Lotus Flower

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.com http://www.ehow.com/about_4762657_meaning-lotus-flowers.html#ixzz1tYdoI682



Circles

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.



Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

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 lion, the scarecrow and of course Dorothy and Toto.

Valley Artisans Market

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 interest me. I hope you will follow that blog too.  Blessings to you.

Morning Has Broken

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.

 Blessings.

You're in My Heart

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 my name and says calm down girl you can fret and worry tomorrow.  Today you have to look after your  own heart.

So a looking I will go.  Blessings to you, find your holly and berries and music you love.   You're in My Heart was done by Rod Stewart back in the day.

Heart of Gold

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'm looking everyday and perhaps the perfect job for a sunny disposition is right out there somewhere.  And I'm writing my blog which gives me a great deal of joy now that I've dealt with most of the drabness. 

So I guess what I'm saying is, go make your own version of a heart sun.  Do something wonderful that brings the joy and warmth of the sun into your heart.  We only have the moment so try to make them count and try to make them sunny.  Blessings.

Flowery Butterfly

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 authentic to myself and lived in love and peace. Colorful, faithfilled and believing that there is an answer out there somewhere to my heart's biggest questions. Blessings to you.

PS I am also adding one of my wreath hearts to Etsy as they are the most fun I can have embroidering, such tiny little green stitches and loads of french knots.  I could do berries and holly forever but then it would get boring.

What is Life?

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 George Harrison, who was a very complicated man but wrote many inspiring songs.  I still embroider to the Black Keys the majority of the time, so find your embroidery and your Black Keys and create.  Create the world you want to live in.  NOW.

Light in the Darkness



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 can't change the things I can't change but I can forgive myself and forgive others and move on. That's all any of us can do. 

So I have surrendered to the universe and I will just wait and see what happens moving forward inch by inch until I have walked completely  into the light part of my soul which is where my life will lead me.  Blessings to you and I hope you find solace of the sun and the moon and the stars in your darkest periods.

Gratitude

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 life.

I am grateful for my hand embroidery and my art.  It seems I was able to express myself so much better in my art then I was able to express myself in words(which I used a hell of a lot of).  Some times you can talk so much that you can't really hear your heart and soul calling out to you.

So this is my attitude at this moment which is all we really ever have.  Our past is over and our future is something we walk towards every day.  I am grateful for the realization that but for the grace of god go I.  There will always be people better off then you are and there will always be people who need a lot more assistance and care then you do.  So blessings on your path and be grateful for everyone and everything you have in your life.  Everything is there to teach you lessons so learn them and move on..

Blue Eyed Blues

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 learn anyway at some point.  So as I look for a job, and then a place to live I'm going to have to figure out how to be my own barometer.  I realized that a cluttered head in a cluttered room in a cluttered house in a cluttered world is something that's not very good for me or my future.  So I am going to spend some of my time uncluttering myself.

And I'm gonna be thankful for all those people who helped me live for the last 52 years since so many people have truly been wonderful and caring and giving .  So thank you all!  And a word to the wise, please make sure you take care of yourself, because one day you are going to have to and it really can be quite an eyeopener.  Blessings and hopefully tomorrow will be better than ever.

The Leap

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 embroidery out of my life for whatver reason I completely derail.  It is the one constant in my ever changing life and the only thing I have control over at the moment.  My pieces come straight out of my head.  Even the littlest ornaments come kind of organically from some place inside my head, my heart and my soul.  And the authentic DebraAnn loves music, all kinds of different music although it is still easier to embroider with the Black Keys in my headphones.  I think I really like the idea of real at the moment instead of the BS we all tell each other about how wonderful our lives are when they aren't.

Little did I think years ago that this particular piece would hold so much meaning.  I'm taking a leap.  I don't know where I'll land or when I'll land but I know that soon this uncertainty will be behind me in my new life .  I think it's the authenticity thing that makes this moment so unlike other moments.  I could very easily go get a job doing anything.  I'm a really nice person and I have a way with making other people comfortable with their own lot in life. I've never really had a problem getting a job unless it was one I wasn't qualified for.   That probably means a sales career somewhere down the line.  But that isn't what's calling me at the moment.  Whats calling me are my dreams.   When I close my eyes and find some peace in my head, the voice in it tells me follow your dreams and don't let them go.  So now what?

Well I know I woke up this morning and made 3 hearts before noon.  That's something that hasn't happened in a couple of months.  I know I put a piece in my Etsy Shop, that's moving forward too.  I know I'm going to change my resume so it makes a little more sense and I'm gonna look for a job. More changes.  I just have to keep making progress and hope that the answer comes to me sooner or later in my path to a new life.  But sitting around playing on the computer all day isn't really the answer to those questions unless it is to blog, to be inspired, to chat with some real friends, or to put my work out there in the universe.  So I'm gonna be a little less visible and a whole lot more peaceful. 

