Anna Scott of Country Bumpkin Publications and Yvette Stanton at the launch of Inspirations 70. Yvette is displaying an embroidered Ethiopian blouse

I apologise to all those who are regular readers of my blog; you probably feel like I am flogging the Walk for Women to death. However, we have newcomers amongst us who have come to find out about it, so I’m going to tell you all about it again!

On Saturday 11th June, I’ll be taking part in the Walk For Women, a fundraising walkathon for the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia, where the amazing Dr Catherine Hamlin and her wonderful team are working to surgically cure women of fistulae. I visited the hospital in March 2010, and it was an incredible experience. I have written about my visit in the latest issue of Inspirations magazine (Issue 70).

The Walk For Women is a 50km walk across Sydney, though you don’t have to do all 50km. Due to major health issues over the last few years, I don’t feel it is necessary or wise to push my body to the limits and do all 50, so I’ll be doing just over 20km. However, while we’re considering that a 50km walk would take most people about 10 hours, and my 20km will probably take a little less than 4 hours, spare a thought for those women with fistulae in Ethiopia and other developing countries who have to walk many days to get to medical care, also coping with the horrible nature of a fistula.

Putting it simply, a fistula is a hole. The type of fistula we are talking about is a birth-injury brought on by extensive labouring without medical intervention. It creates a hole, meaning that liquid or solid waste (or both) constantly leak from the woman. This causes her to be outcast by her husband, family and community, leaving her destitute. The only cure is surgery.

I can surely do 4 hours of walking to help these women, who for all intents and purposes are just like you and me but with a birth-injury that makes them detestable to those around them. And I hope that you will be able to sponsor me doing it. If you’d like to donate (and all donations, large and small, are welcome) please go to the Hamlin Fistula Fund website Donate page. Please enter your details. If you are not in Australia, please put 0000 in the postcode field. For “Event”, please put “Walk for Women YStanton” so that the fund can track donations for the individual walkers. For Australian residents, donations of $2 and over are tax deductible.

It would also be lovely if you could let me know of your donation, so that it encourages me in my endeavour, and makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

Please do support the wonderful work that Dr Catherine Hamlin and the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital are doing to give women with fistulae a second chance at life, by sponsoring me in the Walk for Women. I came away from my visit to the hospital feeling that the work they do there is very right.

My previous posts on the Walk for Women also include photos of the hospital and Ethiopia, so you might find them interesting:
Launch of inspirations 70
Training for the walk for women
Walk for women

You can also find out more about the hospital and its work at its websites:
Hamlin Fistula International
Hamlin Fistula Relief and Aid Fund, Australia

Anyway, back to my visit to Adelaide! The new Country Bumpkin shop is lovely! Its full of all the goodies you’d want, and of course looks simply gorgeous. It was great to see CB’s new home.

The magazine launch was across the road at a local pub. It was very nice, and there was a delicious morning tea provided. Fiona Fagan (new owner of CB) introduced all the staff to us, with many familiar faces, and some new ones. Anna Scott, senior editor of Inspirations, then led us through all the projects that are in this issue, which were displayed in front of us. My absolute favourite would have to be a sublime footstool designed and stitched by Hazel Blomkamp (I hope I’ve spelt her name correctly) from South Africa. It wanted to come home with me!

The last project Anna spoke about was my butterfly curtain, worked in shadow embroidery on organza. They said it was the most difficult project they have ever had to photograph for the magazine! Because its organza, it moves if you just look at it(!), and being see-through, it means that you have to carefully consider what’s in the background. Sorry to cause you all so much trouble CB!

And then it was my turn to speak. I talked about our time in Ethiopia, some of the places we visited, and what it was like to live there. I showed them some examples of Ethiopian embroidery, and an Ethiopian woven silk scarf (silk is a new industry in Ethiopia). And then I told them about the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital.

As sometimes happens, there was a small hitch with the day: the copies of the magazine were still sitting on the ship dock, waiting to be released to CB! So there were only two advance copies in existence, and I still hadn’t seen the printed article before giving my talk. It meant that I was unsure of the photos they had used to go with the article, having supplied quite a number. In my talk, I mentioned that they would be able to see some photos of the lush grounds of the hospital in the article. At the end, Anna told me that they hadn’t had space to use those ones in the end! So people don’t miss out on seeing them, I’ve included them here.

The lush grounds of the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. The building on the left houses one of the main wards.

A calm and restful beautiful place of healing.

I had been terribly nervous about giving my talk, and felt that it went very well. While I did “tear up” in a couple of places and had to stop to control my voice (talking about extreme poverty can do that to you) I think it showed the depths of my feelings for what I was talking about. There were quite a number who came up to me afterwards to talk further about it. It was lovely hearing from them about their thoughts on it, and how we need to hear more about this sort of thing. There are so many people in need, and they can do with our help.

In the afternoon I sat in on a class that was being run at the Country Bumpkin shop, and was able to talk further with the ladies there about my time in Ethiopia. They had all been to the launch, so some had questions to ask. It was a lovely day! Thank you so much to Fiona for inviting me to be the guest speaker, to the lovely audience, and to all the CB staff who made me feel so very welcome and at home.

It was lovely that a number of the ladies there were pleased to sponsor me in the Walk for Women, which is supporting the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. They were very generous, some giving small amounts, and some larger. ANY sponsorship/donation is greatly appreciated, whether large or small.

As an aside, on arriving home I found an email from the walk organisers to let me know that the donation issues for people who are outside of Australia have been resolved. And I quote:

Overseas donations can be made online at http://www.hamlinfistula.org.au/donate.html
Sponsors should put both the town (or city) and country name in the Suburb field. If the overseas address does not contain a State name, then also put the country name in the State field. Put the overseas postcode in the postcode field, or put 0000.
In the event field, make sure your sponsors put ‘Walk for Women Yvette Stanton’, or if that doesn’t fit, just ‘Walk for Women Stanton’, so that way the Hamlin Fund can keep track of your donations.
Please note that these donations will not be tax deductible for overseas donors.

