Katie Rempe: As knitters, we often think our project is finished once the ends are woven in and the blocking is complete. However, there's an entire world of embroidery and embellishments waiting for any creative knitter interested in taking their project to the next level.
Our guest today knows all about sewing and embroidery as a magical act. It's Christi Johnson. Yay. Yay. Christi is an artist and teacher whose personal work combines cosmic visions and botanical beauties. A hypnotic dance of symbols stitched slowly and methodically into fabric. As the author of Mystical Stitches, Embroidery for Personal Empowerment and Magical Embellishment, we can't wait to hear what you have to say on the subject today.
Christi Johnson: Aw. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
Light from Lantern presents Knit a Spell. I'm magical maker Katie Rempe. And I'm the maker of magic James Devine. Join us as we stitch together the symbiotic relationship between crafting and the craft.
James Divine: Can we just start with the back cover?
Mystical Stitches Cover
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James Divine: The back of the front cover? This is Katie's realization.
Move to YouTube if you're listening, okay, here's the front of the book. Katie, what happened?
Katie Rempe: so you just open the front cover, and Christi, I don't know whose genius idea this was, but it's the back of the embroidery that's on the front!
Christi Johnson: I honestly don't remember. I'm like, did I suggest it? Was it just the art director that just did it? 'cause I love the art director that I work with, that story is my publisher, and she's just incredible. We're always bouncing ideas off of each other.
It's a really good relationship. So I'm like, I don't remember. She could very well, could have been her, but I also. I also find it very important to remind people that like actually what the back of your stitches look like doesn't matter unless you're embroidering like a tea towel and you're going to like some royal estate and you're passing it off there nobody cares what the back of your embroidery looks like and so having that in there and leaving just all the loose ends too I was like I could trim some of these ends which if it was inside a garment I would trim some of the ends just so I don't get tangled up when I'm putting it on but for this I was like no. This is great.
It almost looks better with all the loose ends there. And
James Divine: This is how we all look inside.
Christi Johnson: Exactly!
Katie Rempe: the chaos of the creation!
Christi Johnson: Exactly. It's very much a reflection of that.
Katie Rempe: It looks just like the inside of a sweater before you weave in all the ends, especially if you're doing color work .
Christi Johnson: And as someone who just lets my ends just tangle when in my knitting, all the insides, I also knit and the inside of my sweaters I'm like, I will weave it in so it won't untie or whatever, but there's still an end hanging. That just makes me feel a little bit more like I made it.
Can you tell? Because there's a string dangling from the edge. Yes
James Divine: it's about not having to embrace perfection and just enjoying like the way it is. There's such a great metaphor for that.
About Christi
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Katie Rempe: Embracing the process, which really this book is all about. and so the book is called Mystical Stitches. What is your mystical background?
Christi Johnson: I grew up very open ended on that. My mom grew up Catholic, my dad was agnostic. I think he probably grew up some level of church going at one point, but he was just like, what, they lied to me about the Easter Bunny? They lied to me about Santa Claus? You expect me to believe you about this Jesus fellow?
And I like, is word for word? Yeah, I it was very open ended in growing up. It was just do whatever you want. I was doing a lot of research on like Wicca and on different world traditions and Buddhism and things growing up. But when it came down to it, I was like, none of these seem to describe the exact way.
I just didn't want to subscribe to something that already existed. There was a period of time where I joked with my mom, where I was like, I want to make my own religion and I'll call it Christi-anity.
James Divine: Yeah.
Christi Johnson: no, sorry, kid. Names already been taken.
Katie Rempe: Oh.
James Divine: religion I wanted to create was called gymism. And I thought that was pretty funny.
Christi Johnson: That's not taken yet. You can do that.
But yeah, so I've always just been pretty open to exploring what different cultures have discovered through different sort of mystical experiences. I like the idea of the mystic because it is somebody who is on their own page, like even within a culture of a religion, a mystic is somebody who experiences the divine
in their own time and in their own way. And so that's always been something that I felt much more connected to is just like, how can we experience this on our own accord and through our own personal experience and not have a beast, how somebody tells us it's supposed to be experienced.
James Divine: You've been doing. fiber arts for a while, I assume, because your work is so amazing. Was it always magical for you? Was it always a mystical act or did you discover that?
Christi Johnson: sort of started coming out into my art in my later 20s I would say, so 10 years ago. Like that could be yesterday, that could be 40 years ago, like
James Divine: never know. Yeah.
Christi Johnson: No frame of reference. So yeah, about 10 years ago,
I was doing a lot of illustration work. I studied fashion design, so I've always been in love with clothes and fabric and textiles and especially like textures, prints, knits, different ways of creating a crochet, different ways of making patterns pop off of the body, really.
