I don’t sit down in front of a blank sketchbook/graph paper/computer and try to make a design come. First, I need that little nugget called “inspiration.” Sometimes it is an idea, sometimes it is a phrase or a word. Whatever the inspiration, it usually evokes an image for me since cross stitch is a visual medium. I have a doodle sketch book, but inspiration doesn’t always come when that is handy. If the inspiration is something that I need to capture graphically, I will doodle on whatever is handy: a post it or a scrap of paper. Then I have to try not to loose that piece of paper! Other times, I can write down a phrase to summarize the idea and that will record it. Some ideas rattle around in my brain for a long time (I have a couple that are rattling now, waiting to mature), and some come right away.

This doodle came to me Friday morning:

Obviously, I didn’t have my sketchbook with me, as this doodle is in my notebook. Friday night I got the layout and color selection done and managed to get this stitched before I went to bed:

Overall, that is pretty fast for a design. Most take longer, either just working in my brain, or getting the sketch/graph just right. Lately, a Christmas tree has been giving me a whole lot of trouble.

Saturday, I went by the LNS and this jumped into my hands:

Thirty minutes after arriving home, I had this (sorry that it is blurry, but K is for Kat):

I got a jump ring while out and about and I was wearing it that night!

Sunday, I was good and worked on Page 3 of Briar Rose. I’m trying to finish the couch she’s sleeping on, so it isn’t that exciting, but soon I’ll be able to move on to backstitching and lettering!

Monday, I was bad and started something else new – for the record that is three new starts in four days. This came into existence on Monday (it has been rattling in my head for a few months):

If you can’t tell, it will be the December 9 Advent Ornament design.

Oh, and here’s what happens during a meeting where I’m just a listener and not an active participant:

On an unrelated note, Dave Zabriskie, American time-trial champion and pro-tour cyclist needs help. His home was burglarized while he was at the Tour of California: http://tinyurl.com/cq5kwt. Please spread the word!

I did get some stitching done on Briar Rose.

Shhhh! She’s sleeping. As you can sort of see in this picture (and the Page 2 design), my Briar Rose has pricked her hand on her embroidery (presumbably the needle) and not on a spindle. Also, this low-res picture from my camera phone has picked up all the sparklie in the the fabric. These are all being done on Legacy from Picture This Plus.

Speaking of fabric, I picked up some samples from Stitches and Spice while at Market, and already have ideas churning in my head on what to put on them. Hopefully, these hand-dyed fabric companies are gaining a wider foothold in LNS’s across the country because I just like using fun fabrics!

DH and I have been watching the Amgen Tour of California this week. I’ve also done a bit of knitting:

Hopefully, I’ll get all the way better soon and then I’ll have the energy for some more designing!

September 12th found us driving from St. Charles, MO, to Jefferson City. My previous trip to Missouri had been on the edges: driving from Baton Rouge to St. Paul, MN, (that goes along the eastern edge of Missouri), stopping to see the St. Louis Arch, a business trip to Anheuser-Bush in St. Louis, a trip to the SWE conference in Kansas City, and driving from Houston to Iowa (this goes through Kansas City and just a bit of northern Missour). Visiting Jefferson City was my first trip to the interior of Missouri.

They have a strange obsession with Lewis and Clark in Missouri:

The water in this monument contains water from all 21 waterways Lewis and Clark crossed on their way to the Pacific.

Did I mention that I took this stage of the Tour of Missouri?

Ok, not really, but I did get to stand on the podium which was pretty cool.

After seeing the sights, we settled in to watch the finish of the stage:

Yes, I’m in that picture, although it is a bit “Where’s Waldo”. Notice the incline of the street. That’s about 100 meters from the finish line, and the riders did a circuit around the capitol building three times. That’s a pretty killer way to end 100 miles of bike riding!
This is what the race looks like when it goes by:

Seriously, if it isn’t a mountain stage, you get to see the riders for about 10 seconds, so it was nice to have them go by three times!
I managed to get this picture with a couple of big name riders in the middle. Trust me, they’re there.

