(This Japanese embroidery pattern is up for grabs at the NYPL Digital Gallery.)

New York City's Museum of Arts and Design has long been interested in ways that traditional crafts turn up in contemporary artists' and designers' work. The museum's current exhibition "Pricked: Extreme Embroidery" gathers the work of artists who employ traditional hand-made embroidery methods to create provocative, humorous, and unexpected works of art.

At 6:30pm on January 31st, needlework will meet narrative in a reading and book arts presentation, co-sponsored by the Center for Book Arts. Artists Jen Bervin (whose works we have at NYPL), Andrea Dezso, and Tamar Stone (we have Stone's works at the Library too) will discuss how they use language and embroidery in their art.

If you take a shine to "Pricked: Extreme Embroidery," you might also want to investigate the catalog from an earlier related exhibition: "Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting."