~kot86 and I have just spent a wonderful (if rainy!) long weekend at the This Is Not Art festival in Newcastle. It was my first TINA and it was definitely an eye-opening experience! It was amazingly confronting, encouraging, educating and we saw many amazing things and met many equally amazing people! There was a lot of laughter, some tears and, most importantly, some fantastic tea (go and see the girls at Totoro's Teahouse on Hunter Street Mall - I highly recommend the Renew Newcastle blend).

We had a table during the Zine Fair, which was brilliant - we had 15 copies of Jeff the Vegetarian Zombie and 15 copies of Last Min Comix, a little zine of Chris'. Jeff was selling so quickly we were making them as we went! Eventually, I went off for a wander and came back to find Chris frantically looking and shouting at me, 'What have you done with the rest of Jeff?' There were no copies left to make! We had only been there about two and a half hours, maybe. After thinking that they had been stolen, we realised we'd just sold them all! Pretty amazing. Next time, we will be better prepared, honest! Soon I'm hoping to put together a little zine with short stories and haiku, plus learning, learning, learning - I might consider some courses and of course I need to practice and get more polished.

So, yes, it was brilliant. Thanks to all the awesome people I met - Pat, Rebecca, Chris, Patch, David, Ben, John, Lada and Adam - you guys were fantastic, great company and wonderfully encouraging for both of us.
No thanks to - Stockton Beach Backpackers for taking our booking whilst having being closed for renovations for over a year and leaving us with no accommodation a week before the event, the cafe near the hotel for having crap tea, the weather being shit, Mon's Thai Restaurant on Darby Street for their vaguely misogynistic service and misleading curry strengths, and the makers of Manic Panic's After Midnight dye for turning all my clothes, my skin and my bathtub blue.

But of course, it was all down to my ~kot86 - thanks, cariad.