Getting a flat tire at this stage of the race really sucks – there’s no way to catch back up to the front in time.

It is required to be as noisy as possible when the race goes by, so cowbells and clappers are given out before hand:

After the race, we got to see the Govenor of Missouri (the guy with the microphone), the dude in red is the Lieutenant Govenor, who helped organize the race:

I thought I’d never seen the Texas govenor in person, but I have – he rode at the end of the MS150 a couple of years ago.
Here is a picture of all the race leaders together:

Christian Vande Velde is in yellow, and he goes on to win the race. Mark Cavendish is in green and is winning the sprint competition. The guy in the white jersey is winning the best young rider competition, the guy in red was voted most aggressive rider for the day, and the guy in blue is the King of the Moutains. So there are many ways to “win” a bike race. Also, none of these guys won the stage that day.

On Saturday, the race was ending in St. Charles, mere miles from the hotel where the Needlework Market was. So, we got everything set up and then went and explored St. Charles.
We spotted this in the window of Stitches, Etc.

An actual stitched model of “Ribbons” spotted in the wild! Very exciting!
We also saw this:

Which is at a dog bakery – I’m presuming they make treats for dogs and don’t actually bake the dogs, since we didn’t go inside.
Mark Cavendish won the stage, although George Hincapie made a break for it late to try and take the overall lead from Christian Vane Velde. Winning the stage meant that Cavendish kept the green jersy overall. That probably sounds like a bunch of nonsense if you don’t follow bike racing, but just imagine someone talking about baseball players, football or NASCAR and you get the idea.

I spent the rest of the weekend trying to convince shop owners that Cross Eyed Kat designs are awesome:

I also tried to keep tabs on what was happening in Houston due to the hurricane and I did some stitching on a new design. That new design is part of a new series, and I’m very excited about it. I’m hoping to come out with the first two parts in February. Currently I’m about 25% done with backstitching the border (it has a very intricate border), and I’m probably about 70% overall done with the stitching. I really should keep track of when I start these things – I think I started stitching it in early August, and I’ve had a few interruptions, so it is going much faster than I origianlly thought. Here’s a blurry sneak preview:

Ok, I hope everyone joining from the Needlework Show enjoyed looking at the new designs in the show!

The “something” turned out to be Ike. I tried telling it to go away, and it listened for a while, but then turned back toward Houston. We hemmed and hawed about whether or not to go, but finally decided to get out of Dodge. We flew out Thursday night and landed safely in Missouri. While we were gone, we had friends who were under a mandatory evacuation evacuate to our house before heading further inland.

While we were in Missouri, we had planned to see the Tour of Missouri, since it would be ending in St. Charles the day the Market started. Who could ignore this confluence of stitching and bicycling that seemed made for us? By going up Thursday, we were able to see the stage 5 finish in Jefferson City.

I’ll post some more pictures of the Tour when I get them off the camera – this was taken with my phone. The tour was fun – we walked all around the capitol building, had lunch at a little cafe, watched a looping criterium, and then got to watch the end of the Tour stage three times, since it went in a small circuit around the buildings. We stayed to watch the awards ceremony (something we didn’t get to do in Georgia), so we saw the Governor and some other state officials.

Saturday, we got the room ready for Market, then headed off to downtown St. Charles. This is a quaint section of the old town just off the Missouri River with restraunts and shops – including this dog bakery.

We had lunch at an outdoor cafe, then wandered up and down the Main street. There was a cross-stitch store and they had a stitched model of “Ribbons” in the window! The Tour went by in blur – it was a bunch sprint to the finish and Mark Cavendish won, keeping his lead in the green jersey!

Saturday night, Sunday and Monday were the Market, so we were busy with that, along with keeping tabs on what was going on back home. We couldn’t completely relax with the hurricane happening. Here’s what part of the room looked like for Market:

Luckily, the airline started flying into Houston again by the time we were due back. We went to the grocery store, since our power had been out for three days and we’d have to clean out the fridge and freezer. It was mostly stocked, although a few areas looked like this:

So no milk, eggs, tortillas, or prepackaged breakfast pastries. Part of our fence blew down, so we got that propped up, and are working on cleaning up all the branches and pine cones in the yard. This morning I passed the Walmart, and I didn’t see a line at the gas station for the first time in a week!

