Tangled Stitch

This piece is called Serenity. It is currently available at Valley Artisans Market in Cambridge, NY. Rest.  We all need to.  We all need to sleep and rest and restore.  Somehow the universe doesn't seem to have gotten this message. So many people in my universe are having problems going to sleep and staying asleep. My  friends, my facebook friends and almost everyone I run into lately is having problems sleeping. But why?  Is it because our days are so hectic we can't wind down, or is it just the general state of unrest around the world?  Wars, school shootings, politics, unemployment, every single day something horrible happens, not just horrible but catastrophic.  So many people are in just a general state of  despair. Is it hormones or the planet turning the wrong way on it's axis.  I'm not a scientist so I don't really know the answer to that, but I do believe in the bigger picture. Most of my friends are artists nowadays.  O...

Happy Birthday to my brothers!  Anthony is the little dark haired cute one and Laurence is the blond cherubic looking one.  Anthony is 51 today and Laurence died on the operating table when he was 4  from an operation to fix a hole in his heart.  I guess you could say we carry that hole part around with us to this day.  The part that's missing but still kind of there.  My brother has a cat for his facebook picture and I have an embroidered Bluebird so you can kind of separate the three of us but there are things that keep us together even though we are all planted in different places. The lower picture is a picture of Anthony and I  with our cousins(who we saw so often as children they were kind of siblings).  We were all incredibly close and this was my communion day.   If you look closely at the picture you will see the Anthony I remember. He is wearing my communion cape and has a huge space in the middle of his bangs because he cut his...

This is a beautiful soulful song taking on one of the most important messages of life. “Live your every day like you're running out of time” and “Try to find you something that won't fade away in time”   Please listen.  It's kind of a beautiful soulful way of saying find your black keys and your embroidery .Have a great day .  Be back tomorrow with pictures. Vhttp://www.chartattack.com/news/2012/feb/24/listen-michael-kiwanuka-dan-auerbach-the-black-keys-%E2%80%93-%E2%80%9Clasan%E2%80%9D

The name of this piece is Unconventional. It can be found at The Katbird Shop in Schenectady, N.Y. Originally Unconventional was going to be embroidered on Orange water-colored fabric, but then I opted for blue because I wanted to show that although every thing else is "normal" the house is different. Every house is different and every person living in that house is different. My home is in upstate New York, it is the most beautiful, peaceful healing place I have ever lived. I grew up in New Jersey a block away from the second biggest superfund sight in the country, although when I was growing up it was just a paint factory spewing the chemicals from the paint into the air and not into the ground water supply. I was sick all the time growing up. Then I lived in Bayside, Queens. An experience so horrible I just choose to forget it. It was never peaceful and you couldn't distinguish the Fourth of July from a war zone. I was sick all the time. And then I lived o...

I live to be inspired. No other way around it. In the past year I have been so blessed. This is Garden Tree. This is the piece that started the wonderful journey I have undertaken. The piece that started the realization that I am an artist. Sometimes you can make art and not feel like an artist. Artist is such a loaded word really. It means you see the world through a different lens. You have to be thick-skinned, inspired, tenacious, and positive and sometimes in real life those attributes are hard to find in yourself. When you really start to express yourself, your world totally changes. When you finally decide this is who I am and this is who I want to be, the world accepts your uniqueness and you move forward into the life you've imagined. Simply all those wonderful inspirational sayings are inspiring for a reason. Because until you believe them somewhere in your soul they will just never happen. No matter how hard you try. Every unique individual has a unique path t...

Hand of Tree , a photo by DebraAnn813 on Flickr. This piece is called Tree Hand. It's currently available at Valley Artisans Market in beautiful Cambridge, NY. Thursday I worked up in the market and had just a marvelous time. I love to work there and Thursday was a total embroidery day. I worked on my latest project and brought my Christmas gift embroidery books with me and of course met the coolest people. I always meet the coolest people when I'm there, maybe because all that beautiful art by so many different artists just brings out the artist in all of us. Sometimes I just have to pinch myself when I think of how blessed I am to have my work in so many wonderful places and all the wonderful people I've met on my artistic journey. There are just too many of them to list each one but I think each of the artists I've met and the shop and gallery owners I work with all have that one special thing. The love of art. The love of music and literature and interest in...

This is Tallulah. I went up to North Creek with my traveling artist companion Cheryl to drop off some of her beautiful glass and Tallulah and a few of her friends to Nancy at Seven Sisters Gift Shop in North Creek. We had a great time laughing and gabbing all the way up and all the way down the mountain. And yes it was even misty and raining and ice pelleting. But thankfully Cheryl drove and she is a pro at driving in adverse weather conditions and yes it is as beautiful in North Creek when the weather is not snowy or sunny. I am such a lucky gal to have met such great artists and friends in the last few years and yes it is great to reconnect on Facebook with older friends too. You never have too many friends and they just make your life wonderful. They fill in all the little pieces of you whether they be the first boy you danced with, your first real boyfriend and his wife, the girls you went down the shore with and drove up rt 9 with , all your shake your booty girl friends from...

Beauty and Joy are vastly underrated. This little love pillow is beautiful in it's simplicity yet joyful for the wonderful french knots it contains. I can appreciate the beauty and joy of simplicity in all things. The crow who struts across my front lawn is beautiful and he is joyous when he finds a nice tasty worm. My dog is beautiful because she is a little furry soul and her joy is when she can convince one of us to play squeaky ball with her. There is beauty in trees and joy in the knowledge that soon there will be buds. There is beauty and joy all around us but somehow we are always to busy to enjoy it. This morning was an April morning in February. I had all intentions of working all day and then on my way home from the market I decided to take a short walk. On my walk I was thrilled to notice the sky, blue with grayish white clouds. I was thrilled to feel the spring air on my cheeks and the unexpected warmth with just a tinge of cold to make inhaling even better. I w...

