Tangled Stitch

When I was a little girl my mother had to work in a store.  She was a sales lady in the millinery department of National’s Family Store, a precursor to Walmart.  When she couldn’t find a babysitter she would bring my brother and I to work with her and plant us at a table in the snack bar area for however many hours that she had to work.  We would eat lunch usually grill cheese and French fries both of which I still love today unfortunately.  She would give us two dollars each and tell us we could buy whatever we wanted.  I would usually buy a skein of yarn and some knitting needles, even back then I was always losing them and a book.  My brother could get whatever he wanted to and we would just sit there for hours happily occupying ourselves with our treasures. Here I am at 60 years old still remembering the joy of spending that money on something I loved.  I was always a reader even as a small child and I loved the feel of books.  I loved to ...

I've been working but not enough and my head is still a little scrambly and tangled so nothing insightful to say.  Feeling stronger every day and finding that the zen of knitting and crocheting is slightly easier and more creative than embroidering at the moment.  I'm still moving towards my dreams but on days like today feels like I'm going at a snail's pace.  Well perhaps a turtle, and tomorrow who knows maybe a hare.  I'm just checking in.  I did make a scarf and I'm making a bag so perhaps pictures and a little story will come tomorrow!  Have fun be strong!

Finally a productive day.  It's been a long time coming but I feel a change is gonna come( a line from a lovely blues song done by so many artists I can't name them all).  I finished this bag this morning.  I worked on a hand embroidery piece which I will take a picture of soon.  I mailed the scarf off to my cuz.  I brought my books back to the library.  Donated some crafty stuff that I will never use to the senior center and feel a heck of a lot better.  I guess movement is good!  Not too much else to say but this lovely bag will have more of an internet presence when I figure out where to put it and then I'll let you know. Have a good night's sleep and hopefully tomorrow will be productive too.  Yes I can.

This is Anabora, she's my goddess. Yes I actually embroidered a goddess for myself.  She's not available because she's my goddess.  If you want one I'll make you one.  Just email me. So today as I sat down to hand embroider after spending a glorious hour and a half crocheting a christening gown, I realized I just wasn't passionate enough to embroider an eye glass case so  I picked up my knitting needles and let it rip.  I love to knit.  No pictures because I have 3 large projects in three different mediums going at the same time.  I've decided to pick up some of the treasures I've let slip away from my hands while I listened to the the one person who invariably comes up to your booth at a craft show and says I can do this.  All of my work will be based on the feelings that I get from it and hopefully that passion will appeal to someone else. I started another blog(yes another one) but this one is about politics which I am also passionate abo...

deb 005 Originally uploaded by DebraAnn813 This is a lovely green bag that I knit with a pair of bamboo knitting needles. I love to work with bamboo as the yarn just slips off the wood so easily but not too easily. It makes knitting easier for me because I am a flinger. I am always in awe of people who can knit with both hands on the needles the whole time, my needles are always falling and sometimes losing stitches. Just like real life, out there without a safety net. Not too much else to add about the pleasure of bamboo but it does make a knitter's life easier(and happier).

Today I realized that I have not picked up my knitting needles yet this year. I love to knit. I love the fibers and the textures and the colors and the speed(although crochet is a wee bit faster). I knit for fun. Embroidery gets me to my center, knitting helps me run away from responsibility. I've been so good at trying to embroider each and every day this year, but I seem to be avoiding the current project I am working on so I think I'm going to answer the call of the knitting needles and take a break. Perhaps I will even take a road trip next week to my favorite yarn shop a couple of towns away. This purse is in my favorite color green. It uses mohair and cascade and a few other special yarns that I just adore. On our gallery visit last week I somehow got into a conversation at a gallery about felting and although I love the way it looks and it is so very popular, I prefer to knit with texture and color and patterns(or not). So off to the yarn store and perhaps by ne...

Oh what a tangled web we weave(or more accurately embroider). Been working pretty hard and hardly working. Got side-tracked by knitting(yes knitting). When I embroider I have a filter, a filter that lets me do anything I want(including watching politics) and being able to work through it(love the windy wisty tangled threads). Well brought some purses in to the store, knit purses. Since knitting makes me happy and seemed to make other's happy too figured I'd knit myself into oblivion. Unfortunately when I knit I can do more then one thing at a time and it's much too easy to put down the knitting, so got back into the politics. Right around the conventions, and then the nasty commercials, and then the debates and then the financial meltdown and well been kinda wasting my time with my nom de plume in tact debating politics online. Kind of twisted myself up in a million zillion little tangles and realized that I am a person that has a hard time taking myself seriously. ...

Hi All! My friend's sister picked up her bag and loved it so here it is for you to see. Things have been soooooooooo busy lately. I'm working all the time. I sold a framed piece called Flamethrower(it's a hand embroidered framed hand made out of lovely shades of orange which of course I didn't take a picture of) and The Katbird Shop sold my lovely hand embroidered Stella, she is the face on my flicker account. I hope her new owner loves her as much as I enjoyed making her. I am so excited to see things actually sell. I love, love, love what I do and now have a reason to do it 24/7 so of course my mood is soaring. At the moment I have another tree waiting to be framed, it's a bit of a leaner so I think I'm going to call it Leaning Tower of Treesa. I have a heart bag which I'm embroidering(pictures to follow and I'm working on a knit bag kind of shapely, not too thrilled with it in it's current form but think once it's assembled it will be ...

Today is a working day. The first one I've had in a couple of weeks so if you don't mind I'll probably make this short and sweet. I have been tagged a couple of times but will return the favor next time I'm on the computer. This is one of my first happy bags. It's been a while but knitting makes me happy so I call them happy bags(except for the first one which was an angry bag which made me happy). This one was supposed to be mine. It has luxurious textures, mohair and novelty yarns and my favorite wool cascade 200 all in the delightful color green. Then I hand beaded the darn thing, the handle is full of beautiful green beads with a drop in the middle and there is a drop on the closing too. Therein lies the problem I'm not really a bead person, although I think since it is a great representation of my work I may have to become one. So I've tried to sell it and although I've sold others like it, this one is still MINE. So it is mine, I just have ...

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 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.

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

I worked in the coop today and had a wonderful time there. It is a beautiful place filled with beautiful work that makes me go a little beyond myself when I work there. Sometimes I wish I could be there every day it is so conducive to creativity. I am a fan of the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. My days at the coop are my artist's dates. I know all the artists and I'm familiar with their work being there once a week but every single week I find a little something mesmerizing and different about something. Today it was a beautiful mosaic mirror made by our lovely mosaic artist Tess. She joined the coop in the beginning of March and she is very talented. Her mirror is just extraordinary. Beyond the pieces of glass there was a lovely pattern behind it. I must ask her how she did it but maybe it is better to have the wonder of it. I think the wonder of how artists do the work they do is something I wish to give to others. I used to wish to give them something they wo...