Tangled Stitch

Lotus Flower will be available in my Etsy shop.
 The lotus flower is influential in many different cultures.   They have been associated with the human soul,  gods and goddesses  and featured in stories and legends. Blessings to all.

Read more: Meaning of Lotus Flowers | eHow.comhttp://www.ehow.com/about_4762657_meaning-lotus-flowers.html#ixzz1tYdoI682 

Circles and Grids is available at Valley Artisan Market.   It is one of my favorite pieces because it signifies the circle of life.   There are so many circles and threads that connect all of us to each other  and to our universe. The french knots signify peace as I must focus on the task at hand  when making them and I find my center in them.  The colors I chose are peaceful and remind me of the ocean. The ocean tides go in and out and never get stagnant. Most of all when I am embroidering and listening to music I feel the love of the universe speaking to me.  My hope is that whoever takes this piece home will find their own story and their own peace in it. Blessings. 

I finally decided my future lies Beyond the Yellow Brick Road.  This piece will soon as in minutes be available at my Etsy shop.  And the song of the day is by Elton John.

This piece has a lot of meaning to me.  It signifies the end of one part of my life and the beginning of another.  I am going through my womanly changes and this piece was inspired by the most dreadful month and a half of my life and the yellow brick road signifies a new beginning.  A more light fare, kind of as Dorothy going off to see the wizard.  For me it will be a job, a new home, love of myself and a greater awareness of the universe I live in.  I have finally reached the point of moving forward and determining what will come with me.  Although I still hope the wizard has a couple of tricks up his sleeve for me, because in this very moment, I am unsure of anything at the end of this road. I will explore this more on my other blog. The Tangled Thread.  Blessings to all the wizards, the tin man, the cowardly li…

This piece is called Serenity.  It is available at Valley Artisans Market where I will be lucky enough to be working this afternoon, so if you are in the area please drop in.

I've made a decision about this blog.  I am going to use it strictly for my art with a brief description of my work and it's process and what it is about the piece that either made me create it, what I was inspired by or why I enjoyed it. There will be a picture everyday of something I have recently created or something that is currently in one of the shops and galleries I am fortunate enough to belong to.

Being the non computer geek I am, I originally started another blog which I started but couldn't get into isn't that always the way.  It is called the Tangled Thread and it will be used for my storytelling.  I would cut the yarns out but I think some people find inspiration in some of my blog posts so I am going to talk about my path from where I started to where I am now and things that intere…

This piece is Little Brown Bag and it is available in my Etsy Shop.

Morning has broken is a song by Cat Stevens.  It's my song of the day.  Each morning is a new beginning and we can choose how we are going to spend it and with who.  I am writing this blog post about this song because it is a lesson I need to learn.

We seem to lose the lesson that we are who we are deep inside.  We are all masterpieces.  A true artist can never replicate the same painting in exactly the same way.  Each moment is unique and each piece of art is unique.  The same is true about people.  It would be nice if we could all be a size 6 with beautiful long hair and curves in the right placces, but that would be very boring.

 In the moment we can choose love.  I love to do all kinds of wonderful needlecrafting things including crocheting beautiful one of a kind bags using textures and color.   I have included a photo of a close up of the bag so that you can see the texture and variations of color.

 Blessi…

This holly and berry wreath is now available in my Etsy shop.
I have been thinking a lot about hearts lately.  My heart and all of the wonderful hearts I embroider.  It is a symbol I just love to use in my embroidery.   Our hearts give us warmth some days and hurt others.  Our lives are just waiting for us to give our hearts away to someone.   When you are a hand embroidery artist it gives you lots of opportunities to give your heart away.
Every stitch is thought out and meditated over.  Every heart has meaning.  Combine the two and it is a surefire way to keep your heart functioning and your brain quiet.  This piece is made with my favorite calm down stitches, lots of little tiny brown stitches, surrounded by little green stitches and topped off with little red french knots like icing on a cake.    I need to remind myself of that every once in a while.  Especially when I haven't gotten enough sleep, my mind just wanders and rambles and a nice little embroidery project just calls…

This Wired Beaded Heart Sun is available on my Etsy site.

