055.. Susan fell

EDITOR: As you read, Susan has been a victim of the floods in Northern NSW... many artists have lost treasured pieces including huge losses at the Lismore Regional Art Gallery and other independant Galleries in that part of the flood ravaged areas.
Fibre Arts Australia's CEO Glenys Mann is raising monies at the April event in Ballarat.
​We cannot support all of the affect areas but doing as much as we can for the community of Tumbulgum, that has been affected.
More about the monies raised in later news! Glenys Mann.
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I live in Mullumbimby, Northern Rivers NSW 
These images are not very attractive but this is my studio right now.
 I have a small space attached to my house where I create beautiful natural dyed wearables and accessories, stitched artworks and shibori sculptures. My studio is also where I mentor younger textile artists.  
Hard to reconcile the extremes of beautiful clean silk, luscious soft wool and fine stitching with destruction of intense roughness of extreme weather,  all in the one place.  
This is Climate Change in action. 
Endless heavy rain pelted down over the weekend on Feb28 /March 1/2. 
Stinky muddy water inundated both my home and studio.  
Water rushed into the studio and toppled everything over, and filled things with dirty water and dumping a layer of mud about 7cm deep  
Had little visitor wander in to investigate the mud layer  
This morning in my emergency accomodation in Byron Bay, I am experiencing the second inundation of water in a month.
My car is swamped again and I cant get out. 
At least I have stitching I can do for the next few hours till the water recedes and I can return to Mullum to check the water level, check if all the cleaning has to be done all over again.
Ironically I’m currently working on a rivers stitching series - the beautiful Brunswick River as it slides through Mullumbimby making a headlong dash towards the sea.  
 
Not much creativity this month.

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Can't live without...

Having thrown out so much mud covered equipment and materials from my studio onto the flood damage pile on my front nature strip, over the last month, I’ve been reassessing what I can, actually, now do without
 
But I cant live without 
My Bernini
Eucalyptus leaves, and leaves from the hinterland subtropical rainforest
My 80 L pot with its space blanket for long slow warm dyeing
My professional library of books for various research and writing 
Good needles and stork scissors
 

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