Mocha came through the storm fine – she was boarded at her vet’s office and they staffed the building through the storm and had a generator for the power outage.

Things are slowly getting back to normal, at least in our part of the city; there still 60% of the area without power. Also, the destruction on Galveston and the surrounding areas is just heartbreaking.

This past weekend, we kept an eye out on Gustav. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that my folks all live in Baton Rouge, so with east Texas to west Florida in the intial cone of uncertainty, we were all watching out. The good news is that they came through the storm fine, the bad news is that the power is still out and phones are spotty. Sometimes it is amazing how much we rely on modern convienences.

The weekend before this one, DH and I took a little jaunt up to Wichita Falls for the Hotter ‘n Hell Hundred. He rides his bike 100 miles in the heat, while I find places with A/C to hang out until he comes in. I saw this while wandering in the “Fun Zone” by the finish line:

It is hard to ride a bike with a wheel like that (also the back wheel was missing). The guy holding the bike was in the professional race that preceded the general ride and apparently ran into someone else who had crashed (everyone was okay).

Here I am knitting at the finish line (I was still working on my Olympic knitting):

For the record, I was the only one knitting with wool in the 100 degree heat. The scarf is now done, except for the tassels.

I was busy this Labor Day weekend as well. A model arrived last week, and I didn’t like a couple of the colors on it, so I ended up restitching it. That’s all my fault for not doing the test stitching. Luckily it was small, one of a set of three Christmas Ornaments, so I got it done by Monday. I ironed and stretched the other models and spent last night framing them. Stay tuned for preview pictures! Oh, yeah, and I ran 10K in the Nike “Human Race”, so it was a busy weekend. The Fall market is only a week away and the Fall online show falls close on the heels of that, so it time to go crazy!

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!

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.

So how does this Tour de France stitch along work? Well, I’m encouraging everyone to start something new on Saturday! Simply start stitching Saturday and send in updates during the Tour de France. For the unitiated, the tour goes from Saturday, July 5 2008 to Sunday, July 27 2008. There’s no requirement that you must watch the tour while stitching, although it is encouraged. Coverage and TV information is available on Versus. So stitch on something for a month. To make things interesting, I’ll make it a contest.

Comment here or send me an email that you’re participating (this will be open ended and I’ll accept anyone joining until midnight CST on July 26): 1 point
Send ime an email picture of you TdF SAL stitching: 1 point
Post a picture of your TdF stitching in your blog (and alert me to that fact): 1 point
Email/post a picture of your TdF stitching with the Tour on TV in the background: 5 points
Email/post a picture of your TdF stitching with a bicycle: 5 points
Email/post a picture of your TdF stitching with something French: 5 points
If stitching has yellow in it: +1 bonus point
If stitching a Cross Eyed Kat design: +2 bonus points

Pictures can also be posted to this Flickr group.

Most points overall will be the Yellow Jersey winner and get 6 free Cross Eyed Kat charts of his/her choice.
Most unsual picture (at my discretion) will be the King of the Mountains/Polka dot jersey winner and get 3 free Cross Eyed Kat charts of his/her choice.
Most starts and finishes during the time frame will be the Sprinter/Green jersey winner and get 3 free Cross Eyed Kat charts of his/her choice.

Fine print: No actual jersey will be given out. I have sole discretion on determining points and winners. Participants are on the honor system that they are submitting/participating with stitching for the 2008 Tour de France.

Clear as mud? Questions will be answered if asked.

I my personal stitching news, I went to a stitch night at one of my LNS’s last night and I was bad. I just wanted to start something new, so I did. It is, of course, a new design (and part of a new series). I’m just so excited about it, I wanted to start it. So my “travel stitching” piece got neglected. I finished the other model I was working on earlier in this week and I really like how it came it. That design (here’s a hint, it has cats and blackwork), will be available in September.