Technically it is not gold, it is red and orange but Heart of Gold by Neil Young is my song of the moment.  I no longer just have one song of the day I have dozens swimming around my head with the dolphins.  At the moment I am wishing I was on a beach looking at dolphins instead of dreary old Upstate NY hence the dolphins.  The real sun keeps going in and out and drabness is out there now. 

I love to stitch heart suns.  I've made quite a few of them, because they remind me that even on a rainy day it is possible to see sunshine somewhere in the universe.  Our moods are that way too, even when a drab drizzly day has invaded our brain, a little sunshine is never too far behind.

That is how I am choosing to see the world at the moment,  a little sunshine never too far behind.  I'm working a lot more which makes every single cloud in my sky disappear.  I'm moving forward, still no light on the horizon for a job but I&…

This piece is called Flowery Butterfly and it is available at my Etsy shop.

I feel like a Butterfly lately.  This piece was started sometime last year and  was almost completed but I found it in a drawer. Perhaps I started it and then another inspiration came to me or maybe I wasn't quite ready to be a butterfly and this piece had to be a cocoon for a while.

I have been a caterpillar most of my life.  Kind of warm and fuzzy and not yet formed.  Most of my life was spent catching up.  Till this day I am always catching up.  Then there was the cocoon stage where most of my artistic life was making beautiful things that I never finished and things I thought other people might like.

And now I am a butterfly.  Ready to branch out in bright colors and move from one beautiful project to the next and ready to spread my own personal wings.  At this time in my life I am grateful for the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly and am looking forward to the future in a way that is authe…

This piece is called Lifelines.  It will be available on my Etsy shop later today.  It is hand embroidery and Kantha stitching outlining the hand.

Lifelines is one of the first art pieces I made.  It reminds me that all of our lives are connected even those who are lost to us on Earth.  Nothing happens by accident, all of us have a purpose for being in each other's lives.  It reminds me that  I believe in dreams and signs and the universe and gives me a
realization of all the things I love that I want to take forward in my life  and to move on from the past.   It serves no purpose to look backwards. 

I have big dreams and I believe in them and I've reached a point where anything that doesn't fit into those dreams has to be left behind.  Most importantly I want to be an artist who shares her art in many different ways and uses all of her talents.  I want to follow my inner guidance and find the love for myself and the world .

The song of the day is What is Life?  by Georg…

 Light in the Darkness is the latest addition to my Etsy shop.

This past few months have been the most trying collectively of my life.   I've had to come to terms with the darkness I've carried around in my soul most of my life.  It is now time to move on and move into the light.  This heart represents that light.  I am making changes and I will start making better choices now that I know I must.  I am grateful for the experiences that allow me to understand that now is the  time to move on, figurately and spiritually.

We all have darkness in our life, every single one of us.  Some of us talk too much about it like myself and others keep it hidden. But everyone has darkness.  And everyone has light.  Life is a journey of peaks and valleys, goods and bads, highs and lows.  Metaphors are metaphors for a reason.  I have realized that I can no longer live in the dark side of my soul. I can no longer give anyone the power to make myself unauthentic.  So that means surrender.  I c…

This piece is called Red Barn and White Picket Fences it is available at my Etsy shop.

Gratitude!  This morning I woke up with a different attitude.  I realized that the more time I focus on what is wrong at the moment the more I lose a little piece of my soul.  So today I've decided to be grateful for all the wonderful things currently in my life and for the dreams I hope to fulfill in the future. 

I am grateful for the Red Barn in Burnt Hills where I will be doing an artisan show on Saturday.  I had such a wonderful time when I did the show in the fall.  It was a day filled with really nice people who made really beautiful art so I am really looking forward to Saturday.

