I think I lost my design mojo when I finally got my new dragon design out on paper. Here’s what that looks like so far:

Take my word for it, it is going to be awesome!

Maybe it is being sick that has taken my mojo. I just feel tired right now; when inspiration strikes it usual induces a kindof cross-stitch mania. Ok, not that bad, but I do get excited when I can start to bring a new idea to life.

So here’s a chance to influence my design mojo. Submit Christmas ornament design ideas in the comments. If an idea becomes a design, I’ll send you a free copy of that chart. The first twelve designs are: Poinsettia, Candle, Gingerbread House, Nutcracker, Bell, St. Nicholas Day boot, Snow, Christmas Tree, Mouse King, Cookies, Ornamentes and Presents. So those are out.

Three are the new Advent Ornaments: December 4, December 5 and December 6.

Like most of my designs, there is a story behind the design for December 6. Several years ago, the husband and I travelled to Germany over Thanksgiving and the week after. My brother lived there at the time and we had fun cooking a semi-authentic Thanksgiving dinner for his German friends. We went to several cities and visited the Christmas Markets. On the night of December 5, we put our shoes outside the door and St. Nicholas filled them with candy! December 6th is St. Nicholas Day, so this ornament has a boot that is filled with candies and fruit!

Yes, there will be twenty-four ornaments in this series, so start collecting now!

I am also releasing page 3 in the Briar Rose series:

Finally, I’m releasing a set of bookmarks in conjunction with this year’s Stitching for Literacycampaign. These bookmarks are all stitched over two. The one in the center with the sword is stitched on a dyed jobelan fabric and the other two are on a linen banding.

10% of proceeds from the sales of this chart will go to a literacy charity/fund.

Ok, finally, the contest for this year’s Needlework Show! Please post in the comment section below what new design you would like to see in the future from Cross Eyed Kat. At the end of the show, I’ll pick three random winner from all the posts to receive a free chart!

Enjoy the show!

I’m taking a class from Jen Funk-Weber and managed to finish last night.

This is what it looks like laid flat:

And this is what the back looks like:

That’s a herringbone stitch in blue thread on blue fabric in case you can’t tell.

I also spent Friday night and Saturday morning making this hat:

It was for a friend’s baby shower Saturday afternoon. If you can’t tell, she’s having a girl. I’ve done this hat enough that I don’t even have to look at the pattern anymore.

I’ll be collecting Door Prize entries until midnight EST tonight and announce winners shortly be email and then here on the blog, so stay tuned!

This was the first of the “Ancient World Samplers”, which is a typical Cross Eyed Kat twist on traditional samplers. It has the Greek alphabet, along with some specialty stitches and a picture of the parthenon. I really enjoyed both designing this and stitching it, so it was natural that more would follow.

“When in Rome” is the result of years of studying Latin and Ancient Rome in grade school, not that I remember much of it. I still want to visit Italy, but need time do it in depth. While stitching this, my first attempt at the colors for the Colloseum just didn’t look quite right. I frogged about 3/4 of the Colloseum and restitched it. I also had a really hard time deciding what to do with sky. I don’t know how many times I played with it in the stitching program I use. I think I also stitched and frogged it. Finally I hit upon a simple solution: make the sky look like the one in “All Greek to Me”! If you’ll notice the shading is the same, but the clouds are going the other way. I also lends continutity to both designs.

I had so much fun with Greece and Rome, what to do next? I finally settled on Ancient Egypt with Egyptian heiroglyphics to make the sampler fun:

This one I had stitched by a model stitcher, who luckily sent in progress pictures. I say luckily because the color I had originally picked and tested for the darkest part of the pyramids just didn’t look right stitched up. That had to be frogged and restitched! I also wanted the hardanger look like eyes, so I made up a filling stitch to go in the cut areas. Be carefull doing that stitch, though, as it is a bit tricky!

We interrupt this regularly scheduled blog post to bring you the Clue of the Day in the Funk & Webber Designs puzzle pattern contest. The clue of the day is “Sassafras.” For a chance to win the Grand Prize (the first pattern out of the box and all the materials to stitch it), solve this puzzle. For more information about this contest visit Jen’s blog.

