adhesive tape. Seriously, you keep that. :)
• Any chemical scent how ever pretty you find it. Organic or none for this fusspot swapbotter!