Then I was working in the fashion industry in L. A. for 10 years, and it just got really stressful. I started feeling really disconnected to what I was doing, mostly, I feel like, because a lot of it is manufactured overseas, and so I was literally nowhere near where the clothes were designed and wanting to find my own connection with it again, in conjunction with needing to find a way of calming down and really just like relaxing.
And about that time I started doing a lot of yoga and meditation. And so that's the point where my art started reflecting that. Whereas in my early twenties, I had no interest in like sitting still for 10 minutes. I was like, come on, I got stuff to do.
Katie Rempe: That young energy
Christi Johnson: Exactly. Exactly. And then you start to get around that Saturn return age and you're like, okay, this is not sustainable anymore. What do I need? What needs to change? What needs to shift? How can I get to better know myself?
James Divine: It's interesting. I was just in the fashion district in LA and it was so overwhelming. And I know that isn't even a glimpse into the fashion industry at all. It was amazing and inspiring, but I could see how that level of rat race could really wear you out.
Christi Johnson: right. And it's seeing that being in the fashion district when I was 18 and I had just got to LA, I was like, this is so cool. Yeah,
Katie Rempe: Look at all this fabric. Nty Joann's. And so cheap. You can haggle everything.
Christi Johnson: Yeah, and they have everything, whatever zipper you need. You can buy 12 zippers at a time, but it was just like
Katie Rempe: Any color you want at just the zipper place?
Christi Johnson: Yeah, exactly, at the place that just has zippers.
Those are the sort of things that I miss, but I'm also like, I'll pass, for the exchange of lifestyle. I'll go get that up.
Katie Rempe: And, like you said, and what most people don't realize is, the more you get into the industry of fashion, the more you become removed from any act of fashionableness.
Christi's Approach Now
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Katie Rempe: How did working in fashion influence your approach to making clothes now?
Christi Johnson: Being able to be exposed to many different types of manufacturing. Like I worked at a high-end cashmere company and everything was made in Korea and it was like cashmere blends, alpacas really beautiful. And I didn't really know much about knitting at the time, I was just designing and learning a lot about how the things were made, and then I worked for a really high end designer who did leather and silks, and it was all manufactured in L.
A. In the, most of it was manufactured in the building that we worked in, so that was really interesting to be able to see, yeah, to be able to see, be like front row to see how things got made and then after that, I worked for a very large company, and everything was manufactured in China, and it was very much trying to figure out how to get that 39.
99 price point for that dress or whatever. I was like, or we could not spend seven hours in a meeting trying to figure out how to bring all the price points down when I'm just like, knowing I'm the lowest salary in this room, doing the math right now, and this is a, 10, 000 meeting, we could have just not done this and probably had a 39.
99 dress. Just. Figuring out ways to cut corners like
Katie Rempe: much
Christi Johnson: like may have been more intelligent, but no, then I, then we're firing CEOs and things, so we can't have that.
Katie Rempe: In fact, could you pipe down? You're a little loud.
Christi Johnson: yeah, exactly, yeah. And they're like, wow, actually, we're gonna cut you out of here.
Katie Rempe: Yeah, you seem like a problem. I know
Christi Johnson: Yeah, totally.
Katie Rempe: have to pay you at all either.
James Divine: Yeah funny, not funny, right?
Christi Johnson: Yeah, totally. Nobody wanted to hear my opinion on that. But yeah, so seeing all these different ways that manufacturing happened and also being so aware of how much fabric waste there was because of the job where I was, these are super expensive, some of them are 40 to 60 a yard fabrics.
And this designer was actually pretty good at utilizing the majority of the fabric, but there was still so much waste. So I was like pulling the scraps out of the trash can because I'm like, what is this beautiful silk doing just getting thrown away but there wasn't enough left of it?
Yeah! So I was just like, okay, how do I use the scraps? How can I put these scraps back together? And so I started thinking about how to construct clothes based more on the actual shape of a rectangle.
And how you can fit in things and like okay, if I cut this here and let this part hang or fold this over or use this part that I cut out, how can I use that in a different part?
Like one example is the sort of like curved shape of a neckline or of like the crotch of a pair of pants making a pocket that is a curved shape. So you're not having to cut it into another square and waste that curve. Getting inventive on how to use these sort of more random shapes and how to avoid having those more random shapes by pattern making in the first place in a way that prevents that from happening.
James Divine: That is cool.
Christi Johnson: Yeah,
Katie Rempe: smart.
James Divine: The embellishments to the garment are in the shape of the remnant. That's genius.
Katie Rempe: very smart.