With three Ancient World samplers done, I needed a fourth to make it a nice set. But what to do? It had to be “old”, it had to have a different alphabet, and a recognizable monument. I thought about Russian, China, German and Hebrew, but finally decided on Mayan:

Now, this did present at least one interesting challenge. There are over 3000 characters in the Mayan language. I finally settled on using the ones that represent the days of the month.

So that was that, and the end of the “Ancient World” series. Or so I thought. There was this idea in my head still to do China with the Great Wall. But there are so many characters, I thought, and I said I was ending the series. The idea wouldn’t go away, it really wanted out. Then I realized the Olympics were coming again (funny how that happens every four years), and they were going to be in China. The idea couldn’t be denied:

Ok, cue Olympic Anthem. This design is shipping out to shops that pre-ordered it and distributors today! The characters on the left, top and right sides are the characters for the twelve zodiac animals: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Boar. The characters on the bottom (which are not upside down and backwards like they are on all the other Ancient World samplers), mean “Congratulations and be prosperous”, which is a traditional saying for the New Year (notice the tie-in with the zodiac).

Now, to count down the days until the Olympic games begin.

I also saw this recently in the garage:

My one track mind immediately thought “STITCHER”, but I guess it could be s-teacher or something completely different.

While shopping last weekend, I saw these at a major department store and OMG! Flashback city! I used to wear these shoes in middle and early high school. Of course, I think it was an offbrand version from Payless, but still.

Jen Funk-Weber, who lives in Alaska and makes very cool designs, is having a contest starting tomorrow. The top prize will be a full kit to make her new design (I’ve seen it and it is very awesome); that’s a chart, Zweigart fabric, Gentle Arts and DMC floss, so the prize is also awesome. She’s also giving away copies of the chart. Check here on August 1 for complete details.

I’ve been doing some finishing. I finished framing and production work on the new Ancient World Sampler and here it is:

Just in time for the Olympics, too!

I’ve also been doing some finishing work on some Christmas ornaments that I hope will come out in September. Alas, the poor snowfighting dragons have been neglected. I still have to conver the sketches to charts. Finally, I’ve been doing some stitching on my next BAP or should I say Big Ass Design (BAD).

Here’s Becca stitching while watching the Tour:

And is that a red dragon I spy coming to life?

And here she is “Putting the hammer down” as Phil and Paul would say:

I spy: the Tour, a bicycle, stitching (with yellow), CEK charts, kittens, wine, cheese, bread, and a book on French impressionism!

Becca wins six CEK charts of her choice!

First, stitch klosters:

These klosters are stitched with DMC pearl cotton #8. I picked the color 676 to closely match the fabric (Moon Glow from Picture this Plus); this adds texture without color, additionally I don’t have to worry about the color of the fabric showing through the threads. The klosters will keep the fabric from unravelling at the cut edge.

Step two is to cut the fabric! For this design I’m cutting out the threads of fabric in between the klosters. This means that I cut at the interior edge of all the klosters. I do this very carefully and with sharp scissors. I put the tips of my scissors around a thread, then push in toward the kloster a tiny bit before snipping the thread:

Step three is to pull out all the pieces of thread that were cut. In each quadrant of this particular design, I’m pulling out eight vertical and eight horizontal threads while leaving four vertical and four horizontal threads uncut in the middle of the quadrant. Clear as mud? Here’s a picture:

Sometimes I use a tiny tweezer to help pull out threads, but I didn’t use it this time.

