Tangled Stitch

These two pieces signify just how big 2007 was for me. They were both coop pieces and they are named Hope(the black hole) and Transformation(the tree and heart). Hope came to me as I was riding home from working in the coop the first day. It was a flash I couldn't get out of my head so I drew it on a piece of paper in my car at the first stop I could make. It was my first official art piece. Shortly after I started it, the theme for our new opening in our new gallery was the black and white show. As you can see it was a divine intervention. It was also the most difficult piece of work I have ever done in my life. For many years that black hole was my life but the only thing that kept me from the darkness was the hand reaching out of it and my belief in the universe. Nobody else knew the depth of my sorrows but expressing them through hope helped me move through and away from them. Luckily I did the hand and the gold accents first to help me through the tedious black stitch...

Hello everyone! I feel kind of like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz after a two day trip back to Long Island. I never realized just how much I didn't fit in there until I went back there for a couple of days. My stomach is in tumult because everything I ate gave me heartburn or made me queasy. I couldn't drive my car. Too many cars. Therefore I couldn't visit my best friend or my aunt because they lived 45 minutes from my inlaws and my hubby had plans both nights. The local modells made me feel claustrophobic between the racks and racks of merchandise and all the people you had to bypass to get around the store. I probably should have looked at it as some sort of labyrinth or something, instead it felt like a claustrophobic maze. I was looking for Jack Nicholson out of the corner of my eye. It was lovely to see the inlaws though. They are so hospitable. Hopefully next time I will be able to see my friends and family. The food did taste fabulous although it didn'...

Usually I don't talk politics on my blog because my life and my work are more important to me. Today as a New Yorker who uprooted myself and my family after 9/11 I am speaking from a more reflective and fearful place then I usually write from. I have to admit I know very little about Pakistani politics, except that Ms. Bhutto was supposed to be a conduit for democracy and moderation in that crazy place Osama Bin Laden has called home for the last so many years. The fact that OBL had made her a target so soon after she returned to her country(and failed) meant that perhaps she was a person who was capable of change. And then today happened. It may have been Musharaff or someone else not connected to AQ but that is rather unlikely. So OBL has struck again. And I am afraid again. It seems a lot of the last 6 years have been spent in fear and anticipation of loss. The wars, the London train bombing, the videotapes. Everything propagates that fear. Will I lose someone I know? ...

Hi All! This is a heart I embroidered a few months ago for the coop. I usually do twigs and berry hearts but I wanted this one to be a bit more artistic. I really should have shared it pre Christmas but I never took a picture of it before so today is the day. I don't really have too much to say today. I'm pooped from all the holiday hooplah so perhaps you will take a look at some of the links on my blog and be inspired. They are all such wonderful inspiring sites. Enjoy! Keep stitching.

Greetings and Blessings to all on this lovely, peaceful Christmas. Since I moved to this lovely peaceful place in upstate New York, I am able to spend the holiday any way I want to with my two lovely men and my one lovely dog. I spent my entire day(or most of it anyway)listening to the new age CD's my hubby and son got me for Christmas. New Age music is something I never listened to until probably the last two or three months. I am so glad I found it, it brings me such peacefulness. I also hand embroidered the day away. I realized just how lucky I am to be satisfied and content with just beautiful music and a lovely hand embroidery project. That is also something I am very surprised to find out about myself, that I can be content just being. I'm Italian and in my not so far off past I would be sitting stuffing my face surrounded by a rather large family. That was fun but I really have to say I kind of prefer my peaceful little Christmas. I'm not one for material t...

This post is inspired by Inspired Me Thursday and the pillow in the entry below. There is no official topic this week for Inspired Me Thursday so I picked Love. Love, what is it really? Butterflies in the belly, rubbing your Charlie's belly, worrying about your husbands belly or making sure there is enough food in your son's belly. Does love make you dizzy or do people love you in spite of the fact that you are dizzy? Do you love the one you are with or do you love the ones that you miss? It's all of the above and more. We can love people, we can love our work, we can love other people's work, we can love our laptops. We can love everything, so in honor of Inspire Me Thursday love everyone and everything that makes you feel alive and never look back in regret. If it doesn't fit into any of the categories of love or makes you feel something other then love. Walk away and find your bliss. Love is knowing that life is too short and that we shouldn't be wastin...