James Divine: just one pocket though, because you only have one neckline.
Christi Johnson: Yeah.
Katie Rempe: so I'll take one pocket. Yeah.
James Divine: Most women's clothing. We're just going a step higher.
Christi Johnson: Totally. Totally.
Christi Writes Mystical Stitches
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James Divine: Okay. So from all of that, how did you get to this place where you're writing? Is this your first book?
Christi Johnson: Yes.
James Divine: How did Mystical Stitches come about?
Christi Johnson: It was really funny. It was really unintentional There's so many other things that I ended up doing in my business are really unintentional. I just stumbled into it because I did something that I really wanted to do. And then it just kept, growing.
I feel like sometimes people try and overplan whenever they're doing anything really, like when it comes to business or a craft project or whatever, there's a lot of planning ahead and like just do it, like you're actually not going to learn how any of what you're interested in by thinking about it a lot.
It is the actual act of doing something that will inform how that can be done or if you want to do it at all.
James Divine: Right there. That is one of the most important things in business.
Katie Rempe: You can get a lot of satisfaction thinking about the things you're going to do and talking about it. Until you actually do the thing, you're never going to be a good surgeon.
Christi Johnson: Yeah.
James Divine: a friend of mine makes the distinction and I don't know where she got it from, but it was being in action and being in motion. Being in motion is thinking about it, planning it, and being in action is actually doing it and figuring it out. I love that you said that.
Christi Johnson: So this basically started off, I did a podcast interview with Natalie Ross. They own a podcast called Dream Freedom Beauty. I think maybe they still have something. called Earthspeak or something. I think it may have phased out in some degree, but Natalie was like,
would you want to offer anything for the listeners or anything? I was like, Oh, I have some ideas. Cause at the time I was making my talisman, my little star. I still am making them. It wasn't like I stopped making them. But my little stitch wish talisman and they each have their own little meaning underneath it.
And so at the time I was doing this and I was like, Oh, I just started making my talisman. And I was like, Oh, it'd be really fun to have a little like dictionary of a few symbols that people can stitch. And then I had a few instructions on how to do those stitches because I had been teaching embroidery workshops for many years and was like, okay, I can just use some of the instruction from the booklet that I get from my embroidery workshop, put a little bit of the symbolism in there have that dovetail into the embroidery.
I think that would be really sweet for your listeners. And she was like, okay, great. And then I made that five page PDF and was like, I have a lot more to say about this actually. And so I turned it into a little 40 page booklet and I was just getting those self printed.
I was like perfectly content with that. I love this little booklet. It's in black and white. It's wonderful. And then a friend of mine when I met her, she was like, I do layout and book design for craft and woodworking books. And I was like, that is the coolest job I've ever heard.
Katie Rempe: Oh.
Christi Johnson: immediately was like, Oh my God, tell me everything. I want to see every book you've ever worked on. I was just obsessed. And then she, somehow found out, probably through Instagram, found out about my initial 40 page booklet and said you should make a book proposal and pitch this to publishers.
I was like, I don't really need to, you know, I'm fine with the way it is. I don't really yeah, exactly. No, I'm good. And she was like, okay come over my house, bring your laptop, make sure you have all your files on it, and we're going to put together a book proposal, and I'm going to email it out for you.
And I was like, okay.
Katie Rempe: take it.
Christi Johnson: Totally. At no request. She wouldn't let me pay her or anything. And she was like, if I can agree with the publisher that I can work on it, that would be great. If not, whatever. At least you've got this ready to go. So I did that. She pitched it to a publisher. and Now we have a book!
Katie Rempe: What a good
friend.
Christi Johnson: So it was as honestly, it was a bunch of invitations. Like it wasn't ever oh, I'm going to do this thing. It was someone was like, do you have something to share? I'm like, I put something together real quick, actually. That's what it kept being was like, oh, actually, sure.
Let's do this.
James Divine: not only is it a book, it's a fabulous
Katie Rempe: so fabulous. Yes. And it does seem like this is a pattern that our guests have had, where it's like an offhanded comment. I would like to make a sweater in four days with you. Wait a minute, what? And then this becomes this huge thing for this person from just one huh?
Christi Johnson: And the amount of planning that goes into that is like another reminder, like the amount of planning that often goes into that is very little before the thing starts to gain momentum. Then there's a lot of work that goes in behind that, but the initial planning stage is like, Oh, that'd be cool.
James Divine: Reminds me to follow that little, that'd be cool. And, follow that little bunny rabbit.
Katie Rempe: Yep. You never know where it could lead. Could be a book and a whole workshop and who knows what else
James Divine: Could be the beekeeper's quilt.
