Making Stuff & Doing Things

 

As you guys know, I've spent the past couple weeks working on developing a mini graphic novel in the form of a zine.  The zine is mainly about urban foraging, but I'm hoping it'll also raise some questions about place, culture, & identity, & maybe get people thinking about the weird & sometimes wonderful experience of being a human in a big city.   It has been an exciting challenge, since I'm trying to tackle some big themes in a tiny platform, & also since I've never done anything like this before.  For inspiration & guidance about how to make the zine format work, I revisited one of my favorite books from my teen years: Making Stuff & Doing Things, a collection of DIY zines assembled by a guy named Kyle Bravo.

 

The book is a crazy extensive foray into all things DIY.  In it, you can learn how to make clothes, books, paintbrushes, rope, rugs, beer, wine, jewelry, toothpaste, soymilk, glue, candles, birth control, pet food, solar ovens, composting toilets, & giant puppets, as well as how to do magic tricks, play the guitar, build a lean-to, silk screen, wheat paste, turn old vinyls into flowerpots, do home repairs, make electronic music, fix your bicycle, car, or harmonica, & much, much more.  Some of these have very detailed, clear instructions or recipes you can follow start-to-finish, while others just give a couple tips & then point you in the direction of books you can check out from the library.   How many of these guides will be useful to you depends on how committed to DIY you are, &/or how homeless you are. (A guide to deodorizing socks without ever washing them? I'm cool, thanks).  

I thought you guys would be particularly interested, since a big chunk of the book is devoted to practical alternatives to participating in the industrialized corporate food system.  The Outdoor Survival, Food & Drink, & Health & Body sections are packed with super helpful tips about foraging (urban & otherwise), sprouting, natural remedies, & more.  There's also a small section on gardening, which has some useful info about composting, companion crops, & extending the life of your raised beds.

  

In keeping with the book's anti-consumerist, DIY ethos, it's also available for free online. You can download the PDF here:

http://www.pdfebookds.com/Making-Stuff-and-Doing-Things-PDF5-978828/

If you are at all interested in making stuff &/or doing things, I suggest you check it out. There's something for in here for everyone.  Even people who want to make their own butt plugs.