I'm really exhausted tonight. Too much reveling yesterday. Picking up my work from the Albany Shaker Museum this morning and then the dreaded Christmas shopping. So this post will be short and sweet, with Christmas right around the corner and the absence of time for blogging and sleeping I will share Christmas related work and Christmas wishes. Today I heard Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Sinatra. It reminded me how lucky we are to have the people we have in our lives today and the memories of the people we had in our lives yesterday. So might I wish a Merry Christmas to all of the bloggers I know today and the bloggers I will know of the future. Hold your loved ones tight and my special blessings to all of you who are dealing with the illness of a loved one or the recent loss of someone dear. It never goes away but it gets easier and the more loss you have the more you appreciate what you have. God Bless Your or a universal blessing. You are not alone.

First off thank you to all my blogger friends for leaving comments and tomorrow when I am sober I will respond to them all and come and visit your lovely blogs(I have to say I am completely in awe of people who I feel like I have gotten to know by dropping in on their lives. It's crazy how blogging works isn't it?) Tonight is a kinda tipsy end to a delightful day. I had breakfast with Emily and she gave me the most beautiful, wonderfully appropriate gift which she made which encompasses our friendship. Tonight I had a ladie's night. Margaritas, great food, great friends and wonderfully baked goods which my family and I will enjoy thoroughly. I am not a baker, I'm a crafty artist. Last week I baked a box of brownies, it needed oil and water but it was basically a box. But cookies that take different ingredients and time, up there with gardening(I look at the flowers and they die). I have a wonderful life here. Good friends, great bakers and creators. I'm a v...

This is a bag I made over the summer. It has hand embroidered pink flowers on white silk. It is a reminder of the love I have for my work and for the ability to lose myself in my work. I worked on my turtle purse which is coming to a close in the next few days. I wasn't in the mood today to sew the handle onto the new knit bag, maybe tomorrow. Pictures will be coming soon. I was working on a new artist statement which I am not ready to reveal quite yet and I realized how much my work has evolved and I have evolved over the last year. There were glimpses in the past of what I was capable of and how my soul felt while I was working but I was never able to put the two together. I say this a lot but I never knew I was an artist and I had something to self express until I allowed myself to become an artist. I read on another blog that art is rather painful because it brings us closer to God then we are ready for. It shows us how close we can be and that knowledge is painful. I...

I found the best way to handle the Christmas season is to work through it. To use the gifts and the love that God has given me for my work and let it help me through this time. I realized just how lucky I am to have so much fortune in my life. I have a wonderful husband and a fabulous son, my friends and I have my work. The colors, the textures, the tangled threads that become something else, the flash of inspiration that comes out of nowhere. The last couple of days I have had several gifts of inspiration. Yesterday I finished knitting the purse I have been making. The handle is being blocked as we speak since the pattern made it curly. I've beaded it and will put the lining in and then I will share it. Last night I had an inspiration for a new project which I will throw myself into after I finish my turtle bag, although I think I will start it today or tomorrow and do a little bit every day. Sometimes if I don't act on an inspiration it falls by the waste side. It wi...

Since I am hearing Icy pitpats on my roof, I figured I should blog before the electricity might go out and get myself back to the wonder of fibers and threads. This is a picture of my beloved Charley in the snow. It is actually a few years old but not much has changed especially today(sorry I don't have a current picture of Charley in the snow but it's cold and I'm not going out until I have to, neither is Charley). I moved here from Long Island 5 years ago next month. When I moved my mother in law told me I should knit Charley a sweater. Now I know that Charley should knit me a sweater. My tiny little westie loves the snow. She rolls around in it, she chases it, she licks it, she just loves it. Myself I'm not quite so taken with it but it is lovely especially when it is falling and Charley is very lovely when she is rolling around in it. Funny thing is we don't have a heck of a lot of snow where I live in upstate NY. The fronts either drop below us or fly a...

I know that Christmas hasn't come and gone yet, but I decided to look forward to next year anyway(the closer it gets to Christmas the better I like it anyway). In the next year, I want to have my own web site and find an on line outlet for my work. I also want to find some nice little shops that will carry my work locally. About my work, I want to get a bunch more experimental and show the talents I have. I have been doing needlework since I'm a wee little girl and I'm way past the wee little girl stage. I also want to embrace my differences. Oddly enough although this season wasn't a gangbuster like last year, I did sell the things that I walked out on the limb for. I'm also going to work more. I'm a bit of a procrastinator so I'm going to play less work more(which is more interesting and fulfilling then playing anyway). I'm going to make more for myself. As much time as I spend making the pieces I make I always try to sell them. It is time for ...

Hi All! Feeling better. We had a snow storm and I've been sort of snowed in so life is much better today. I've been knitting up a purse(no pictures yet) and embroidering a purse(no pictures yet) and I've managed to creatively get myself out of my slump. There is always a day somewhere in the middle of the holiday season when I dwell on what is lost and I guess we can say I had that day. I've decided to enjoy my family and to make plans for my business and be creative for the next three weeks. I just happened to look up from my computer and saw the lovely(I guess you would call them lovely) Russian men in tutus swimming. It was a sight that made me smile. Hopefully you have seen it too. The picture is of a sampler that is currently in the Albany Shaker Museum. I enjoyed making it as it has lots of twigs and berries! Lots and lots of french knots. My work will be there until next Friday. The Albany Shaker Museum is such a wonderful place to be involved with. Th...

Ok, I know the picture is another repeat but pretend I am a member of the Television Writers Guild. The only reason my hand is here is because it is my hand and I am blue. What I'm going to write is probably a repeat too but when I wrote about it last it wasn't the Christmas season. Here is where I will insert my disclaimer if you are a Christmas loving, carol singing, purist who adores everything Christmas this post is not for you. How does one get through the entire Christmas season without getting melancholy or blue? Everybody I love(except for my hubby and my son and my friends)has ties to the holiday season and they are gone. Either they died during the time surrounding Christmas or they had their birthdays or anniversaries or some other reason to remember them and to remember that they are not here. Add that to the sappy Christmas music and the wonderful Hallmark movies and well I guess you can figure out the rest. I know I'm not alone in my sadness and melancho...

Read entry below for explanation of angry bag and yes it is very similar to happy bag!

This is one of my happy bags. They are my favorite thing to do. I love to hand embroider but when I embroider a lot of other variables go into my work. But when I knit I'm usually doing it for fun. That's where the happy bag comes in. First a little background. My first happy bag was actually an angry bag. I was having an argument with my husband that I was losing(but of course)and instead of fighting him I took out all the colorful yarns I could find and made my first happy bag. It's a lime green(i love lime green) hot pink, multicolor concoction. Rather small able to be finished in one night(at least when I'm angry anyway). I tried to sell it but nobody bought it(I guess they could tell it was an angry bag)so it's still mine which is wonderful cos I love it. Truly love it. I used my favorite colors and knitted myself into a good mood while making it so I'm kind of glad it's still mine. Then I made one with checkerboard and a basketweave pattern. ...

Ok I need a little cheer myself. It's cold and I'm cranky and I need a little brightness and cheer. This is an eyeglass case I made for my friend. It is two butterflies and her initials. She really liked it and so did my other friend who asked for a pink one with purple flowers for her beautiful little girl who just got glasses. I decorated the tree, including the lights(which were a little scary from the top step of a step ladder). The menfolk really liked it, which was a nice surprise. But other then that not much to talk about. I worked on my turtle bag still no picture. And I read a little bit of Celebration of the Stitch. A wonderful, inspiring book about embroidery. And that's about that. Hopefully tomorrw will be a more talkative day with more to share. Blessings to you and yours during this holiday season.

I didn't think this photograph was on my laptop but miraculously it was. As you can see it is a bit glaring to have two glaring lights in the middle of my project but I think you can see the details a bit better. Today is one of those days when I am fighting off a cold. I've finished the first half of my turtle bag(photos to come soon). It's hand embroidered using my tangled thread technique(the word technique makes it sound so more interesting then pulling threads out of a knotted mess don't you think?) although I think I added more to my knotted pile then I took out of it. I haven't decided whether I'm going to do the bead thing. I'm not really a bead gal myself and I am making it for myself. But I'll finish the back and then decide. My hub is home and we put up our Christmas tree(yesterday actually but it fell over, so we had to redo it). No lights or ornaments yet, I like to do that by myself and my hubby is glad and my son well he's 16 h...

