In this case the only requirement was that there needed to be a duck.  Yes, a duck.  I was stumped for a while about the angle, but then I thought of two things — my love of Cattails and how they could easily be shaped to look like the letter shin, and that there is a bit of Torah about birds and nests.

Deuteronomy 22:6 says that you can’t take the eggs from a nest a mother bird is on or near (mitzvah of shiluach ha-kan) in the wild.   It’s one of the positive commandments towards compassion, so I call this one “Model of Compassion.”  The cattails form a subtle letter Shin.  In my design the mother bird isn’t sitting on her nest, but she is carefully watching over it.

The second design is a keyhole based on an antique escutcheon I found on Ebay.  I’m so much happier with how this one turned out.  The first one was just too bulky.  I really slimmed down the design here, almost too small for the scroll, which you can see peaking out over the top.  I didn’t cut out the inside of the keyhole this time.  I felt with the small and delicate size it would be better served without that.  Okay, and I was on a deadline and afraid of screwing it up.

Both are pretty tiny, with the Compassion Mezuzah being just slightly larger at approximately 1.5″x4″ and the Keyhole at approximately 1.25″ x 3.25″.  I say approximately because I forgot to measure them before I shipped them off to their owner!  Both are also stitched on my favorite linen with silk floss.  The Keyhole is a pretty heavy satin stitch, which I used a laying tool to get a nice dimensional texture.

Oh, and yes, I know one of the pictures has the mezuzah posed the in the wrong direction.  Do you know which one? 

Portable personal altar with Kohenet symbol and Ketzirah's "cipher"

I’ve been thinking about this idea for a while, and this is my first execution. It’s two 3″ hoops that have been put together with a tiny hinge to create a locket. In this case, it’s a personal portable altar for me. One side has the Kohenet symbol on it and the other side has my own personal totem/icon/symbol on it.

It’s stitched on simple muslin.  I transferred the images with Sulky pen, and inked the word “Kohenet,” which is Hebrew on the left with my fountain pen after.  I really like the effect instead of stitching it this time.  On the right, the pomegranate was transferred with red Sulky pen, and I used that along with this nifty dimensional specialty floss to give it some nice shading.  In the center of the pomegranate is the letter Kuf, which I’ve written a hundred times — but kind of goofed up here.  Kuf is the first letter of my Hebrew name, Ketzirah, and is also symbolic of a needle — which is totally appropriate too.  It’s also means monkey, which I dig!

Overall I’m pretty happy with the outcome. I learned a few things that I’ll be sure to improve on for the next go-round.

Available on Etsy.com

“Prayer for a Quiet Mind” is mediation on stillness, even in the midst of chaos.  The imagery was inspired by rock cairns I saw on the beaches of Key West, Florida. The day I was there, the waves were crashing and breaking all around the standing stones, but they still stood still and silent.

You can even see a video of the inspiration:

It is permanently framed in a wooden embroidery hoop that has been sanded,and left natural to evoke the sands of the beaches in Key West, Florida. It has a custom made hanger of metallic silver embroidery floss that matches. The piece is signed in ink with my cipher, a pomegranate and the Hebrew letter kuf.

Wood Sculpture in photo is by adrauglis.etsy.com

Here’s a slide show of piece in progress, from the sketches to the 3″ version for a swap, to the final piece.

Shame Offering 1 - Plastic bag embroidery floss on muslin

Size: 8″x10″
Fabric: Loose weave muslin died with wild-harvested blood root.
Floss: hand-spun plastic from up-cycled newspaper bags

This is the first real piece from my planned Sacrifice|Offering Project. I’m very excited about this first one, and the others currently in the queue.

This first offering series is intended as “prayer flags” to focus on the wastefulness of modern Western culture. The symbol is one that I designed to symbolize a sacrificial offering. I plan to use this image in all of the pieces in the Sacrifice|Offering Project.

The embroidery is done with floss I spun from the plastic bags my newspapers come in. Thankfully, there was a unique sponsor one day that had a bright purple bag that turned into this variegated lavender. I can get probably 20+ yards of floss from bag., and it stitches like a dream.