I am grateful for my son and my husband.  They both have given me much to be grateful for even though the three of us are all moving in different directions.  I am also grateful for the rest of my family and friends both here and scattered to the wind.  I have been blessed with a lot of really good people in my…

This piece is called Blue-Eyed Blues.  It is available at my etsy shop.  It is a raw edge quilt measuring approximately 8x10.  It is hand embroidery(but of course)on watercolored fabric with coordinating fabrics of my choice.  It features french knots(but of course), straight stitches, backstitches and kantha stitching was used for the Quilting. 

Today was one of those days when you realize you just have to surrender to what is.  I am deterred quite a bit but not giving up.  I have to believe that at the end of this particular part of my life, everyone involved will have learned how to be a better person, including myself.

As I was lamenting my day I realized that I have never really had to depend on myself.  I've been married for such a long time and I am always asking for advice but never really trusting my own instincts.  So I think although I will still ask for advice and cherish it, I have to start listening to my own instincts.  It's something I'm going to have to …

This piece is called The Leap.  It is the newest piece in my Etsy shop.

Hi All!  This was going to be my first piece listed on Etsy, but I don't think I was really ready for the Leap to happen.    Right now though the only thing I can think of is the Leap into my dreams of the present.  I'm at one of those strange times in your lives when everything is saying move on but there are no clear answers to what direction that should take.  So being a hand embroidery artist with a blog and an Etsy account here I am.

I am so ready for the rest of my life to begin.  To move on in a way that allows me to be authentic and real.  The authentic DebraAnn likes to talk a blue streak so therefore my blog will always have more words then people want to read.  So if you stop after the first sentence where it tells you that this piece is available on Etsy so be it.  The authentic DebraAnn loves to embroider,  I really love it.  I've come to the conclusion recently that when I take hand embr…

This piece is called The Light Within and it is available at the Katbird Shop in Schenectady.

I made this piece a few years ago and never has it been more a metaphor for my life.  I am a living example of why women should follow their bliss, make themselves happy, and be in control of their own life and their own light. 

A few months back I mentioned a loved one who seemed to think she needed a man to be complete and my solution was to espouse on my blog about how no man should be necessary to complete any woman's life.  Find your embroidery and your Black Keys was my answer.  Wrote it with a straight face too I might add.  Needless to say this loved one has moved on and I am currently in the midst of a very complicated marital situation and struggling to embroider every day.

I did bring the Black Keys back into my eardrums and I can still embroider when I put on my head phones and block out the rest of the world.   Or when I do mantras which do help in the short term but my cur…

French Knot Explosion is available in my Etsy shop.  It is different shades of orange, red and yellow on black fabric in a 5 x 7 frame.
French Knot Explosion is a metaphor for my life at the moment.  My life inexplicably exploded about a month and a half ago.  Everything that was there before is somehow irrevocably changed now.  I have emerged from that explosion somewhat tarnished but somehow I feel almost like a Phoenix rising out of the ashes.
There are times in your life where you realize you just can't go back to the way things were.  You really have no choice but to move forward in the moment and see where life brings you.  That's my life at the moment.  Moving forward.  I am determined to move forward in peace and tranquility and see where not leading with my emotions brings me.  I have always been a good talker but not so much a good doer.  I made lots of plans and somehow I leave them on the cutting room floor along with all the other emotions I've acted out in m…

This lovely sparrow is available at Valley Artisans Market, where I will be tomorrow afternoon if you happen to be in the neighborhood.
I was at a loss really as to what to write today and then I settled on the Valley Artisans Market as it is one of my favorite places in the world to work.  Not just work as a salesperson which is a joy all by itself, but as an artist.
I really have been blessed to be accepted by some of the most talented artists I have ever met along with meeting exceptionally nice people, both artists and customers alike.  It's easy to see why I like being a salesperson there because every time I am there I meet another extraordinary person I would have never met otherwise.  I have met young artists, new artists, established artists, reiki healers,  and others with beautiful souls, including a monk who thankfully did not take a vow of silence as he was a delight to speak with. 