This little bird is named Kuku! I absolutely adored making her and couldn't wait to stuff her. She is several different colors of red and orange and her stars are lime green with orange french knot centers. I am going to make her lots of friends and hopefully someone will buy her and a friend so that she is not ever lonely. I guess you can tell from my posts and my work that I am very happy lately. Being able to work so much is definitely the best thing in the world. Having a soundtrack is lots of fun too and having wonderful friends and loved ones and seeing(or Facebooking) them often is another reason why. But I think the difference is finding happiness between the ears. Finding the ability to love yourself no matter what is going on in your life, laughter, dancing, and a little bit of crazy really are the best medicine. I think if people just tried to make themselves happy and gave themselves permission to be happy it would be the greatest gift to themselves, their loved...

Sunny Sampler , a photo by DebraAnn813 on Flickr. This piece is called Sunny Sampler. I hope you like it. Sunny Sampler was done a while ago and it is available at The Katbird Shop. It is one of my favorite pieces. It's bright and cheerful and orange. The color orange is such a wonderful color to work with, it's hard to be blue or gray or anything other than happy when whistling a happy tune and embroidering with a cheerful color. And to see bright blue skies with beautiful fluffy clouds is also the most wonderful thing. Something about the winter sky when it is blue makes it just magnificent. Today I'm working on some hearts to replenish my supply and as a gift after embroidering in gray for a few days. I'm working this morning on a Bluebird of Happiness, actually just a bluebird but bluebirds are the official bird of happiness, or at least I think they are. And the other wonderful thing about making bluebirds is that part of them are orange. Blue and orange...

This is the current piece I am working on. It is going to be several different colors but at the moment I am working on the gray. Not very inspiring but I'm sure that lack of inspiration will be lost when I move on to the other colors. I guess in a world where you are what you eat, you are what you stitch also. Even though the weather has been exceptionally mild, that hasn't erased that particular color of gray that is present when the sky isn't a beautiful blue. It sort of permeates my soul if I let it. But to counter all that gray I have used tiny bits of blue in the gray in the stitchery. It's kind of amazing what color or the lack of it, does to a piece and does to your psyche. It's important to break up the gray in our lives also, imperative really. I feel at my best when my outlook is bright and sunny and whimsical so I'm also working on some tiny little bright and cheerful hearts which brighten my mood. Also ever present are the headphones which ...

Put on your work shoes mama and your morning coat. That is the song in my heart for this morning. In reality it's more like slippers and fiberfill(still stuffing hearts). But every morning I wake up with a different song in my heart and then I listen to it to cement the mood. Lately I've found that the morning really does set the mood for the rest of the day. I've also found that music can soothe even the most savage of beasts. The one in all of us before our morning coffee. I used to watch a lot of television, but my friend Cheryl doesn't own one(well she owns one it just never gets turned on)and she is the most prolifically and inspiring artist I know. She listens to classical music, I listen to the Black Keys. I just love to embroider to them, high energy but not too overwhelmingly loud(except for El Camino which I listen to in my car). I've also taken to listening to the blues which are also great for embroidering. The most important part of this paragra...

Hi All! The name of this piece is Orange Drops. It is currently residing at Samantha's Cafe waiting for a more permanent home. I really love the color orange lately. So cheerful and bright. It's been a very strange winter season up here in the Northeast. Good for the people probably not so good for the planet. But it's kind of a weirdish early spring vibe that keeps asking the question about whether global warming could be a possibility or whether it will snow in May. My life kind of feels like that lately too. Kind of a weirdish vibe. Creative and busy and kinda stuck at points too. Can't put my finger on it really, except I guess to say when I'm working I'm totally engrossed in my projects but it's kind of easy to break my attention stream and lose hours at a time. I am so fortunate though that I am loving what I am doing and loving all the outlets I'm fortunate enough to have my work in. So life is good and kinda boring which makes for a m...

This blog post is written on a really gloomy day outside, but a good day to wish for sunshine inside. This lovely sun heart is at the Katbird Shop in Schenectady waiting for a home if you need a little sunshine inside. This post is also an ode to my mothership. I finally went to the doctor last week and my mothership is doing well, except for a little too much sugar and certainly not enough Vitamin D(really not enough). The sugar can be improved by diet and exercise, both badly needed. The vitamin D is a megadose once a week and a little bit of sunshine and some vitamin D enriched foods the rest of the time. I kind of think of this vitamin deficiency as my vampire weekend. I am a hand embroidery artist who would rather be inside embroidering than just about anything else. No I don't have a coffin but I do have a hand embroidered cocoon. And I don't collect blood but does red embroidery floss count? Even as a kid I would love to be inside doing some needling instead of outsid...

It seems I've been tied up in French Knots lately. This is called Sailor's Knot and the coloration is more like the larger picture but I thought the small one was kind of cool and it does show the details. I love French Knots for many reasons. First they are the most mindful stitch in the hand embroidery handbook, you can't be doing 10 different things at the same time as you are doing one french knot. it gives incredible texture to the pieces it is stitched on. Its very versatile, it can be used as one single stitch in the middle of a daisy or you can go hog wild french knotty and make an entire piece out of hundreds and hundreds of french knots. I also think they show the definition and subtlety of each color when colors are changed after a few french knots as illustrated here. But mostly I love them because they are my favorite stitch. If I ever do manage to hand embroider a cocoon for myself, the french knots will have a prominent spot. Sorry it's been a whil...