Tangled Stitch

I thought Halloween was the perfect day for a black hole called hope. Hope is a piece that I designed for the Black and White gallery show at Strolling Village Artisans. Hope was hand embroidered using two strands of black thread and gold metallic thread for the hand and the threads emanating from the hand. It is one of my favorite pieces as in life, I think all of us have those black hole days when only our hand is sticking out looking for life and hope. It's funny sometimes we have to look backwards just to see how far we've come. Hope kind of does that on a personal level and an artistic level. It was my first real piece that I thought was art. Others may beg to differ but it was truly my first attempt at self expression. Before Hope I stitched things that other people thought were art and they were symbolic and quite beautiful but not very self expressive. Hope truly explains me better then any other piece before and any other piece since. Hope also expresses my in...

I do not know much about science nor physics but I must say I've been very interested in the string theory. the string theory says that everything is connected by invisible threads. I've recently uncovered one of those invisible threads. My mother was a young girl when her father left. My grandmother remarried a wonderful man and for all intensive purposes, he was her father and my grandfather. My mother did keep in touch with an Aunt and she told me about this when I was a teen. She showed me a card that her aunt had written and that was the last time I heard of the aunt or the card. I vaguely remember seeing it after my mother's death in 1983 but that's where the story ends or at least so I thought. A couple of weeks ago as I was working in my craft room (or in artist words my studio) I happened to look on the floor and there was the card. My heart skipped a beat as I read the card, recently I have been thinking about the family I have that I don't know a...

Today was a wonderful day at the coop. We had lots of customers and I was able to hear wonderful comments about my embroidered pieces without people knowing who I was. I love the fly on the wall aspect of the coop. Eventually I told them who I was and they were still very complimentary but being able to hear comments about your work when people do not know you are the artist is fabulous. One of the customers said they could not tell my work was embroidered until they got up close that it looked like a painting. Someone else told me my work was unique and that I should continue along those lines(she was looking at my tree which I have moved up to the first page). I love what I do and I used to hate to sell it, I am not very good at tooting my own horn so I used to get very nervous at craft shows. I am usually very at ease with people I don't know but the craft shows used to bring out the worst in me. Either I would talk too much or talk too little. Now I bring my embroidery p...

I've made a couple of changes to my blog and added some pictures to my start up page. I had previously shared my funky purse and transformation elsewhere in the blog but as the blog changes daily they fell into the atmosphere. I'm still working on the Christmas project and a knit bag. I dropped my work off yesterday at the Albany Shaker museum so if you are in the neighborhood drop on by. They really have a wonderful selection of artists and gifts for the holidays. The Christmas fair is open from Saturday, October 27, to Thursday December 20th. There is also a wonderful feeling to the meeting house. I guess that is because they used to have church meetings in there. The Shaker philosophy is an interesting one too and I feel a kinship with the shakers of old whenever I am there. Hands and hearts working together. Isn't that what we do now? I've also had something very exciting happen but really don't want to discuss it until I'm sure where it's going. ...

How can one describe men on a blog about needlework? Infuriating. It seems men have a real problem seeing needlework as a job or being an artist as a job. I may not make any money at it but it doesn't mean I don't work. I work very hard trying to express myself in thread but sometimes I think it's necessary to express myself in words too. I am getting just a wee bit sick of the idea that one can just turn creativity off and on like a lightbulb or that one can schedule their work like a normal part time or full time job. Or that one can do all those housewifely duties all day long and then fit their life's work into a ten minute relaxation period after Oprah. It ain't easy being a woman, unless of course you are a woman who is alone(and not too sure if that would be any fun when I'm not pissed off). Men have such stereotypical ideas about what their wives should be, whether they work in the home or out of it, we just don't get no respect. I have been...

Well after going bananas for weeks making ornaments and eyeglass cases and a cross stitch pillow(gasp how I hate the cross stitch pillow but it helps me on the road to my millions) I have been completely enjoying simple garter stitch knitting which doesn't really look very simple and embroidering a Christmas project that doesn't really say Jingle Bells I am in a much better mood. It'll be a little while before pictures. I probably wrote this a long time ago but the new me is much different then the old me but I'm kinda having a hard time letting the old gal go. This entire year has been a year of change for me. I am about a month away from the first time I entered the artist coop I belong to. When I showed up there I had my closet work. By closet work I mean the most interesting things I made that were in various levels of unfinished in my closet. I was stuck in embroidered ornament land probably permanently had I not taken a leap of utter madness. Well I don...