The work and the quaility of the work by all the artists is just extraordinary and I…

Love is the latest Art Heart added to my Etsy store.

Love is such a complicated emotion.  It gives us great joy, it stops us dead in our tracks, it sneaks up on us and it can make us absolutely miserable.  I think all of us can relate to those descriptions and many more.

I think the most important definition and the one that I myself need to work on is to Love ourselves.  Just the way we are.  Nobody is perfect, it's silly to even think we can try to be.  We all do things out of our character every once in a while.  We like to keep those imperfect moments to ourselves(or in my case screaming from a mountaintop) but then they fester in our souls and our psyches until they just eat us alive.  So along with the forgiveness we give others, we have to learn to forgive ourselves, love ourselves and move on. 

I am going to show my love for myself by embroidering.  I am going to show my love for my family by keeping this and other personal issues private. Lastly,  I am going to show my …

The name of this piece is Transformation.  It is not for sale at this time.  It is hand embroidery on muslin and I have taken the glass off .  In person it is so much lovelier then it was with the glass covering the details and the textures of the piece.

The Power of a dream can be transformational.  It certainly has been in my life. I needed a reminder that if you hope and you pray and you work and you never give up you can live your dream too.  I am trying to move on in a conventional way with my life, and I am a rather unconventional kind of person so perhaps I need to believe in fairy tales myself.

Where I live and how I got here are a perfect example of how a simple dream and a belief that it can be done can make it happen.  I have a much longer version of this tale but perhaps that is better left for a magazine article I might write if I end up following that dream too.

I had a dream.  A beautiful dream.  A dream in which a long haired angel led me through the woods and the for…

Hope is the newest item available in my Etsy Shop.  It is a hanging pillow hand embroidered on watercolored fabric.

Hope is a word that gets used rather commonly.  I hope I pass this test.  I hope the boy next to me asks me to the dance.  I hope I get my rebate check.

Hope is also a word that connotes great danger ,risk and optimism.  I hope my test results come back negative, I hope I can find a job that will feed my children.  I hope that I can just get the will to wake  up tomorrow morning.  These are the times when hope and optimism is of the most importance.  The times when the answer really could mean the difference between life and death.  The times when we need a higher power to answer our prayers.  When we just need something to believe in. 

I am in one of those optimistic times when I need hope to help me follow through on a number of different avenues of my life.  My mountain seems a little bit high for me to get to the top, but I'm going to keep climbing one step aft…

f Happy Easter to one and all!

This piece is called Reverence.  It is available on my Etsy Shop.  http://www.etsy.com/shop/DebraAnnSalat

I was going to wait until after Easter to start listing my work on Etsy and then I thought a bit about it and realised there is no better time to get started then the present.  I am ready to walk to the light, leave the past behind and and start over.  Easter  seemed like the perfect time to start that transformation. 

I am so grateful for all the people and angels who have touched my life up until now.  No matter what lesson they taught me good or bad, it was a lesson I needed to learn.  But it is time for me to start my own journey.  I will carry many of the people and lessons along with me but it is time for me to reflect, create and move on.

The past few months have been quite a lesson about what is important in life. How important our families are.  They make us who we are today and have taught us the lessons we needed to know. No matter what …

There comes a time in everyone's life when they hit a crossroad.  They can live in darkness and follow their ego whereever it takes them.  Or they can choose to be light and walk with peace and joy towards the future they want for themselves and the future they want for everyone else.

I have hit that crossroad and decided to choose the light side of life.  As I wrote in yesterday's blog post somethings are constant, some things are changing.  I am changing my life as a human being, but I have been changed as a soul also.  I have made some foolish choices in my life living with most of my fears hidden in the darkness of my soul.  Now  I must wallk towards a life lived out in the open peacefully and joyfully.