Ok, so I’ve carefully cut my threads and carefully pulled them out, and now I’m left with this:

The next step is to do the decorative stitching with my DMC pearl cotton #12, also in color 676. For this design, I’m doing wrapped bars and Greek crosses. Wrapped bars are pretty easy; starting on one side of the uncut middle threads, I go over two threads, then under two threads, wrap around and go over and under again. Fill up the uncut threads, then move on to the other side. The Greek cross is a bit different. First, I wrap my thread around two of the uncut threads from the outside to the middle of a quadrant; sometimes this is a bit tricky as the thread can get squirrely and it needs to lie flat. Then I start doing the over/under thing again, but this time, I’m going between two sets of threads that are at 90 degree angles to each other. The thread will naturally fan out and look like a quarter of a circle. When the fanned out thread is as far out as I want it, I wrap the remainder of the second bar with thread. Then repeat around for this particular design:

Finally, the finished product:

Not so bad!

Ok, who wateched the stage yesterday! It was awesome although I was really hoping Christian Vandevelde would make a break for it as well. Now, we have to see if Sastre can hold his lead through the time trial on Saturday or not. As a side note, I don’t recommend doing hardanger while watching something like yesterday’s stage. I did have one miscut, although it was easy to recover from, since it was a thread that went underneath a wrapped bar. On the other hand, I’m happy to say that this design is now completely stitched! I’ll be framing it and hopefully printing it this weekend.
Becca submitted the following pictures to the TDF SAL, and I’ve added them to the Flickr group:

Aren’t those awesome? Cross Eyed Kat design, yellow stitching, bicylces, French stuff, and kittens! I just want to pick up the kittens and play with them, although Mocha might get jealous.

There’s still time to enter the TDF SAL! Join in until Saturday (midnight CST).

I didn’t have a restful day Friday as we got up early to experience this:

We probably wouldn’t have done it except that my father-in-law wanted to get out in the madness. Unfortuantely, because our phones go through a corporate account, we left the store empty-handed.

Over the weekend, we finally got some proper TDF watching in. My fantasy cycling team is currently in 4874th place. I have been stitching, but I have been bad and stitching on a new design. Normally that wouldn’t be bad, but it means that I am neglecting both the new design sketch and stitching on my travel project. I received a couple of new models that I should be doing the finishing for; however, they need some cording and will have to wait until I get a chance to go to the fabric store.

Here’s what I have done (oooh! a sneak peak!):

Yes, the bicycle is inside the house, why do you ask?

Becca asked: “By the way, do you plan to do a green and orange in the Snowfights? ”

The answer is yes and more! The snowfight series is missing: Orange, Green and Indigo. I have sketches for Orange and Green and need to get cracking on making charts to stitch from! Indigo hasn’t told me what he wants to look like yet.

Yes, there is a sketch on that piece of paper – it is hard to see because of the lighting, my mediocre camera phone, and I’m keeping everyone in defense. So that the suspense isn’t too bad, I’ll tell you now that the potential design involves a bicycle, although that’s not revealing much considering this is being done during the Tour.

In my defense, we have company visiting, so it is harder to get the cross stitch stuff done. I have done a bit of printing that I need to send out tomorrow and not much else. We’re just out and about, so I’m not getting anything done at home. We’re not even watching the Tour as much as we have in previous years. I wake up and turn it on in the morning, but we’re not getting to watch the evening coverage. Luckily, it goes on for a few more weeks. That means there’s still plenty of time to join the Tour de France Stitch along! Win fabulous prizes! Talk about stitching and bicycles!

Ok, now I must get back to redesigning a new design that I’m already stitching on.

And we didn’t even know that there would be fireworks – bonus! Of course, they have to open the roof for the fireworks. Two years ago, we saw the Astros at the Rockies and the game was delayed for rain. We don’t have that problem here in Houston; of course, we have a good bit more rain as well as heat.

Here’s the roof mostly closed:

And here it is open – pretty neat, right?

We had a nice and quiet Fourth of July. We saw the movie “Hancock” (two thumbs up, by the way), grabbed some dinner out and then sat out on the driveway to watch the neighbors blow up money fireworks.

That’s a bunch of firecrackers!

Saturday was the start of the Tour de France, so we watched stage 1 and 2 all weekend. I also made Tour de France cupcakes:

I’ll award a bonus point in the stitch-a-long to the first person who can name what each cupcake represents.

I started sketching on my TDF design.