Month: November 2015

Earth Kinnection Zine Vol. 1
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http://errthkinnection.tumblr.com/

Get your guerrilla gardening on and follow up with a sweet spot of tea…

I am a self-described black thumb. I’m probably one of the few people on the planet who actually tried to grow ivy and ended up killing it. So you can imagine that I wasn’t quite sure how much I would be into this zine. Turns out that it’s not all about the gardening.

Earth Kinnection Zine gets off to a great start. There is a table of contents, enough cut and past to make it aesthetically pleasing, and some of the articles are portrait while others are landscape. I don’t know if that bothers other people, but I love it. It makes the whole zine reading experience.

The content covers all kinds of ‘natural living’ stuff. Guerrilla gardening, what a tincture is and how to make it, and even the 7 Principles of Alchemy. I was impressed with the variety of stuff in here. Though it seems kind of wildly different, it still all fits together in a way that makes the zine itself feel organic and ‘wild’ grown. The subject areas aren’t in my active interest areas, but I did enjoy reading along and learning about things. Some parts reminded me of high school biology (which I adored), and some of it struck the ‘call to arms’ green movement.

Unfortunately, I found a bit of the content to be hard to read. I could mostly see it outdoors, but there was no way I was reading it indoors without a lamp. (Full disclosure: my indoor natural lighting sucks a bit.) Here’s a bit of what I’m talking about:

It is absolutely possible that it’s only my copy. Photocopiers do as they please when they please. However, I did think it was worth the mention. I can’t exactly hop down to Sticky to see if other copies are the same.

The other ‘stick out’ thing for me stuck out because I’m an author. Intentionally misspelled words. I certainly try not to call anyone on mistakes because I make plenty of them myself. However, I’m 99% convinced that these spelling mistakes were not typos or, in fact, mistakes. Maybe there is some sort of cultural-type stuff happening with ‘iz’ and ‘humyn’ that I’m just not aware of.

One thing I need to point out (not just because of my growing fondness for tea) is the tea of the month! I love this. Tea is delicious (albeit I add milk, which could get me shot in some places), but it also has some pretty cool properties when you get up into drinking that stuff. But I look at this from a zine-maker standpoint, too. An ‘of the month’ thing says there will definitely be more volumes (moreso than ‘volume 1’, I think, but that could be just me). It’s a fun little tick of approval to put in your brain to let you know to check back for more if you like this zine.

All up, pretty cool. Not really my usual dance, but I was interested nonetheless.

How to Be Alone 2
Bastian Fox Phelan
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bastian.fox.phelan@gmail.com

I bought this zine when I was last at Sticky Institute – and that was a long while ago. So I can’t help but find it amusing that the content of this zine covers subjects that have been on my mind very recently.

As you may have sorted out, this zine is the second installment in a series about being alone. There is no mistaking this as anything other than a perzine. Bastian talks about things like codependency, life after issue one (hinted at being about getting off Facebook, taking a break from dating, etc), and more. There’s also a side of the mystical with talking about past lives and ‘the north node’ (a new concept for me).

This zine doesn’t start out with an introduction but with a story about a bike accident. Like most people around an accident, I couldn’t help but pay attention. It’s like the start of the book. “This zine is the first I have made using just one arm” as a first line is an excellent hook that keeps me reading.

Even better, as you read, he refers to things written about in the first zine in a way that doesn’t confuse you but does make you want to get a copy of the first zine.

I find myself hoping that Bastian is doing writing in other ways as well. He definitely has a way with words and a writing style that I enjoy. I’ll be hunting down the first zine (and hoping for more).

Check it out.

Labor of Love
Amanda Joy
www.RiotgrrrlK97.etsy.com
http://wemakezines.ning.com/profile/RiotgrrrlK97

Sometimes with a zine, the cover pretty much says what it’s all about. 🙂

Pregnancy and motherhood are two subjects that I know very little about, so I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy this zine. Lo and behold, even though it was outside my sphere of experience, I found it quite interesting. A labour story, thoughts on motherhood… This is obviously not going to be everyone’s cup of tea.

It is what it is – and, for what it is, it’s good.

Amanda did lose me toward the end with the ‘Teen Mom’ reality show thoughts. (I don’t watch reality TV.) But disinterest in one section didn’t stop me from finishing the lot.

This is the first zine I’ve read in a while that really gets into the ‘cut and paste’. I try to keep a ‘you do you’ attitude toward aesthetics, but I have a growing fondness for all those bits and pieces. There are pictures, stickers, pretty papers… Very nice.

There’s also page numbers, a table of contents, and a clear contact page. There’s also a resource page with Amanda’s favourite links in the back. Talk about hitting all the right boxes on the Nyx list.

If you’re interested in the subject, then you’ll like the zine. Check it out.