I can make the choice.  I can open the blinds, get rid of the emotional  clutter that has bogged me down  and make myself lighter and move on.  Or I can live with all the regrets of the mistakes I have made along the way and stay where I am today.  I am going to unburden m…

Constant and changing.  The moon and the stars are a constant, there are different phases and weather conditions might not allow you to see them, but they are always up there somewhere night after night.  Stars have always been used as a guide through the darkness, something bright and sparkly when darkness overtakes.  In my life my son has been my moon and my stars, something bright and shiny in a life that sometimes lives in darkness. Everyone has days in their life when they live in darkness.  It's nice to know there is a bright shiny star to move towards when they really cannot find their way out of the darkness.

Trees are ever changing.  They go from barren to fully leaved to their highest potential.  I love trees.  Each one is unique and I can appreciate that uniqueness when there are no leaves and you can admire a tree in all of it's twisted gnarly glory.  I love spring trees when there are just tiny buds to show us that transformation is possible.  I love summer treee…

Let me introduce my goddess, Anabora.  She was made a few years ago and stayed mostly folded in a drawer since her creation.  But somehow overcoming the month of March has made me want to frame her and share her and some of the things she stands for.

She stands for hand embroidery, as I love to embroider just for the love of it more than anything in the world besides my son.  She stands for motherhood and unconditional love.  I know there is nothing my son could ever do to me that I would not forgive him for he is the sun in my universe.  The reason I wake up every single morning just to be his mother.

She stands for light in the darkness.  For the life of me I don't remember why I decided to embroider her on black but she seems very suited for the DebraAnn I see today.  March was one of the darkest months I've ever had in my life.  One of those dark months of the soul(actually more like two weeks but not really relevant at this point).  There are so many people who just live…

TURTLE : Mother Earth : Turtle is the oldest symbol for the Earth. It is the personification of goddess energy and the eternal Earth itself.  Turtles also signify longevity, creativity and grounding. Their shells protect them from the few predators the turtle encounters.

I think I would like to touch on the goddess energy of the turtle. I never really thought of myself as a goddess in any way. Although I do have an embroidered piece that is folded up somewhere which I might frame one of these days that I created as my goddess. I gave her a name and everything. But back when I made her, I never would have told people she was my goddess. Even now the word goddess makes me a bit uncomfortable.  But somewhere in my soul I think every woman should think of herself as a goddess.

We are the beings who make the work of the Gods(or so they think) possible.  We do all the little things men need to have done for them.  We have children and raise them.  We cook for and nurture them.  Some o…

Ok so I know I just posted a blog post.   But manual labor screamed out to me.(I consider framing manual labor) So I framed this piece.  I named it Peace because that is what it is to me.  It is hundreds and hundreds of french knots with gridded circles placed randomly.  The picture really does not do it justice but hopefully you can see the detail if you click on it.

Peace was made using my favorite peaceful colors, pale blues and greens.  Doesn't matter what I am making if I'm using pale blues and greens it is peaceful. And well add the hundreds and hundreds of french knots and it was a wonderful peaceful project to embroider and framing it went rather well also. 

I'm leaving the other post on the blog as it was my moment.  But framing this peace changed my moment.  If you are in a crappy mood find something to change your moment too.  Blessings see you soon. 

The Light Within It is available at the Katbird Shop


This peace was done a while ago but it seems very relevant to me at the moment.  My heart feels one thing and my head is telling me a different tale.  Whenever I go deep inside my heart and soul, I feel peace and whenever the supposedly more rational logical brain takes over I'm conflicted and confused.
Now a few months ago we would not be having this discussion.  I was very happily embroidering every moment and listening to divine music in my ears while I did it.  The world was shiny and new and filled with possibilities with my work and my life.  Now my personal relationships seem very muddied and unclear, my job prospects are nil and I'm just exhausted from the tightrope I'm walking on. If I stay steady and keep moving forward my future will be very bright.  If I go backwards,my future will be very bleak as I am not living a life I've imagined, I'm living in a prison of my own making. And then there is the ti…