Candid Thoughts on Embroidery & Life
Seedlings
I was out mowing my yard today, and it’s always a great time to let my thoughts wander free. I love mowing, mostly because I can be outside but also because I have a tough riding mower that I drive like a go cart. 
Lately, like so many of you, I’ve been wading through…
Keep Singing
Today I attended a memorial service dedicated to Dr. Janet Morrow King, my former voice teacher at Colorado State University. I studied Vocal Music Performance with her there for 2 years in my mid-twenties. I still regret not finishing the program… but that’s another story. Dr. King passed away last month, and I’ve been…
Telling the Truth- My First Self Portrait
For the past 6+ months, I’ve been envisioning and working on my first self portrait, due for a show in July. From the start I WANTED to do it, NEEDED to do it, to really dive in and see what I would find in myself. Last fall, I began working with a nervous system…
A Year of New Things
I can’t tell you how excited I’ve been lately! Over the past two years I’ve been thinking hard about what I want to be doing with my life & work, and how fast the years are flying by… In 2023 I started taking more concrete steps in the directions I’ve dreamed of. It’s hard not…
The Meditation of the Stitch
The year has flown by, and this one brought some unexpected challenges. In many ways it’s been an incredible year for me; I joined the Louisville Area Fiber & Textile Artists, had my first experience of having a piece of my work in an art show, and I’ve really started to allow myself to take…
cre.ate: verb, “to bring into being”
How do you begin to make something? How do you bring something into being that’s never existed before? Where does it start? With an idea? A clear vision of something to be translated from the internal world to the external? Maybe with a song, or a sky, a conversation, or something you read in a…
I’ve Been Asking Myself the Wrong Questions…
April 20th 2023 I recently joined a fiber and textile arts group in my city. The membership consists of mainly female, experienced, professional and semi-professional artists. Mature women who take their work seriously and offer their skills and perspective to others. After only two meetings I’m already having a blast meeting new, creative people and…
How Elizabeth Parker Changed My Life (Part II)
(content warning: this post includes mentions of mental health, abuse, suicide) Meet Elizabeth Parker- in her own words: “As i cannot write I put this down simply and freely as I might speak to a person to whose intimacy and tenderness I can fully intrust myself and who I know will bear…
Second Spring: A Love Letter to Kentucky in Springtime
It’s nearly 7pm on a Thursday in April, and I’m standing in my yard. My mind is abuzz with the day’s work, tomorrow’s work, reliving and overthinking a conversation from earlier in the day, and churning over so many other things….. I’m so stuck in my head that it takes me several minutes to feel…
A Visit to the Little Loomhouse
Down a narrow road, tucked away in a charming, wooded neighborhood are three historic cabins housing a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and teaching the history of weaving and textile arts. Today I paid my first visit to the Little Loomhouse. If you’re ever in the Louisville, Kentucky area I highly recommend it! Completely picturesque…
Thread Confessional: How Elizabeth Parker Changed My Life (Part I)
(Content Warning: This post contains discussions of mental health, abuse, and suicide.) “As I cannot write I put this down simply and freely as I might speak to a person to whose intimacy and tenderness I can fully entrust myself”. Around the year 1830ce, Elizabeth Parker was an English teenager who had already…
Liriodendron tulipifera
Back in college I took a dendrology course, studying the forms and prevalence of trees all across North America. I happily poured over textbooks full of scientific names, taxonomies, and learned tree identification skills in the mountains of Colorado. Now, nearly 25 years later I’ve forgotten so many of those details, but I’ve never forgotten…
First Confession… The Threads of My Soul
Why do we stitch?….. Why do we spend THOUSANDS of our hours hunched silently over fabric and thread?…. What does it take… and what does it give?… For me- embroidery helps take away my fears, and helps me find my voice. tiny stitch, by tiny stitch, by tiny stitch… …Over and over again until all…