Tangled Stitch

This is my favorite work in progress.  It started as nothing and now it is something.  Isn’t that the way   God made the world?  He started with nothing and made this beautiful mosaic of colors and textures from the tiniest bird to man to the largest elephant.  All of us beautiful in our own way.  The beauty of a tree in a breeze with its leaves swaying to and fro.  The beauty of a cardinal in the tree.  The beauty of a young couple in love walking by the tree.  The sound of rippling water of a creek whose water feeds the tree.  To me embroidery is that tree.  This piece is all connected by thread on black fabric bringing light to the darkness.  Bringing me peace to my all too active mind.  Being love.  Being safe.  Being alone but not alone.  Being thankful that something can bring light from my darkness.  A gentle breeze rustling through my tree.

Hi All!  Its been a long while.  I figured its time for me to express myself again and restart my blog again, hence the title of this blogpost.   My Etsy shop has been up and running for a year now and I've made 50 sales.  Quite an accomplishment for me as in my previous attempts I was not as successful.  I am still a waitress.  I passed another milestone birthday.  I'm still single although much more happily single than I was in the past.  I've been embroidering up a storm it's still the one constant in my life. Speaking of embroidery since that is the point of this blog, the piece above is a custom order for my friend Clif.  Its a lavender garden made completely of French knots in lavender(of course), green and eventually blue.  It's a work in progress.  It's my second attempt as my first attempt wasn't really working that well,  sometimes life gets in the way of embroidery.  The world and my life have been a bit u...

  Up and down goes the needle, In and out go the pins, Focusing on the fabric, Trying to make beauty.     Trying to forget the past, Trying to fix that which is broken, Not sure which way to go, But finding solace in the up and downs and ins and outs.   Focus, focus, focus, Live in the moment, Grab it, live it, love it, For once it is gone you will miss it everyday.        

Butterfly Available at Valley Artisans Market This is another poem.  I am not quite polished as a poet YET!  But I will never be a writer if I don't write, I will never be a hand embroidery artist if I don't hand embroider, and I will never feel alive unless I figure out a way to be myself without needing to be perfect.  Make peace with yourself, fall on your face and hope to get back up tomorrow morning with a loving face looking into yours.  That's my plan.  Here's my poem. Wake Up Wake up, be counted, Don’t wait for the why, Wake up, be counted, Before we all die. See the beauty of the sun, Hear the sound of the waves, Take the day off tomorrow, We are not born to be slaves. Give a shit about living, Your neighbors and friends, Make sure they know you love them, In case the world ends. The world is not perfect, And neither are we, Perfection is an illusion, Meant to keep us from who we wish to be. E...

TRY Even if there is no hope try, Even if there is no light try, Even if you are alone try, Even if you feel unloved try, Even if your mind is filled with chaos try, Even if you are riddled with pain try, Because if you don’t try someone else will be filled with those feelings. I love you please try.

Been a while again.  A lot going on.  I moved again.  I missed my son so I moved closer to be near him.  Moving 4 times in 6 months not so cool but I think this time I might be in the right place at the right time.  Sometimes you have to fail at something several times before you realize that if the reason you are staying in a region is to be closer to your son, then you should just move closer to your son. I'm being rewarded with quiet, just peaceful quiet.  Makes it so much easier to sleep, to think, to be.  My last apartment was beautiful, really beautiful but it was very loud. I'm grateful because I learned how to be alone and I did a lot of soul work there.  After always being taken care of it is kind of frightening and fearful to be out on your own for the first time, a voice in your head tells you all the things you don't really want to think about yourself.  But then you get to work those thoughts through and I am hopeful I came out...

This is dedicated to Uncle Jerry who is not really my uncle but who always made a sad little girl laugh.   Speak to me of death is a line from the book The Prophet by Khalil Gibran.   That line is the beginning of my spiritual journey.   That page in that book was the first time I looked at death as anything more than an utter and complete tragedy.   I felt my loved ones were in peace. I want to talk about death because nobody ever wants to talk about death.   We don’t like to think of our own and we don’t like to talk about others and we don’t want to think it could happen to us. But it does happen to us every single day, someone dies and it affects everyone in their lives forever.   We can dismiss it and cry about it in the middle of the night but god forbid we talk about it.   We don’t want to admit we are vulnerable enough to be completely devastated by the loss of someone we love and the pain and the sorrow that accompanies it sometim...

The tree of life is open and wanting and transformational.    We lose old habits and sprout new ones like buds forming on our branches.   We seek the sun and it’s warmth as the leaves on a tree sway towards the sun.   We suffer like a tree when we lose our branches because of an exceptionally strong wind or a disease that withers away part of our human trees. Trees are eternal until we cut them down.   Our souls are eternal like the tree.   Each one of us is different just as each tree is different.   The amount of sunlight, love and pruning of a tree equal the amount of sunlight, love and pruning of our souls.   Cutting off the parts that no longer serve us and making the parts that remain stronger.   The oldest part of the tree is the wild and woolly part at the top where it takes more than a mortal man to tame, just as the oldest part of a person is that part which he has carried since he was a child and is usually the hardest to...

Once again I am reminded of the fragility of life, the story about the boat capsizing off of Oyster Bay New York killing three young children is a tragedy, beyond words.  My prayers go out to the family and hug your own children.  I just hugged mine. We live so much of our lives feeling we are invincible.  That we are strong enough to handle anything that comes our way and sometimes the truth is we are not.  We grow old, we get sick, we die.  But how do we live before those moments come?  That is a really good question.  I know the answer I'm supposed to give, which is we live each moment to the fullest.  After living my life the last few months in a vacuum I can honestly say I haven't.  I've had tremendous growth and devastating backwards motion.  Another thing I can say is but for the grace of God, I could be the parents of one of those children, that is a real tragedy not a self inflicted one. Every day we hope to make a differe...

In every moment of our lives we must make choices.   We ask ourselves the deepest questions in our dreams?   We often times find the answers in love.   What we love says a lot about who we are and what our purpose in life is. Not one of us is perfect in this world there is always something to overcome on the pathway to loving oneself and others.     We beat ourselves up daily, we are not working enough, we are not being enough and we want people to like us.   Instead of looking inside and seeing the love that exists within our hearts and our souls we look for love outside ourselves.     We all need the love and abundance of the universe.   Forgiveness is the way to find that love.   To accept that in the moment we are living in and the moments ahead we can choose to love ourselves and those who are not perfect and move on. I love my son without conditions.     There is nothing he could do that would ever change my mot...