Blessings to you and good luck on your leaps of faith and your pathway.

The Light Within

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 current situation begs a more long term solution. I have been living through hell frankly for the last couple of months, because I did not heed my own advice.  That a woman does not need a man to complete her life she needs to find her own light and follow it.  Whereever it will take her. 

She has to listen to her own unique qualities, find peace in her heart and follow her freakin dream and do anything possible to create that reality.  If I had taken my own advice a few months ago we really wouldn't be having this conversation.  But again, God does not give you these experiences unless he wants you to share them so here I am espousing my opinion of a woman and what she needs again.

Take my advice, even if you find the love of your life.  Make your own life.  Follow your own light, make yourself ready for any eventuality that may arise and find whatever makes you happy enough to do that.  Because I'll be quite honest, following a pickup truck on the highway because you think there is a man on a white horse in it doesn't really work out so well for you.  It blows up your life and everybody unfortunate enough to be in your life.

So now I have to take my own advice and follow the light in my soul and follow my dreams, embroider, write my blog(sorry if this one was uncomfortable for you) and hope that dreams do come true because the reality of a woman with not so many options is not pretty. At times I can be delightful and witty and funny, it's really hard to do those things sometimes when you have no choice but to leap into the future on a wing and a prayer.

Blessings to you and I hope that if you are single, engaged or married you follow your path into the light however you deem necessary because failure really isn't a good option.

French Knot Explosion

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 my life. 

Now I have a new beginning, a rebirth, a chance to start over.  While I'm trying to figure out what I should bring with me, I'm dealing with all the clutter from a life filled with too many words and not enough actions.  It's really hard to take a leap of faith in life, even when you've made so many mistakes that the leap is your only option. 

My life at the moment is about discovering what is too priceless to leave behind, what is too unimportant to take with me and hand embroidery and my blog.  They are the only things I can control at the moment and being an embroidery artist and writing this blog are parts of a dream I had a long time ago when I was just a little girl.  I loved to embroider and I wanted to be a writer.

The only other time I had a dream and followed it through with a leap of faith was moving from my house on Long Island with  my family to upstate NY which is home.  It was a remarkable, miraculous story from beginning to end.  I  feel like that is the direction of my current life too.  I made it all the way up here and now I have to follow the rest of my dreams the rest of the way too.  It may be a leap, but at the moment it is the only option. 

Blessings to you and your family, friends and everyone else too priceless to leave behind.  If you are taking a leap too, try to do it peacefully and lovingly because life is much too short to fill another human being's life with so much pain and heartache.  Forgive me for being a mere mortal with a penchant for explosions of the real and french knotty kind.

Valley Artisans Market

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 am flattered beyond words that  they thought my work belonged there too.  I just marvel at how beautiful and inspiring everything is from the tiniest greeting card to a beautiful painting I wish was on my wall.  There is something there to catch every person's eye.  I could really go on for days about all the beautiful items there but you will just have to come in and see for yourself.

And finally there is the work of this artist.  There is such a wonderful energy in the building.  Perhaps it is because it is beneath the legendary Hubbard Hall or perhaps it is the residual good energy left by all of us artists that are lucky enough to work there a couple days a month.  But it is so easy to be inspired and be creative I really can't put it into words that would do it justice.  I suppose by now you know I am a rather sensitive type in more ways then one, but the ability to pick up positive energy(along with it's ugly stepsister, negative energy) is a always a blessing when I'm at the market.  It's always a very inspiring positive day there and the idea that I was able to discover my true artistic nature just puts the icing on the cake.

So I guess what I'm saying is sometimes when you least expect it, a fabulous opportunity comes along to follow your bliss, be inspired by others and meet extraordinary people. So if that opportunity should ever come to you, take a leap.  It could just end up being the two greatest days of your month and change your life in the process.  And even better if time permits I'm going back to visit the monastery which brought me such tremendous peace and clarity the last time I was there.

Blessings to you and if you are in the neighborhood please come on in to Valley Artisans Market, even if I'm not there.  You will be so inspired and glad that you came.

Love

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 love for humanity by reminding each and every one of us, that if we do something in love and we send it out to the universe our love will travel all over the world.  One person and one soul at a time.

The Power of a Dream

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 forest(a rather idyllic woods and forest) to a beautiful cabin on the water where I would sell my work in a little shop on the property.  At the time I lived on Long Island where this particular tale could never happen unless you were a multimillionaire, but I digress.

I convinced my husband and my son to follow that dream whereever it took us and thankfully for me they made the journey with me.  We encountered so many obstacles to get here, namely the disbelief that a family could uproot themselves and move to a completely different life because of a dream.  But that being said, I believe in signs and dreams and everything else metaphysical that goes along with those beliefs.