Katie Rempe: there you go. Yes, anything.
We're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk even more about this wonderful book.
Knit With Color Magic Coupon
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Katie Rempe: Hey there fellow knitters! Are you ready to enchant your stitches with the power of color? Discover how in my online workshop, Knit with Color Magic. In Knit with Color Magic, you'll learn how to use color as an intention setting tool. This self paced workshop will teach you everything you need to know to get out of your color ruts and conjure bewitching combinations while adding intention.
You'll also learn how to build a strong and simple intention, how to translate intention into colors, and to develop and develop. A personal gir of color correspondences. With a simple shift in your mindset and some personal reflection, you can start knitting color magic into any project. And for a limited time, listeners of the show can save $20 off this workshop by using the code COLOR20 at checkout.
Find all the information in the description or visit light from lantern.com/knit with color magic to learn more. Merry make.
Intro to Palmistry Workshop
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Katie Rempe: Hey Katie, you took my intro to palmistry course. Sure did. Why would you recommend it or would you? I, well, first of all, absolutely. I would, it shined some light on how I tend to be personally self critical and you were really able to help me break that habit.
By looking at patterns as not things that are wrong, but just things that you can work with. This is one of my major ideas, is palmistry and tarot and other things reveal patterns. not predictions.
And to be able to also look at your own hand and transform and reframe your perceived character defects or your self critical analysis and look at that as a tool that's super useful and can be very positive for you, I think that's an amazing thing to do. I would recommend it to anyone who's interested in palmistry to any degree. Where can they go to find out more? You, listener, can learn the divine hand palmistry method at your own pace with my brand new palmistry course. Go to introtopalmistry. com to read more information about it and to sign up.
Knit A Spell Patreon
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Katie Rempe: Hey Knit Aspel fans, we are back on Patreon with a new dedicated page. For just 5 a month, you'll gain access to behind the scenes posts, exclusive downloads and resources, and you'll be able to participate in influential polls with fellow fans. You'll also receive a free exclusive Knit Aspel sticker sent right to your door after being a subscriber for three consecutive months.
It's a great way to support the podcast and Jim and I are so appreciative to everyone who's joined so far. To learn more and patreon. If you'd like to sign up, visit patreon. com forward slash knit a spell. See you there.
Book Dedication
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Katie Rempe: Welcome back. The dedication of this book is very cool, and I want to share it with everyone. It says, to anyone who's ever been told they aren't creative and that their art isn't good enough. Why do you think this is such an important message as an artist and a teacher?
Christi Johnson: I have seen so many students who are like, ah, I used to embroider. I could never do it right. Or I would like to make my own designs, but I just can't draw. I'm like, if you have the capability of holding a pencil in your hand, you can draw.
So much of the work that I like to share in my workshops like, examples of different work from around the world, it's none of these people stopped what they were doing because they said, oh, I can't draw. This embroidered hanging that I have behind me, the person that made this may not have been able to sketch a face perfectly with all the shading, but they could pick up a pen and draw patterns onto a fabric and then go ahead and stitch that.
And so I found that very important. To just remind people we need to move past the Western idea of only artists are allowed to make art or only people who have been trained in something are allowed to do that. Unless you're talking brain surgery do it. Give it a try. You don't have to be trained in it.
You don't need to know every single stitch to put a piece of thread in a piece of fabric. This is all done in style of embroidery stitch. You can, Do so much more than you've been led to believe that you can.
James Divine: it's such a hugely important message. I know this too as an artist and as a person who can draw in a way that is less negatively judged. People look at my drawings And instead of being inspired to draw more, they're like, I can't draw. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, yes, you can.
People say, I can't sing. And I'm like, if you can speak, then you can speak. Even if it's off key, who cares? That's like a judgment. And wouldn't it be great to just express yourself?
Katie Rempe: Mm.
Christi Johnson: It's such a specifically, like, Western idea that only people with a specific amount of training in something are allowed to do this. And it's to the point where I have had to untrain a lot of the drawing styles that I've learned because, especially studying fashion you probably know, Katie, it's like you are trained to do these nine head figures, these like really tall elongated humans.
Yeah, that don't actually exist in the real world. And it's like almost offensive to the actual human form. And when working with drawing animals and drawing objects, I don't want it to be perfectly drawn. This is a recent piece that I did these horses and I just quickly sketched them on like a one inch scale.
And I was like, Ooh, I like that these horses are like chunky legs and like weirdly thin in the middle. And I You know, the hair is going off to the side, and that for me was something that was like, how do I introduce a little bit of that playfulness back into my work? It feels a little bit more freeing.