That seems to be the theme of my life these days. Winning and losing but what is really winning and what is really loss? My craft show went kaput. All my craft shows this year have been a little slower then I would like it. On the winning side, I didn't sell any of my ornaments so now I don't have to make them anymore this year(and probably still will have to somewhere down the line but a girl can dream can't she). On the winning side I sold a knit purse. I love to knit but now that I have become an artist and want to have a body of my work. I haven't really been allowing myself to knit very much because embroidery well it's my gift from God. I'm a really good knitter but I am an artist when it comes to my embroidery. The embroidery comes from the soul but I have to be truthful I love to knit bags. I probably could make millions of them if I just let myself go. So maybe that is the lesson, letting myself go. Be happy. Knit the bags in beautiful color...

I have been super busy getting ready for a craft show on Saturday. Embroidering, embroidering, embroidering. It's one of my favorites so I hope it is a beautiful day. It's supposed to be quite cool and for some reason cool weather brings the people out. A couple of years ago it was so warm people were gardening in October and even into November so as crazy as the weather has been maybe we are due for a break. In case you are in the neighborhood I will be at St. Clement's Church in Saratoga Springs New York. I'll post pictures of all my new work after the rush is over. See you soon!

Hello All. I spent the weekend working on Christmas ornaments and here is a sampling. It was kind of hard to get in the Christmas spirit yesterday with the mercury way up high. It was in the 80's but I guess that is what it is like to be a fiber artist in Florida. Perhaps if I were a shell artist it would have been easier. I like to make each ornament a seperate piece of art. When I started I used to make duplicates but I don't use patterns so even back then they were a one of a kind but now I delight in making one of each ornament. My only exception is the twigs and berry hearts, they are my favorite ornaments to make with the tiny little stitches and lots of french knots. They are also my most popular ornament. I love to do twigs and berries period because they are so delightful in their complicated but simple way. I used to tell ladies at my tables that I would spend my whole day just doing twigs and berries if I could. But now I found other ways to share my embr...

Today was a wonderful day in the coop. Quite a few interesting people and it was First Friday also. Someone actually asked me what my process was and I had to think fast but came up with an answer. Being a housewife, turned crafter, turned artist I still have to wonder sometimes. The weather was awfully hot. Someone said it reached 95. That would be unbelievable since we all know what the calendar says and what the temperature is supposed to be. As lovely as a summer day in October can be it really worries me about the planet that we live on. Sounds like we are being baked from the inside out. Everything seems a little screwy. Maybe it was already but it seems the planet, the country and the world are much more unpredictable then they used to be. More thread metaphors, lately my life has been one giant thread of thread metaphors. Interesting to the fiber artist in me. Spoke about the string theory yesterday with a pal. The string theory everything is connected. I'm ...

The other day I mentioned how I have been trying to unblock myself and make myself happy to be me and in the moment. Today was Tai Chi day. I think the day I made the decision to sign up for Tai Chi was the day I started to get unblocked. It was a year and a half ago, last May to be exact. I did not have any idea how much our energy and our souls are blocked. In the beginning I thought I would never be able to follow the class never mind learn how to do it. It is such a beautiful flowing exercise that it is hard to imagine how many steps there are and how disciplined one has to be to understand it. Finding my center back then was just about impossible. I was still in the smiling on the outside, crying on the inside part of my life. But little by little I started to learn it. Little by little I found my center. Little by little I unblocked my blockages and learned to breath. Breathing correctly is the most important thing to do for your health. Babying the parts of you that...

I must be honest with you all. I have lived a very blocked up life. Since I have discovered that I am an artist, my blockages are all becoming unblocked and my recent foray into complete self expression has gotten my emotions and my reality in a whirlwind. I have decided that I must put my biography out into the universe so I can deal with it once and for all and move on to authenticity. I lost a brother when I was 6 and he was 4. My father was in a devastating car accident that put him out of work and in the hospital for most of a year shortly after my brother died. My reality when I was 6 was that my little life probably really was a nightmare. I was much too young to realize it but my mother was in a deep depression and I lived with that and the baggage that comes with severe depression. Let's just say it right now, I lived in hell. Back in the 60's people didn't believe in mental health counseling, not so much for adults and almost never for children. I learned ...