Here’s an obligatory first picture of Mocha:

She’s not sure about all the papparazzi flashes going off.

Here’s a picture of an ornament I did for an exchange:

The one in the middle, not the one in the upper right corner of the picture. The “Love” ornament I stitched in December of 2000, and I’d guess it is from the 2000 JCS Ornament issue. The one I did for the exchange is, of course, an original Cross Eyed Kat design. It will probably be commercially available in the summer of 2010. I’m doing several of these little four-square designs for next year. This ornament is finished as a needlebook, and I’ll probably add a couple of other “stitching things” to the charts. Currently, I’m stitching on a spring-themed version of this for a class I’ll be teaching in March on different stitching techniques with overdyed threads. When you’re a cross-stitch designer, you end up stitching on off-season designs!

Thanks for all the comments on Christmas ornaments. It was interesting to read Mel’s comments about not wanting snowy stuff in Austrailia, because here in Texas, the weather could be cold or hot. I often wonder if people in more nothern climates decorate houses with icicle lights. Would you want icicle lights if you’re likely to have the real thing? On the other hand, we did have a white Christmas one year in the Rio Grande Valley!

Nashville market is coming up soon, so here’s my current stitching to do list:
1. Spring 4-square and any accessories
2. Dragon design (close to finishing this and really loving how it looks)
3. 15th Advent Ornament
4. Design and stitch project “T” if possible
5. Cheshire Cat (not a priority for Nashville)

I’ll try to remeber to take a picture of the back as well – I ended up stitching part of my Cross Eyed Kat business card on the back. This has the advantage of keeping all my contact information on the ATC, as well as providing some space to name the card and date it. Stitching through paper is hard, especially since I didn’t do it until the card was all put together.

Thursday at the stitch-in, we held the trading session of the ATC class. I received a lovely atumnal blackwork ATC done on perforated paper. That’s another thing I need to take a picture of! I think we’re going to start an ATC exchange club at the shop to see if we can build any interest. The next exchange will be sometime in February with a Valentine’s theme. Email me if you would like information on how to participate.

While driving around last week, I spotted this:

It’s an Autobot! And yes, I was stopped when taking this picture. I was driving around like crazy because I had run out of Miss Mocha’s food. She eats a special limited ingredient cat food after some stomach problems several years ago. Unfortunately, the vet’s office was out of her food! So I went over to PetSmart, since they have a vet’s office attached and carry her special food. They were out of her flavor and the other flavor they did have was all expired! I looked at the ingredients on the expired, and it didn’t look as limited as the name suggested, so I looked around the other “fancy” cat foods. I finally settled on Healthful Life (R) from Cat Chow (R). Mocha loves it! She scarf it down. Now I have to worry about her eating too much. She’s also still adjusting to the time change, so she meows at the door way too early in the morning because her bowl is empty. I’m hoping that I can keep her on this food.

Really, who can resist this look?

I feel like I have been very busy in the stitching department. This week, I went to both of my LNS stitch-ins, which was fun, although attendance at both was light. I recently got charts made for three new snowfight dragons, so I abandoned my bigger projects for a little instant gratification. I got the first stitched except for the knotwork border (and I’m waiting for the Dinky Dyes for that to arrive – it should be here soon) in less than three nights of stitching. I started the second one last night, but I’ll try to get back to my bigger projects before stitching the third.

I’m also working on a new series that be more Christmas ornaments. These will be a little bit more traditional, though. I’m starting to feel the time pressure to get things done before Nashville in February!

Here is something else I worked on:

This is an original design as an ATC. It may make its way into a dragon Design Element chart. The weird thing is that it should have theoretically been smaller than the ATC size of 2.5″x3.5″, but was almost too big. Maybe my fabric was slightly off on the stitch count – I just don’t know.

I also started stitching on the second design of a new series – always very exciting. The only bad thing was that I couldn’t find the piece of fabric I had set aside for it, so I had to use a new piece of fabric. Somewhere in my house, half of a fat quarter of Picture This Plus Legacy is hiding!

Even without the stitching, we had a fairly busy weekend. Our neighbors run a haunted house in their garage for the week before Halloween and we helped them with setup (well, DH did most of the helping). Also, we finally decided on some new bedroom furniture, so we bought it and most of it is coming this weekend. Which means we have some cleaning and straightening to do before it arrives. I’m wondering if it is worth it to get those disks to put under the furniture legs so that it can theoretically slide around if we ever want to rearrange. Anyone have experience with those?

Mocha also had a busy weekend chasing and killing some string:

I had an almost traumatic experience. When I got home from work Friday, I thought I had left the book that I’m currently reading Stone of Farewell by Tad Williams at work! The horror! Then I remembered many years ago that Tad Williams came to Aggiecon as a Guest of Honor, and since he is one of my favorite authors, I decided to buy hardcover copies of the books I only had in paperback. And he was kind enough to sign all nine of the books I brought! In my defense, it wasn’t my fault that the paperback version of To Green Angel Tower came out in two volumes! And now I’m glad I did that because it meant I didn’t have to put my reading on hold for the weekend (or start into something else as a last resort).