Oftentimes it looks a little bit more stylistic than trying to get every stitch right. I'm not sure if I included it in the book or not, but there's a quote from an embroidery book that I have that says To replicate a bird feather by feather is barbaric. To illustrate its essence is divine.
I really discovered that through the stitching of mystical stitches, where I was trying to really replicate the rose. And how can I best illustrate the rose? I'm like, you know what?
People have done that before. Plenty of people have made perfect roses and perfect Made perfect patterns for those perfect roses, I don't need to perfectly replicate the rose.
What I want to do is create the the essence of a rose through a few geometric forms and keep it more simple. And so that the page that the rose is on, the botanicals page, one of those, floral spreads. I think I redid it like three or four times, and just kept doing it, ripping stitches out. realized I was just overworking it. I was trying too hard to make it look like a rose, and it just needed to be more of the essence of the rose.
James Divine: When you showed the picture of those horses reminds me of a time when my granddaughter and I will draw together. We'll get a great big piece of poster board and we'll work together on the poster board cause it's big enough. And we'll have all the markers and the pens and everything.
One day we were drawing and she drew a unicorn and i Drew a unicorn and then she says wow i like your unicorn and i said i like your unicorn And i drew a unicorn like she did with a big boxy shape and funny legs. It was like a little kid's drawing and she tried to draw a unicorn like i drew a unicorn And it was such an amazing experience. What I noticed in her was she was validated that her way of drawing was just as cool as mine because I wanted to emulate her and then she wanted to emulate me.
It's a way for me to get out of, my like, a unicorn must look like a horse with a horn.
It can look like how little miss Hazel does it. It's really cool to see that. And when I look at your horses on that piece, they're very folk. It also lets it be accessible to me.
Katie Rempe: Do not make me do a photorealistic embroidery of anything, please. Amazing to look at finished. But it looks pretty tedious.
Christi Johnson: Yeah, totally. And one of my early art teachers this is like when I was in elementary school, would say, the camera's already been invented. You do not need to recreate what you in real life. And I was just like, that's it.
Katie Rempe: So smart! Yes!
Christi Johnson: 20 years trying to figure out how to recreate what I saw in real life photo realistically.
And I'm just unpacking that.
Katie Rempe: It's a great example of it takes time to build your own style. And sometimes that is difficult. Going through many versions and not comparing yourself to others, but being inspired by their work to see, Oh, maybe that's a direction I might like to go. Because as soon as you start comparing yourself or thinking you're not good enough, you just shut down .
We all have to learn at some point. And if you're not willing to be in that. student mindset, you're going to be one of those students that just feel like I should know how to do this already. Why would you know how to do whatever this is already? How?
Science of Slow
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James Divine: Embrace the student mindset. So this kind of reminds me of your first chapter when you talk about intention. You talk about the science of slowness. Tell us more about that.
Christi Johnson: Yeah. Basically the actual brain waves, like the length of our brain waves automatically start to slow down and lengthen out, get longer, as we start to do these handcrafts and as we start to use our brain in that way, and it really, it's like, it is. Physically soothing to the body but it also allows you, yeah, there's our wavelengths
and so if you look at the bottom, that gamma wavelength that's up and down, up and down, up and down, that's really great if you're doing something that it requires a lot of, high energy and tension, but we do not need to live our life in that state and we end up living our life in that state way more than we need to. Being able to bring ourselves into situations that allow the wavelength to lengthen out a little more allows to calm down some.
It really physically alters our ability to adapt to stress and it allows our brain to have that downtime of not having that really up and down reaction to things and allows us to think a little bit, deeper about things and allows us to sleep better, for one.
Katie Rempe: Yeah.
Christi Johnson: to more easily access those lower states and to return to that state more frequently.
Katie Rempe: Just like a magical pathway. After you do it once, it's much more easy to access that path again.
Christi Johnson: Right. Totally.
James Divine: The reasons I resist doing art is because it doesn't seem, I'm just realizing this now, sometimes I'm like, I got to get stuff done. It seems like a waste of time. And I'm like, no, this is what you need to do. Your book, inspired me to go and buy a bunch of embroidery supplies to start embroidering.
And I'm super excited about it because it's this idea of, no, this is your meditation.
Christi Johnson: I pay somebody to help me. She's amazing. She both knows how to stitch and she's really great with my daughter. And so I pay her, she comes once a week and she'll help me out with some stitches when my daughter wants to be with me. And then we'll hang out with Juno in the backyard or whatever.
When I need to get stuff done and she was over and I was like, okay, I gotta do this. I gotta do this. And then I had about 20 minutes left at the end of the day and I was like, what can I do? What can I do? What can I do? And I was like, you can sit down at your chair with your markers and you can just make something Just go ahead and color spend that 20 minutes.