I made a plan, put a picture on my refrigerator, put my intentions in writing and then kind of let the universe take over.  Whenever I would hit upon the right thing for us I would find street names like Wood-Ridge or Huntington which is where my husband and I grew up.  I would find street names like Brian which is my son's name.  I found so many markers along the way that I even found a house that was previously owned by someone with the name of my mother in laws family.  I didn't end up in that house but I did end up in the right house for us at the moment.

When those obstacles arose, I was working in a kiosk in a mall on Long Island.  Almost every single day I met someone from up here in the Albany area and oddly enough there was a girl who worked in the Disney Store right next to my kiosk and her name was DebraAnn and she had lived in Clifton Park before moving back to Long Island.  I took all of those signs as a sign to keep my eye on the goal I had set.

It was a rather long story of synchronicity and metaphysical activity that really does warrant something longer then a blog.  But somehow the belief in that dream and the help of the universe made that dream come true.  Except for the cabin and the water and the shop(although now I am on Etsy). 

So now I find myself at the different end of the dream, the one where I take who I am at the moment and transform my life into what and where I want to be in the future.  The conventional signs in the real world at the moment are rather dismal.  The synchronicities and signs pointing towards my future are all green lights ahead. So many of them it's kind of overwhelming.  So in the next few months I will be exploring my dreams, my work, my inspirations and how they all fit together to give me the life I imagined as Thoreau put it.

I also hope that I have given you enough of a background and a clear sense of how your inner voice and the universe can work together to help you follow your dreams.  The world is kind of a tough place to be an inhabitant of at the moment.  Many people have lost hope and lost their dreams.  But I chose today as a reminder that yes it can happen to you and yes it can exceed even your own expectations.

Blessings on your path.  Transform your life and do it from the inside to the way out there.

Hope

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 after another until I reach where I want to be.  I need to believe in Hope and optimism at the moment.

Hopefully if you are looking for something inspiring you will find the hope and optimism to help you on your journey too.  Blessings to all.


Happy Easter

 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 happens amongst families there is always love somewhere in the mix.

My friends have just been amazing the last few months or my entire lifetime.  I have a real knack for picking the most wonderful people to be my friends.  I cannot adequately comment on how wonderful and nurturing my friends have been in the last few months.


My art and hand embroidery.  It is through them that I really started to find myself.  I learned how to meditate to embroidery and how to work, really work hard towards my goals.  I found joy and peace and love in expressing myself and in embroidering.  I realise today that it is my saving grace and that if I am not embroidering or making art,  I just am not functioning. Period.

Love.  Without love we are nothing.  We need it to survive the ordinary occurances which leave us breathless and hurt alongside the roadside.  We need it to open our heart and to move forward to a better life. 

Light.  This is the direction I am going.  Both metaphorically and in life, this is my direction.  I can't really carry the burdens of the past anymore so I am giving them up to a higher power and I am giving up the unimportant things that make it so hard to see the important things.

Blessings to you and your family on this most sacred of holiday seasons.  I hope that you find your light and move towards it with peace, joy, love and forgiveness and find yourself hidden in there somewhere.

The Light

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 myself of the heaviness of my life up until this moment.  I offer forgiveness for anyone or anything  who has brought me pain and  I wish nothing but happiness for all of the souls I have met on my journey, I hope they too find the light. 

My work will take a slightly different turn, but not too different.  Embroidery has been the one constant in my life.  It is my salvation.  It allows me to express myself in many different ways.  The overriding theme of most of my embroidery work has been light.  This hand has a star in the middle of it.  Hope is the piece of art which has a hand coming out of it with light streaming out into the blackness .   I make crosses,  suns, whimsical creatures and hearts.  Lots and lots of hearts. It has been that work that has been shining out of my lighter happier soul.

Starting Monday I will be putting my work on Etsy.  I am moving towards a more independent light filled life.   I am choosing to move on, closer to the true nature of my work and my soul. I'm hoping that everyone who reads this on this most religious of holiday weekends recognizes that they too are capable of finding light at the end of the tunnel.  I am still committed to finishing the work of other souls to bring solace to their loved ones.   If you have a needlecrafted piece from a loved one which is folded up and hidden in a drawer because you cannot finish it and cannot give it away, I can do it for you so your loved one's work is out in the open and can be enjoyed.  It will be one less piece of emotional baggage.that you carry from place to place.

We all have pain and sorrow and things we really do not want to talk about in the light of day.  I will listen and understand.  If you need solace of any sort you can email me at das813@hotmail.com.  I understand the need for solace in a lifetime.  I will be your light.

Blessings to all and stay tuned for the next part of my life.

Constant and Changing

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 treees that are leafy to their highest potential giving us shade from the hot sun and reminding us of summers that have passed. And then there are autumn trees.  They are my favorite, as resplendent in color and beauty as you could ever imagine. Living in the part of the country that I live in, I am in awe of the colors and beauty of an autumn tree and the ability to see trees change in every season in a beautiful way.

