getting my mojo working!

Beth Brennan of Still Life Pond sent me these vintage gloves back in 2019, when I started deconstructing them I thought they could become a crow somehow, one day. Beth gave me a gentle nudge in that direction last week with a link to Ann Wood’s ‘Crow Sew-Along‘, inspired I bought her crow pattern

& started gathering all the black leathers, velvets, satins. silk & lace around the place and laid them out on the studio floor

Beth’s mother’s gloves will make the wings for my crow!

have cut out the pattern and underlay for the body & am ready to start stitching it all together when I finish this post! My good friend, the amazing sculptor Bronwyn Berman has been staying 5 minutes walk up the road, looking after the equally amazing sculptor Margarita Sampson’s trio of Siamese cats while she’s seeing Paris, the Venice Biennale and more!
Bronwyn and I have been hanging out, making things at the kitchen table whilst drinking copious cups of tea and catching up on life, the universe and everything. She sparked me along to finish this Blue Moon from Glennis Shibori Girl that I started stitching on the March Equinox!

Filigree of Memory I was stitched and unstitched, then stitched and unstitched repeatedly, over and over from the March Equinox to the September Equinox 2022, this is such a long strange trip … with so many memories of Old Man Crow held in each of those tiny stitches and knots, finishing it with Bronwyn’s encouragement and great sense of humour has got my mojo working again at last! Just finished reading “Earth Grief: The Journey into and Through Ecological Loss” by Stephen Harrod Buhner, a book that everyone who has a heart should read. I am hanging this next body of work which will take me the rest of my life on this quote:
“The process is difficult, time-consuming, and painful. It seems that emotional acceptance can be achieved only as a consequence of fine-grained, almost filigree work with memory.”
and talking of memory look at this filigree work in the Wind Eroded Caves !

Bronwyn and I climbed up to sit for a bit with the ancient stone

true friends are rare treasures, Bronwyn both encourages & challenges my work as well as making me laugh a lot with her great sense of humour!
This month she became officially Dr Bronwyn Berman or Doctor Bee to me, love this photo !

photo courtesy of Dr Bronwyn Berman

Thanks for everything my friend!

Spring Equinox

To celebrate the Spring Equinox I went for a bushwalk with the mist obscuring and revealing the gateways to the liminal spaces in between, love this glimpse of Horseshoe Falls veiled in cloud.

what a long strange trip

The path of heart is never a straightforward deal!

after a month of attempting to take two variations of high blood pressure medication and feeling totally strange and disorientated I said to the GP the drugs were not my way and asked my Tai Chi teacher for a transformational counselling session. It was a dance, she circled, I side stepped for quite some time til finally I allowed her into the heart of the matter, “what have I lost besides Old Man Crow?” I closed my eyes and felt deeply, searching and realized my third eye was closed, clouded with a saddened burnt sienna red! She helped me spin that cloud in my mind’s eye until it turned into a flame, in the centre of the flame was a diamond so I drew that and stitched it into the long cloth of grief

I started stitching this beautiful length of Japanese hand woven indigo dyed hemp on February 1st, it will take the rest of my days…

& have stitched and unstitched this Memory Keeper made from an indigo moon backed with red silk from Glennis Shibori Girl since the Equinox in March

On Monday with magical timing Susi Bancroft wrote “The ‘mark making of grief’ I would love to see. One mark or small step at a time and one day you will take that line for a walk – walks can be tiny steps to big leaps, side steps and take you in circles and even backwards sometimes…. “
Yesterday I took Free for a ride to the Wind Eroded Caves near Anvil Rock and made my first foray down the track down into the Blue Gum Forest from Perrys Lookdown

Magic Days!

into the blue

mountain magic

ancient stone spiral at Mount Hay

these ancient stones were formed under the sea

mountain magic looking towards Bridal Veil Falls and Govetts Leap

misty morning at Echo Point in Katoomba

Scribbly Gum aka Eucalyptus haemastoma

stone steps leading down to Leura Cascades

Leura Cascades

old bridge at Leura Cascades picnic area

the Grand Canyon walking track goes behind this waterfall

water music

stepping stones

a sign at the crossroads deep in the rainforest

going back up

and up

to Evans Lookout

rainbow at Govetts Leap

Free!

Yesterday was the perfect sunny day to ride Free out along the Burramoko Ridge Trail to see Hanging Rock!

tied up safely to a post to walk up to Baltzer Lookout

view to the right of the trail

close to the edge, the river is a long way down

Grose Valley

View from Baltzer Lookout of Hanging Rock to the left and the Grose Wilderness

Hanging Rock

a bit closer to the edge

Baltzer Lookout

This week I am celebrating being fully retired, all the paperwork that needs to be sorted & signed off on when someone dies is done & dusted. The fabulous tax agent in Katoomba sorted both Rod & my final tax returns + cancelled my ABN as I don’t make enough out of my art to warrant having one, I feel so free! I can go bushwalking every day when the weather is fine & when the mist settles in stay home & make whatever wants to fall out of my hands just for the joy of it!

My high school friend Jolly recommended the Serious Readers Heavy Duty Table Light & it is brilliant, I can get the point of the brush or needle exactly where I want it for the first time this year!

My eyes have deteriorated radically this year so the new light combined with new glasses for seeing distance and new lenses for my reading glasses will keep me happily making and reading for the forseeable!

More Bushwalking!

On the track to Lockleys Pylon

Fortress Rock

Fortress Rock Falls

Fortress Rock Falls a bit closer near the summit

Fortress Rock and Bridal Veil Falls from the summit of Lockleys Pylon

Bridal Veil Falls from the summit of Lockleys Pylon

view of the Grose Valley

wild heathland on the way back

Mo on the way back

with my intrepid bushwalking friend Cathy, we have to come back & do this walk again in spring!

Bushwalking!

After a week of living in the clouds the sun came out for a bushwalk from Popes Glen to Govetts Leap

mosses, lichens and a tiny grass living on a rock

Horseshoe Falls

Grose Valley from Horseshoe Falls

Old Man Crow’s spirit danced with a rainbow in Bridal Veil Falls as I walked along the edge of Govetts Leap

Grose Valley from Govetts Leap

freewheeling!

My beloved 50 year old Raleigh fell apart late last year so I have been dreaming of a brand new electric bicycle for months. On Thursday I booked some test rides & fell in love with this freedom machine, the Lekker Jordaan+. The great team set it all up ready to ride within an hour & wearing the biggest grin I rode back to to Central Station to catch the train home to Blackheath.

It’s a dream of a bike to ride & so sturdy! One of the many fabulous features is a walk button so when the track gets too rough or steep I can just hop off & it self propels at a gentle pace.

Rode to the end of Hat Hill Road and did a bit of exploring yesterday morning, the 12 km ride felt effortless but my legs are feeling quite stretched this morning.

Having wheels opens up exploring more of the bush walking trails around Blackheath, this photo is near the top of the Centennial Glen walking track

very brave people climb these cliffs with special shoes and ropes!

the track gets quite wild in places!

On Monday Cathy & I found the Ikara Head track where the pink flannel flowers grew after the 2019-20 bushfires, love this surreal panorama shot!

Cliff Top Walk

Today is Old Man Crow’s birthday so I walked with his spirit along the Cliff Top Walk
between Govetts Leap and Evans Lookout

looking down into the Grose Valley

hat off at Bridal Veil Falls where Cathy and I scattered his ashes a few weeks ago

Bridal Veil Falls

weathered sandstone stairs marked by time with all the footsteps

the trail beckons

view near Evans Lookout
feeling so blessed to have the time & space to explore these beautiful mountains!