Just coloring. And what I ended up coloring was not good For the record it was I was like, I could never see this again and be fine. But that act, that 20 minutes of allowing myself to just go there, it was so calming. And I was able to return to my life. I was in such a better mood.
I wasn't feeling frantic and I was able to be like, okay, baby girl, let's go hang out now. And now let's us go outside and have some fun. Instead of being like, all right, now I got to do this and that. Yeah. It just really, those calming creative acts just help us return to that state.
Katie Rempe: Talking to Sarah Schira last month, who is a designer of such cute knitted gnomes. And she said the same thing that knitting has had a technical study that gets you into the theta. brain waves. So you can really get into that meditative state. So there's a lot to be said about all those memes that go around to say that handicrafts are good for your mental health.
It really is.
Love Your Threads
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Katie Rempe: Let's talk about another part of this practice of loving your threads. Because, as a knitter, I have a lot of thread like material around me. And so how better can I love my threads?
James Divine: have a lot of yarn? Do you, Katie?
Katie Rempe: I might have some.
Christi Johnson: So loving your threads. There was just a thread hanging down over here, so I was like, oh let me just go ahead and love this one. This is a concept that I learned from Natalie Channon of Alabama Channon who has an embroidery book it's I think it's like the Geometry of Stitching or something, just really beautiful conceptual work I love.
The way that she talks about it, I worked with her when I was in college. She was a mentor of mine. So she would come to our class every couple months. And she taught us to love our threads. And it was not only a way of giving The twist of the threads, a little bit of a release so they don't get as tangled.
It also allows you to deposit just the tiniest bit of natural oils from your hands, which kind of serves as like a beeswax or something. It's not like, a visible amount, just the tiniest bit. And I never wax my threads and I feel like that's part of why I don't really have to is because that does work like that.
And then also it's a great time to just put some intention into there and also, Get that slow brain wave going back for you too, because you're just slowing down and just connecting back with the materials.
Katie Rempe: saw that in the book, I was like, this is what I'm going to start telling people when they're talking about winding yarn. Because, of course, you can use a ball winder and a swift, and that's doing it by hand, and you can still, touch it during the process. But the slow process, right? Going back to slow of hand winding yourself, using your knees or your feet or friend and just, having each inch of that yarn go through your fingers.
That's putting intention in there. You're also finding if you're going to be coming up against any knots. So that's fun to navigate ahead of time. Roads clear all that kind of stuff. I was very inspired by that.
James Divine: I love balling yarn. My husband's. Crochet yarn. I'm always like, let me ball that up for you.
Katie Rempe: Oh, good partner.
Christi Johnson: yeah, seriously.
Embroidered Hands
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James Divine: It's still a
you have these amazing symbols in here and there's a page that caught my eye because I'm a palm reader.
So I'm super into hands, obviously.
You talk about the hand here on page 97. The ultimate tool of manifestation, allowing us to sculpt our surroundings and reflect our visions. The hand symbolizes positive potential and good fortune.
I love this. Because so many times when people learn that I'm a palm reader, they not often, but occasionally enough that it's concerning, will recoil and say, I don't want to know the bad fortune that's in my palm.
Katie Rempe: I don't want to know when I'm going to die.
James Divine: It's a pretty common, experience. And I love how you said the hand is a symbol of good fortune because I think that the hands are created by, the divine and there can't be anything negative in your hands. Look how good those hands are.
Geez.
Katie Rempe: Was there a reason that you chose these gestures?
Christi Johnson: As I was designing that page, I just was like what do the hands regularly do? How are we regularly holding the hands? I initially, there was some sort of mudra designs like this one, but this has been co opted by some bigots. The creative editor was like, maybe we'll leave that out just out of, just out of an abundance of caution.
It was really just about studying, like a lot of the book when I would get to a certain symbol, it was like, okay, let me spend some time with that and just sitting and studying. Doing with that idea. And so the hands are just right in front of me. I was like, okay, this is really convenient.
It's much easier than studying like a Pegasus or something. And so just, yeah, just playing around and being like, what are the shapes of my hands? And I think what I did for that page, I think I just took photos of my hands and then traced them. So it was like, let's just make this easy. I could spend a thousand hours trying to draw the exact place of all of these things.
It was like, or I got a model right here for me.
Katie Rempe: Boom.
Christi Johnson: Just take the photo and trace it. And so that, yeah, it was really just like me playing around with what are the many different ways we use our hands? I wanted the fingers to all be Pointing inwards and dancing with one another too.
Katie Rempe: so fun.