Once I have a few completed, I’ll be listing them for sale in my Etsy shop. Leave a comment below, if you’d like to be updated when they are available.  I’ve previously thought I’d be listing these for $36, but I’ve decided that the prayer flags will be $18.  I am still planning on immediately investing any money earned from the sale of these prayer flags on the micro-finance website Kiva.org.  Eventually, I’ll get the $18 — but it seems really right to “pay if forward” before I do.  It’s possible I might use some of it to fund amazing other artists on Kickstarter, but my plan is for these pieces to fund Kiva.

WIP: Shame Offering 1 by Ketzirah

I’ve written before about the Sacrifice|Offering project, and not too long ago I wrote about searching for the image I would use as the central symbol.  I had a moment of inspiration and found the image recently.  After some work, I created it in an illustration program is this is the first work-in-progress.  I’m calling this the “shame offering” series, because it really is such a shame how wasteful Western culture has become.  We take too much for granted and too much is disposable with no thought to what happens to the waste.  The floss for this series, I’m making from plastic bags that my daily newspaper comes in.  I cannot tell you how much floss I was able to spin from a single bag – yards and yards.  On the right you see a “spindle” with both purple and white floss, both from the same plastic bag.  The photo is blurry, but I’ll post better ones soon.

I’m planning on selling each of these for $36 and then immediately investing the money on the micro-finance website Kiva.org.  Eventually, I’ll get the $36 — but it seems really right to “pay if forward” before I do.  It’s possible I might use some of it to fund amazing other artists on Kickstarter, but my plan is for these pieces to fund Kiva.

Size: 5″ Diameter
Fabric: Linen
Floss: Pima cotton in “Stick & Stones” from Caron Collection Watercolours
Stitches: Chain stitch, stem stitch

“New Moon” is inspired by the cycles of the moon. When the first crescent appears the new month begins in Jewish tradition. This is the first piece of this theme I’ve done.

“New Moon” is permanently framed in a wooden embroidery hoop that has been sanded and then finished with traditional shellac. It has a custom made hanger of silk embroidery floss that matches the color of the frame. The piece is signed in ink with my cipher, a pomegranate and the Hebrew letter kuf.

Available in my Etsy shop.

I read about a call for entries the Mizel Museum was having for Mezuzahs to accompany their upcoming “4,000 Year Road Trip: Gathering Sparks” exhibit.  Apparently, they are going to have a lot of doorways and wanted mezuzahs for all of them.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve created a mezuzah, and I don’t really know why I stopped making them.  I figured this was just the kick I needed.

When I started playing with ideas for a new mezuzah design, I thought it might be really amazing to make it a keyhole design, both from a symbolic perspective and from a design perspective.  I often think of a mezuzah as the spiritual lock on a Jewish home.

The keyhole design also offered an opportunity for a little cutwork,which I had never done before.  This way, you can see the scroll (there’s not one in there right now).

This design is based on a keyhole cover from 1855.  There’s all kinds of symbolism in the color and design choices, but I’ll let you interpret this as you choose!

Wish me luck.  I sent it off to the museum, and hopefully it will be selected for the exhibition!  I plan on doing more based on this design in the future.  There’s some other stitching variations I want to try.  If you are interested in ordering one, convo me on Etsy or just leave a comment below!

The Colors of Life - By Carly Lesser (Ketzirah)

Photo Gallery
8.5″ Diameter
Stitches:  Chain, French Knots, Sheaf Stitch, Seed Stitch, Algerian Eyelets, Straight Stitch, Stem Stitch
Materials: unbleached muslin, cotton DMC pearl cotton #5, Caron Watercolours Variegated Pearl Cotton  wooden hoop finished with amber shellac

I have woven the fabric of your life.
What you do with it is up to you.
You can create beauty anywhere — anytime.
Even the ugliest experiences can be shaped to bring beauty into the world.
How will you use what you have been given?

I began this piece in December 2009.  I drew the basic design the morning I was leaving for the airport to bury my sister-Kohenet Yosefa Rafaela Gypsy-Jill Greenberg-Strouss.  This piece, from the beginning, was meant to be a tribute to her life.  She was wild and colorful, in every moment.  She was also troubled and messy.  She was authentically herself in all things, and impacted every person she met.  This sounds like something you say about everyone after they die, but at her funeral I learned it was true about her — like no one I had ever met.

I knew her for less than five years, but her impact on my life will probably resonate for the next 50 — or however many years I’m given.  I learned from how she lived.  I learned from how she died.  I learned from who and how she loved.

If you are interested in purchasing this piece, please contact me at peelapom (@) gmail.com.

Purchase a replica print that will benefit the Yosefa’s Colors scholarship fund.

Prayers are always heard, maybe a bit delayed, but are always heard. - Photo by Sundaram Ramaswamy (legends2k) used by Creative Commons Attribution Permisions.

I recently posted about my Sacrifice | Offering project.  While I always have many projects and pieces I’m working on, the next I know I want to do in this series is offering me unique challenges.  I want the next piece to also serve as my first submission to the EGA Master Craftsman i program I’m enrolled in.   I believe it’s the right fit.

In my explorations around sacrifice and offerings, I was looking at the “Women of the Book” project.  I noticed that Parshat Tzav wasn’t taken assigned to anyone yet.  While I don’t know that my work will fit their criteria, I did realize that this was a clear sign.  It brought together my concept around Sacrifice|Offering, Torah study, and the framework for my first EGA master craftsman submission.  I’ve actually had two ideas for what this Tzav inspired piece could be.  One is a broader vision, closer to something that would fit the Women of the Book project.  The other is a simpler diptych that would work well for the master craftsman program.

The master craftsman program  submission, which is focused on color for embroidery design, needs to be the same design in two different color schemes.  What I’m searching for though, is a shape, and idea, a form that fits both Shalom Offerings and Sin/Guilt Offerings.  When I read Tzav, I read the sin and guilt offerings really as one offering (כַּחַטָּאת וְכָאָשָׁם) - Leviticus 6:10.  Although, with deeper exploration I  may need to do three pieces to encompass all three offerings. I’ve begun researching and playing with shapes and ideas, but I really am interested in using this to create a bit of a dialogue, all through the process.

So, I’ll put it to you all — what shape do you see when you think of an offering that can be both for Wholeness (Shalom) and for Sin/Guilt, if you just change the colors? What reaction do you have to this whole idea? What do the words Peace/Wholeness and Sin or Guilt trigger for you?  If you read Tzav (Lev 6:1-8:36), what images and feelings does it evoke for you?

Song of Songs, a collection in progress

I recently posted about this collection, but this new addition I thought was worth sharing.  Up until now, the basis of each piece in the collection has been the “Empress Woo” fabric.  That’s the fabric with the, well, wooing lovers like in the piece on the right.  I had been planning for some time to start working in the text of Song of Songs, and then I remembered that a while back I had been playing with ink-jet transferring of text onto silk.  One of the samples I had done at the time, included the text of Song of Songs 1:2 onto a piece of pink dupioni silk.

Needless to say, I realized how well this might go in this collection.  I used the same basic style of embroidery, and the same fiber choices (DMC Pearl Cotton & Caron Collection “Watercolours” Pima Cotton).  This time instead of the embroidery enhancing the story of the two lovers, I’m using it to frame the words.  For those not so familiar with Song of Songs, or unable to make out the Hebrew (like 99% of the world), the translation per the JPS 1917 Edition is:

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth–for thy love is better than wine.

That last word at the bottom (מִיָּיִן), means “wine.”  I shifted from the variegated floss to the DMC Pearl Cotton there to bring the dark pink of the wine in.  Not sure it really reads, but I like the effect.  I’m really happy with the overall result.  The way I framed it, also gave it some extra depth.  I think for silk pieces, at least, I’ll use the same system again.

I am happy with this, so look for more of these in the future.

You can buy this piece and see the whole collection currently available on Etsy.com.  There’s also more pictures of the collection on Flickr.