The flash is doing something funky with the fabric color. It is more of a gold than bright yellow:

I love doing macro work on cross stitch. One of these days, I’ll get a digital SLR and take some real pictures.

So, I have been painting and stitching. And also drawing:

This drawing passed Mocha’s smell test. It needs to be traced onto graph paper so that I can transfer the line drawing into the computer program and work on colorizing it. In theory I could scan the drawing and then import it into the computer program and I might try that. In the past, I haven’t been as happy with that method as I have by using the graph paper, but it becomes time intensive.

I have also gotten 60% through another new design. This one went from basic idea in my head that was noodling around my head a couple of days to a inspiration sketch in a flash. Think “I could’ve had a V-8!” type of flash. So half of the design is done, since I was able to draw it directly in the computer program, the other half I’ll sketch on the printout.

I still have to do all the work to sort the business receipts and get cracking on the taxes. Yuck – but maybe it will inspire me to get on the ball with 2008 receipts.

Oh, and for those still wondering:

I picked choice number one (the silver things on my ears are headphones and not part of the glasses).

This is what it looked like on Saturday night:

And this is what it looked like on Sunday night:

No, the pictures aren’t reversed. I was stitching along and decided I just did not like the way the colors looked or worked together. So I invited Mr. Frog over and he got to work taking out all the stitches. This is part of the work of designing. Actually, there is quite a bit of work involved in all aspects of designing, from initial drawings, to test stitching, to production work. For me, the best part is probably the excitement I get when I get a drawing nailed down into a graph and get the colors selected. Ok, another best part is seeing the final piece done! Production work is just work.

I didn’t get any more progress done on this design last night. Instead I got a small amount of painting done:

I also did some sketching, since I am trying to keep that ball rolling and not get bogged down in the details of stitching (although that is fun and relaxing). Finally, we watched almost all of Bender’s Big Score - the new Futurama movie.

Tonight, I might get back to the frogged design. I have to get food for Mocha and run a few errands, so I’ll have to see.

The fabulous finishing job was done by Fran of Cathouse Angel Designs, so check there if you need a tuck pillow or ornament for finishng!

To add to the Christmas craziness, I am frantically working on new designs and class projects for the Winter TNNA show, which is in mid-January. It is 2-3 weeks earlier than Nashville Market, so I have less time, but on the other hand, I don’t have to do the productions runs that I need for Nashville, since it is an order only show. That whole yin-yang thing really works, doesn’t it.

I am really close to finishing one new design, and about to pick out colors for another. I need to sit down with sketch book and paintbrush in order to start getting ready for the summer show, but I’ll probably just be running behind again. It is hard to force creativity, and mine seems to come in spurts. I’m still very excited about the classes I’m teaching!

Meanwhile, this came into our lives shortly before Thanksgiving:

And it totally eats up time! Also, I have no sense of rhythm, which isn’t that much of an impediment in real life, but makes playing the drums harder.

Mocha liked getting things in boxes and is looking forward to Christmas for her own reasons:

One of her most favorite things is big paper bags, so we’ll see if Santa will bring her a new one this year.

These tiny kittens were photographed on the second day of their lives, having survived being born and left to the weather after Hurricane Humberto hit the Texas coast.

They were rescued by the amazing Fran, who takes in little creatures such as these and gives them the tender loving care they need.

Can I get a collective “Aaaawwwwww”? Thanks.

In stitching news, I am trying to get ready for the October Needlework Show. This means that I really need to do the finishing work on “Nina’s Sampler” a pink version of “Kolya’s Sampler”. Since brothers and sisters are different, “Nina’s Sampler” is different from “Kolya’s Sampler”; the quote is different, as is the size of the overall piece, and I’m planning on making the embellished version with different letters (this is what is holding the process up). Of course, now that I’ve done designs for my niece and nephew, my brother has informed me that another niece or nephew will arrive in December. I’m contemplating trying to do something new for the baby.

Also on the to-do list are more rainbow dragons (the Snowfight series), more dragons in general, and other stuff. The website also needs updating, and I need to paint some canvases, and continue with my experiment. Also, I have some other “things” that I’m experimenting with, but I can’t say more right now.

I took the plunge and signed up for a big (ok bigger for me) booth at winter TNNA. This is a scary prospect, because it just about doubles my booth cost for the show. Remember for designers that tradeshows are probably one of the biggest ongoing expenses of the business. I won’t mention how much I spend on ink in a given year. However, a tradeshow is an investment in personal advertising. Also, I’m teaching at least one class at the show, and I’m actually hoping that I’ll be teaching three!

In other news, the release of Halo 3 is being highly anticipated in our household. Personally, I’m a Simpsons: Road Rage kind of gamer, but I sometimes enjoy watching the amusing online action of Halo. It also intially inspired the Snowfight: Dragon series – Red vs. Blue was the initial premise of the first two designs. Tonight, I’m hoping to get a hour of TV time to watch Heroes. Are you confused since the game doesn’t come out until midnight? Here’s my problem: G4 is running an all-night TV countdown until the release of Halo 3 at midnight. Does this seem any crazier than the Harry Potter hype?

I’ll let you know tomorrow if I survived.

So that was Mocha’s big day. We’ll have to see if it repeats itself tonight.