James Divine: cool thing is if you take my intro to palmistry class, oh, dear listener you can actually interpret the hands on that page. What the fingers are doing, what planetary energies are there and realize that these are more modern mudras, that we use all the time, like the peace sign and the cross fingers, but this is a mudra at the top.
So it's really fantastic. I just particularly love that page.
Christi Johnson: Oh, I love that. I have to check out that palmistry.
Katie Rempe: The book walks readers through everything that they could possibly want in terms of Hi, I'm a newbie of embroidery and or magical, concepts. And I just love that it is so accessible for anyone, no matter where they're at. To be inspired and get into it.
You have wonderful sections in here and more than just embroidery, it's, symbology, you even have a section on stretching, which is wonderful because what is helping you embroider your body.
Being Present
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Katie Rempe: Can you talk more about the connection between not only doing the projects, but like being in your body while you're doing it?
Christi Johnson: That is actually a foreign concept to me. Not it was one of those chapters that came from actually making the book. I am just the sort of person that can get so lost in my work that I forget that I am a person and a body.
And be like, why does my back hurt? Like, how are you holding your shoulders this whole time? And so just having to really come to terms with that on a regular basis in my life. I feel like it's cause I'm an Aquarius, I'm an Air Sign, I'm all, just like in the head, in space.
And just every now and then need to like, okay, back into my body. And I think that's why I really loved yoga and meditation more so than most other physical acts because it was like, I have a deep awareness of my body and of the feelings because I, specifically working with Hatha yoga where you're holding poses longer or even Kundalini yoga which I got into for a bit where it was like you're holding poses to the point where your body is like, whoa, I'm having a feeling here.
What is this feeling? It's not quite pain, it's. Being in my body and working a muscle and finding new muscles and being like, okay, how can I really be kind to that area of my body that is doing so much work for me? And it's supporting everything else that I'm doing.
James Divine: Yeah. I think so often we are in a society that is all in our head. We even hear it in metaphysical circles, high vibes only. And like you need the low vibes, you need the rest. I think of high vibes like, the piano, I think of like energy, and if we only have high vibes, that's the soundtrack to Psycho,
Katie Rempe: Oh my God. Yeah.
James Divine: right? And if we only have low vibes, it's Jaws.
Katie Rempe: Oh my gosh.
James Divine: But if we have the full piano at our disposal, we have Vivaldi, And so I think that's a really important thing is how do we have the full spectrum of energetic experience in our actual bodies while in this theta state of creation?
Christi Johnson: Thing that I just thought about with painting, like the idea of Cher a Skirl, where you have the really dark darks and the really light lights you're not really showing anything unless you have that depth along with that brightness.
And the full gamut of that experience. And it's all going to come out eventually anyway, sorry.
Katie Rempe: Yeah.
James Divine: Consciously how much you push the
Katie Rempe: That's right.
The Art of Embroidery Design
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James Divine: I want to know what topics didn't make it into the book.
Christi Johnson: I felt very thorough in the book about what I got done, but I did want to go a little bit deeper into kind of the act of creating your own embroideries and getting a little bit more into that. I think there's one page on composition of like how to start to compose your own.
I only have the capacity of working on so much at one time at a certain point you're like, okay this ends here and something else begins.
Katie Rempe: does that mean there's a cliffhanger to, there could be a part two or?
Christi Johnson: There is book two work
actually a it's not an extension of mystical stitches. It's its own book, but it is my second book. So that's the concept behind the second book of mine is much more about, okay, we learned about how to work with symbolism, how to start to create your own intentions using imagery.
Now, how can we start to have that confidence of creating your own embroideries, of learning the different elements of design and starting to use those and apply those to your own works of art. So that is what the next book is, The Art of Embroidery Design.
When can we expect that?
Christi Johnson: Winter 2025, which is like January 2025.
Katie Rempe: Oh, okay.
James Divine: awesome.
Christi Johnson: a ways away.
Katie Rempe: It'll be here before you know it.
Christi Johnson: Yeah, I know. That's why I'm like, it's a long time from now. I'm like, no. Okay. I know how time moves and it's really not that far from now. But yeah that's very exciting. I'm, thank you. Yeah, I'm almost done working on it. We're working on the cover now, it's a heavy responsibility following up that other book.
I'm like, what do I do? So that's where I'm at there.
James Divine: Does the second book have a it has more of a mundane title? Does it have a magical or mystical bent to it?
Christi Johnson: naturally a little bit just based on my own, but we did want it to be a little more universal in application because we wanted it to be like anybody who wanted to design. But in the end of the book, I have these templates that I've designed. So it's like the idea of here, I built you this.
And you can start to fill in this template you can use some of my images here or you can use your own and all of those templates have their own intention behind it.
If you want to get more specific in your intention for, let's say this overflowing fountain what does that mean for you, how do you want to respecify that maybe the magnolia that, Flower that I have in the middle with the fish coming out of the top.
Maybe the fish doesn't strike you in the same way, in the same meaning that I had for it. So just replace that one part. And so it's meant to be these like templates where you can start to create your own designs by having that scaffolding. It's much more about expanding creativity.
And yeah, learning to develop your own designs, but naturally it's going to have a little bit of that. How to make it into a talisman, but we also had included, I think there's probably eight other artists. whose work is included in there. And so we talk a little bit about how some of those artists weave spirituality into their work.
And so it's a little bit lighter on that just because I did want it to be heavier on the design aspect of things and sneak it into people, where you're like no, it's a book about design.
Katie Rempe: Yeah.
Christi Johnson: And end and they're like, what happened?
Katie Rempe: and now it's magical? Amazing.
yeah.
can't wait to get that one and we'll just have to have you back to talk all about it again. Yay!
Follow Christi!
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Katie Rempe: How can folks find more about you? Do you have classes coming up?
Websites? Social media? All that fun stuff.
Christi Johnson: My website is mixedcolor. net you can find a whole bunch of stuff there. I've got a bunch of free resources if you're a beginner embroiderer, even if you're not a beginner embroiderer and you just want to get a little more creative. I did a stitch along a couple weeks back and so I want to start doing more of those.
That was so much fun to see what everybody was making. I just was like, this is so great. But I also teach courses, online courses. I have my course magic threads, which will open back up, I think in September. And that's all about working with intentional embroidery. It's a ten week series where you go over a new stitch each week.
Much like my books are. It's not just about learning the actual stitches. It's like, how can I use these stitches in infinite ways? And also, how can I open up my creativity in a way that is most supportive of my own sort of evolution? That's the new book is a little bit of that too.
How does my own creativity support my own personal evolution?
Katie Rempe: Yeah. How do I meet me where I'm at?
Christi Johnson: Yes totally. And appreciate that and be like, thanks. Oh, good job, self.
Katie Rempe: Yeah. That is
wonderful. We will link everything in the show notes slash description whatever you're consuming us from so that you too can get connected with Christi. and of course even knitters can embroider on their items.
And so this is definitely one that you're going to want to add to your magical making library, because it's just a wealth of knowledge. And all of your knitwear is a template waiting to be embroidered
upon.
James Divine: Even the stuff in the back, like it's such a great resource. This book, I am using it for everything.
Christi Johnson: Thank you. It turns out kids love it and also cats love it is what I found to be true.
Cats,
Katie Rempe: and cats love it.
Christi Johnson: cats just understand and kids love it because it's this library of symbols. And so it's just like all these images and descriptions of what these images mean, like whether or not the kids can read them.
It's just like pages full of images stitched.
James Divine: That'll be my review on Goodreads. Five stars from my cat.
Katie Rempe: Oh, you know why? It's because it's full of string.
Christi Johnson: They're like, ready to go.
They're ready. They're like, I saw the inside cover. Yes.
The amount of people who have sent me photos of their cats sitting on the book, I'm just like, yes. Oh, my favorite. I love it.
Katie Rempe: That's it.
James Divine: So cute.
Katie Rempe: Christi, thank you so much for joining us on this episode. I'm just gonna spend the whole rest of the weekend embroidering everything I have, so thank you.
James Divine: Me too. I'm in a braider for the first time in my life. Cause I went and got a whole bag of embroidery stuff.
Christi Johnson: I can't wait to see what you make.
Katie Rempe: Follow us on Patreon. We'll make sure to show what we're working on.
Christi Johnson: I love it.
James Divine: Thanks everyone for listening. This has been an awesome episode.
Katie Rempe: we will see everyone next week. Thanks again, Christi.
Christi Johnson: Thank you. This has been so nice. Bye. Bye.
Katie Rempe: Thanks for listening! Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the show, consider sharing it with a friend, leaving a review on iTunes and Spotify, or following Knit A Spell on Instagram. You can also subscribe to the Light From Lantern YouTube channel to enjoy full episodes of Knit A Spell and see our happy faces.
You can also learn more about readings and knitting. and events going on with your favorite maker of magic, James Divine, by visiting thedivinehand. com and subscribing to his newsletter. Then follow Jim's fun and interactive Instagram account at divinehandjim. Keep up with Katie, the magical maker, by subscribing to her newsletter at lightfromlantern.
com. You'll receive a free copy If you'd like to receive a free knitting pattern as a gift then follow Katie on Instagram at light from lantern for even more magical making tips. See you next week.