This is one of my tangled thread embroidered hands that I had hanging in the coop. The picture doesn't really do it justice but it is a rainbow colored hand with green accents. It got a lot of interest in the coop and people who saw it used to love to run their fingers down the threads which was exactly what I wanted them to do. I have another picture of it but that one had glare from the lights, the colors in the hand were more visible so if you want to see a better look and can forget about the glare let me know. I love to use lots of colors and different hues of the same colors in my hands. And then of course there are always the lines that go off the beaten path. Just like myself. I hope you enjoy looking and reading and hope that you appreciate all the twists and turns of my work and my life. Although to be honest I could really appreciate a rather straighter life at the moment. But if my life went in a straight line to my goals and aspirations I don't think the jo...

I am inspired by InspireMeThursday. The subject is ice, so therefore I need to be inspired. Ice is wonderful in a cocktail. Ice is a wonderful reason to stay home and embroider or knit. Ice is beautiful when it hangs off my gutter or during an ice storm when it just begins to hang off the trees. Ice makes me laugh when my dog takes for me an impromptu ski lesson down my front lawn. It also makes me laugh when I'm backing out of my driveway and I stop just in time to miss the basketball hoop. Ice makes me happy when it melts on a freezing cold day just from the sun. Most of all ice makes me think of all the warm things that make the ice bearable.

My husband is back and so is my laptop and this piece is called Dancin. Still not really in the dancin mood but feeling much better then yesterday! Dancin started out as a cross but I kept adding to it and adding to it and soon it looked like a dancer. It is varied threads of blue done in my favorite kind of hand embroidery where I use my needle as a paintbrush. It may have a new owner soon, a friend really likes it but can't decide between it and one of my hands(embroidered that is). So it's mine for a little while. Dancin also was a coop piece that never really had an opportunity to hang on my walls. So that is where it will be until whenever. I hope you all had a wonderful day and you spent some of your day dancin. Happy Stitching.

Well if you care to go back to June or if you were reading this blog back then, this purse will look hauntingly familiar, but since my husband has my laptop and I loaded all my new pictures onto that computer this blast from the past will have to do. This purse was in the coop the past few months and it has returned to me anyway. It is freeform thread crochet. I love to crochet with thread almost as much as I love to embroider. There was a time when I would just spend all my days crocheting with thread and making purses and baby sweaters and christening outfits, ornaments. I loved it. I used to put on Andrea Bocelli and take out my crochet needle and crochet the day away. I had a pretty good business when I lived on Long Island crocheting to my hearts content. Now I find my center in hand embroidery, but I am tempted to make another thread bag and put on Andrea Bocelli just to remember yesterday. Yesterday, or more accurately, years of yesterdays were so much tougher. I found ...

Since it is a freezing cold day and summer is no where in sight I decided to amuse myself with a little sunshine. This purse is called Wisteria on Silk. It is hundreds of purple french knots on a summery green vine on White Silk with a beautiful beaded handle. It is one of my favorite purses especially since it took so long to make. When I look at it, it reminds me of weddings, proms and many other joyous occasions during the summer. It has a lovely pale green satin lining and it really is a lovely piece. Perhaps if I have a joyous occasion this summer I will keep it for myself. But I am at the age where most of my friends are married and none of us have children old enough to get married. So perhaps it will be used for someone else's special occasion. Now to the art of it, which really is the point I suppose. It is interesting in it's simplicity. Basically it is green outline stitch with hundreds of purple french knots embroidered all the way around the top. I am a ...

I don't really have much to share. My digital camera needs to be charged as does myself. Friday I picked my work up from the coop. No hard feelings, no tears, just a quiet resignation. The end of a learning experience. All in all I am very grateful for the time I spent there. I learned a lot. I could have done without the last month but now I'm sort of resigned to the fact that I really wasn't meant to be there any longer and if it wasn't so obvious, perhaps it would have been sooner or later. As I left I wished them a successful holiday season and surprisingly I meant it. Not so surprisingly, it was a big part of my life for the last year. I had a wonderful time yesterday at a Christmas luncheon at a local country club selling my wares. The people were wonderful and I sold a few pieces that I had picked up from the coop on Friday. All in all not a bad day. The highlight being a lovely girl who bought my mohair madness purse. Sorry no picture but it was a h...