Donations from within Australia can also be made at http://www.hamlinfistula.org.au/donate.html.

They’ve asked me to talk on my visit to the hospital, but rather than simply rehash the article, I’ll also talk about our time in Ethiopia in general, Ethiopian embroidery, AND my visit to the hospital. Of course, I’ll also be mentioning my participation in the Walk for Women, and that people can support the hospital by sponsoring me!

If you’d like to sponsor me, please do. You can donate through the Australian Fistula Fund’s website. Please specify “Walk for Women: Yvette Stanton” in the ‘Event’ field. If you know me in real life, you can also hand me the real money, and I will fill out a donation form for you, and the fund will issue you with a receipt. All donations of $2.00 and over are tax deductible.

When I last invited sponsorships, one of my valued readers in the UK let me know that she was unable to, as she didn’t have an Australian postcode. I have asked the fund to resolve this problem, and apparently they are still working on it. I will definitely let you know as soon as I know, when it has been fixed. You could always just enter a spurious one, such as “2000″… but then the receipt might not make it to you…

Anyway, I plan to have a lovely day in Adelaide (and on planes and in airports…) meeting with nice embroidery type people.

That’s all today. I’m having the day off.

The exhibition included 130 costumes from various ballet productions of the Ballets Russes. Some were plain and simple, others were over the top with their elegance. The National Gallery has one of the largest collections of costumes from the Ballets Russes, and this was a wonderful opportunity to see many of them. Highly highly recommended if you’re going to be in Canberra any time before it ends in March.

We also explored the bookshop at the National Portrait Gallery, and I bought a wonderful book full of inspiration that I will review in due course.

So with the exhibition and the new books, I feel full of inspiration!

We decided to visit some places that we’d never been before, while in Canberra. We drove up Mt Ainslie after dinner on Wednesday night to have a look over the city. There were so many ladybugs, butterflies and birds up there. The air was filled with the songs of the birds, and the fluttering of colourful wings. I have never seen so many butterflies and ladybugs at one place before. Unfortunately some people seemed to think that squashing ladybugs was fun; why, I will never understand…

On Thursday we went to the Australian Sound and Film Archives which was very interesting, and we got to share some of the original sound and film recordings that we often quote to the girls, with them. Things like “Miranda! Miranda!” (from Picnic at Hanging Rock), “Hurry up…” (Blackboard from Mr Squiggle), “Well may we say ‘God save the Queen’ because nothing can save the Governor General” (Gough Whitlam, 11th November 1975, on being thrown out as Australian Prime Minister by the Governor General).

We saw bits of “The Story of the Kelly Gang” which is possibly the world’s oldest feature film, of which only about 15 minutes of film still exists, pretty much all found by accident! We saw a bit of a documentary about the restoration of a portion of it that was accidentally found in the BBC archives some years back. It was very interesting.

After exhausting our options for entertainment there, we moved on to the National Museum of Australia, a decidedly underwhelming experience. I was asked by a lady if I’d ever worked at Canberra Hospital, as I apparently have a double. “No, sorry.” I explained that I do have an identical twin (cruelly getting her hopes up) but that she’d never worked there either (cruelly dashing them). Very odd, however this is the same lady who had walked straight past the ladies toilets not recognising that they were the ones for her. I’d say her powers of recognition were a little underdeveloped…

We have been to the museum before, and for such a large and architecturally interesting building, they just don’t seem to have much displayed in it. I am unsure what the focus of the museum is. Is it natural history? History of the people? Decorative arts? I wonder if the museum has a bit of an identity crisis? Maybe if they figured out what their focus is and redeveloped the museum according to that, it might seem a little more interesting and cohesive. But maybe I’m being harsh. Maybe visitors to Australia find it interesting?

We came home via Bungendore, to see an amazing woodworking showcase there. It was quite incredible. There was an astonishing table worth $50000 (count the noughts!) which absolutely glowed. The grain in the wood was incredible, and it was oh so beautiful. Can’t really see it in our house though. It would end up encrusted with my youngest daughter’s Weetbix and smears of glittery stuff from her glitter gel pens. Not a great way to show respect for a $50000 table. I think we’ll let someone else purchase it. (So magnanimous of us…)

Had a great couple of days.

There is also another review of one of my books – this time The Right-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion, and you can go in a draw for a chance to win either The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion or The Right-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion.

The issue is once again filled with interesting articles on interesting things that you can do with interesting fabrics and fibres! The article on 3d shibori was fascinating. I also loved the article on textiles in Morocco. We would have loved to have gone there some years back when we were in Spain, but with two very young little girls, we decided to give it a miss on that trip. Something to dream about doing one day…

In the meantime, while we’re all dreaming about seeing the textiles of the world, you should be able to pick up your copy of Embellish in Australian newsagents in the next few days.

Now I am jealous! I would have loved to have visited them while in Ethiopia – Nairobi isn’t so far from Addis – though I know that no opportunity existed at the time. But to be so close, yet so far!

Last week at biblestudy another lady in the group had a letter from a family that we both know in Ethiopia. I sat there during the study looking at the Ethiopian stamps on the envelope feeling my chest constricting and realising that even just looking at those stamps was prompting a reasonably strong emotional response in me. Oh dear, I had to get my emotions under control!

I have written back to the lady in Kenya and asked if she can tell me more about their group. I’d love to know more, and if I find out more, with her permission I look forward to sharing it with you.