We live in a world where there are reminders daily of constants and changing winds.  We all bear a responsibility to move with those constants and move through those changes.  We can decide whether we will bear these changes and constants with resistence or whether we will move along with them.  I think I am at a point in my life where the path to change is the one with the least resistance.  So moving towards that change willingly and peacefully is what I must do.  And if I should get lost or forget about the willing and peaceful way I wish to change I have the constant of the moon and the stars to guide me through the night. 

Blessings to you all and I hope you can live your constantly changing life with the least  resistance and find peace.

Anabora

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 in darkness and wish they could find the light and sometimes like myself when you come out of a really dark place you realize you had the light all along and just didn't know it.

She stands for love.  There are so many things I love, some of the most important ones are family, friends, hand embroidery, art, music, laughter.  It's written on the top of my blog but I really do live and love to be inspired. 

She stands for friendship.  I have been so blessed to have the most amazing friends all throughtout my life.  I have needed them so much in the last month and every single one of them has given me nothing but love and concern and they have just taken care of me.  I don't know where I would be at this moment if there were not some beacon of light coming from at least one of them during this dark period.  I hope to return the favor to each and every one of them and I am always available to listen to whatever it is they need to say.

She stands for family and the legacy left to her by all the women in her life when she was growing up.  My mother was this wonderful unconditionally loving mother.  She was a frustrated artist so she has given me the greatest gift, the ability to go after my dream and not be dissuaded.  She also taught me so much about culture by letting me read what I wanted to read, see movies I wanted to see, to listen and dance to the music I wanted to listen to.  I guess she had a belief that sooner or later I would find the classics and she was right. I was so blessed to have her even though she was not in my life hardly long enough.

 My grandmothers who taught me the true meaning of family, love and acceptance.  My grandmother Lucy was just the most wonderful person.  She was outspoken and loving and generous.  I adored her.  And my grandmother Bertha who taught me everything I know about my craft. She was such a sweet, kindly woman who lived over a church.  There is definitely some kind of symbolism to that. And my wonderful aunts and cousins who just taught me how to love.

This is about goddesses so men talk is prohibited in this post except for my beloved sun.

And finally she stands for acceptance.  I spent so much of my life bemoaning my big hips and my big butt.  They have always been there, nothing can really be done except painful procedures so there they are and there they will always be.  I also spent so much  time bemoaning the fact that I was not "normal" only to find that there really isn't a normal.  Nobody is normal, some people just haven't figured that out for  themselves yet. 

I also have to accept the choices I made, some of them have been doozies to be quite honest but we can't turn back the clock and make it all go away nor can we expect that a man, any man has all the answers for us.  I have gotten in so much trouble as of late waiting for my prince charming. I'm finally ready to move on to my dreams and if there is a prince charming waiting for me I will be gloriously happy, if not  by myself I will still be gloriously happy.

As women we are brought up to believe we need a man to take care of us.  But in the end if we  are truthful with ourselves, we end up taking care of them and our children and our jobs and whatever else we goddesses do without even giving a thought to what we want waiting for us at the end of our day. 

As a goddess I want a cottage by the sea, to be an artist,  to be able to live without financial worry with just enough to pay my bills.  And of course to be able to embroider and follow my dreams whereever they take me.

Now I have to as my own goddess get back to work on my dreams and where I want to go and stop talking and just start doing.  Find your Anabora, your embroidery and the music that rocks your world.  Fairy tales can come true it can happen to you if you're young at heart.

Needles and Pins

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 of us work out of the home and come home and take care of the children.  And some use the creative spirit of the turtle and create art.  But whatever we do we are goddesses who create life and bring tenderness and love to the masses.  For the most part anyway.

Embrace your inner goddess and then embrace your outer God and live life and do what you love because that is when the goddess is at her best, when she is creating something out of love.

Needles and Pins is a song sung by the turtles. I used to love it as a child and it's the perfect song of the day.  Here is a link for the song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDZcKkExz4o&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL8572652F68682CE2

Here are the links for the turtle totem. http://www.whats-your-sign.com/animal-symbolism-turtle.html and http://www.linsdomain.com/totems/pages/turtle.htm.  Have a great day.

Peace

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

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 tightrope, if I'm not careful and thoughtful and cautious I will fall into the abyss.

I know in my heart embroidery is the light within the darkness.  It is and always has been my salvation.  Whenever my life was difficult a single skein of embroidery floss and a small piece of fabric was all I needed to make my life complete.  God's blessed me with the gift of an artform that just allows me to block out the world but I also at this moment need to block out the noise in my head.  So what will I fill it with? Hope and optimism for the future, or regrets from the past. Perhaps the answer is to live in the moment and forget about the past and the future.   Perhaps the answer to that question is the light within. Embroidery.