Kelly

“Ignore content that tries to persuade you that you are not in control of most of the outcomes in your life. Avoid the victim mindset because you are the alchemist and the magician. Cry, rest, and reset if you need to. But afterward, get back up and take back your power.”
― Robin S. Baker

“In the sixteenth century, the needle held a number of symbolic meanings. It was thought to be synonymous with breath, the rhythm it produced being analogous to that of breathing. It also signified an arrow piercing a target or a gateway through which one could pass between the underworld, the temporal universe and the celestial heavens.”
― Clare Hunter, Embroidering Her Truth: Mary, Queen of Scots and the Language of Power

“In a prior age, the human experience was understood as the temporal embodiment of desire, delight, fear, grief, faith, love, hope, hatred, horror, sympathy, gentleness, kindness, loyalty, fidelity, sublimity, desperation, chagrin, anger, fury, wrath, distress, discomposure, shame, dignity, indignity, glory, contempt, slight, heartbreak, fondness, tenderness, adoration, infatuation, compassion, goodwill, worship, sorrow, anguish, despair, woe, dejection, despondency, duty, angst, reverence, respect, esteem, exaltation, melancholy, disquiet, weariness, felicity, glee, bliss, ecstasy, rapture, euphoria, exhilaration, rhapsody, brotherhood, contemplation, mediation, surrender, fancy, impulse, yearning, thirst, hankering, pining, enthusiasm, need, obligation, fancy, mystery, helplessness, luck, recklessness, boldness, fearlessness, wildness, sorrow, regret, gloom, heavyheartedness, and dreaminess and ten thousand others. These are the sentiments which great art compels us to feel. But mediocre art truncates the human experience. It prunes and lops off all the diversity and richness of life and leaves us with little more than lust, amusement, self-fulfillment, and the resentment which comes from our endless search for the power that now attends victimhood.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity

“In embroidery, there’s just as much undoing as there is doing—plucking and pulling your thread back through the holes you pierced to see where you might have gone off-course, and where you might begin again. Our ancestors once believed the stars themselves were a result of this kind of occurrence, pinpricks of light poked in the fabric of night. The Creator doesn’t make mistakes, but sometimes it’s so damn hard to see the reason.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir