Second, the following people submitted ideas for Christmas Ornaments in the Advent Ornament series and their ideas became actual charts!
Heather L
Annette
Katrina
These people should also check their inboxes because I need their snail mail addresses. They’ll receive a complementary copy of the design they suggested.

Third, it is always very interesting to see what people request for designs when given the opportunity. I’m seeing many requests for more (more origami ornaments, more dragons, more knotwork, more math, etc.) which is nice because in theory it means that people like the first design if they want more. Although in fall, I got a lot of requests for a Stonehenge Ancient World Sampler and that wasn’t in the list this time.

I am working on the Father/baby dragon concept (it has been in the brain since it was first suggested). This design has a border charted and several rough sketches of the dragons.
I love celtic knotwork, so I definitely have more of that coming out.
I actually keep a spreadsheet with a list of design ideas. There are more than one hundred design ideas on the list right now. Usually the design that is yelling in my head the loudest is the one that comes out. This is tempered by constraints such as time (I actually have a full time day job that pays the bills) and other stitching obligations (model stitching and design obligations).

Fourth, does the “all” in the “we’re all mad here” quote look better with the l’s reversed?

I guess I make my l’s backwards.

Fifth, someone asked what I thinks of the new holographic Kreinik threads. First I must confess that I love all things sparkly! The blending filament in the spool is very, very sparkly! I’ve only done some minimal stitching with the thread and none with the #4 braid yet. The filament makes a nice sparkle when blended with DMC. I tried stitching with just two strands of the blending filament and found it way too slippery for that – at least when stitching in hand the way I do. I also tried out stitching with the #8 braid, but I was using a 30 count fabric, so that didn’t work out well. I should be getting the #4 braid soon, which is the real standby with cross stitch, so I hope to do lots of stitching with it soon. These threads immediately say “Dragons” and “Fairies” to me. I hope to have some designs out with them soon.

Sixth, if you’ve been to the main Cross Eyed Kat website lately, you’ve probably noticed some weird things going on. I’m in the middle of revamping it so that it will be easier to update. I’ll also be cleaning up the “Where to buy” list to add new shops and remove any that are no longer in business.

Finally, it is not too late to send in a bookmark for Stitching for Literacy! I’ll be collecting through May 7, 2010. Becca sent these lovely bookmarks in:

Everyone who sends a bookmark to me will receive a free bookmark design!

The design went from looking like this – the rabbit in question is in the top right block of the needlecase:

To this:

Doesn’t that look more like the shape of a fox than a rabbit?

Mocha must have just rolled around on the keyboard and hit the mouse a bunch to get it to change! So, if anyone who has this chart already (and I’m groaning thinking about all the copies I used in class two weeks ago), email me and I’ll send you the rabbit. For anyone who has the rabbit and would rather have a fox, I changed the colors to complete Mocha’s masterpiece and make it more like a fox. A copy of that change is available here.

Then the fox would looke something like this:

I guess I’ll have to officially demote Mocha from being an office assistant kitty cat!

This resemblance is dimished somewhat as I continue to fill in the rest of the face, but all the remaining bits are white, so I’m not sure. I love the idea of this design, I love the fabric, but maybe it is just a bit too much? A bit too out there?

Here is what the whole thing would look like (approximately):

So what does the world think? Keep stitching or put this on the back burner?
As a side note, there is an aweful lot of gray in this design, so it will probably go into a rotation with something else no matter what!

Well, I’m behind on my Christmas Ornament designs, so I’m trying to work on that in my head while my fingers are stitching for spring!

Items accomplished from my to-do list for Nashville: One. I finished stitching on the 15th Advent Ornament. However, I am making good progress on the “Hopping Over” design and I rounded up all the materials to get a second model of “Iris Biscornu” made.

I wasn’t expecting to get too much done this past weekend, since we had company in town. We had fun though! Here is dinner at the “Kitchen Table” at Buco de Beppo!

Hopefully, I’ll get more stitching done this week since I have two stitching nights. And I really should start printing soon, but first I need to order more ink.

Are you dizzy yet?

The Nashville Market is just four weekends away! This is a wholesale cross-stitch market where designers and vendors, like myself, attempt to convice the local needlework shops from across the country that we have The Next Big Thing ™. Here’s my to do list:
1. Frame and Photograph “Dragon Tattoo”
2. Make and print charts for “Dragon Tattoo”
3. Finish stitching Advent Calendar 15
4. Do finishing work for Advent 14 and 15
5. Photograph Advent 14 and 15
6. Make and print charts for Advent 13-15
7. Finish stitching “Hopping Over”
8-10. Do finishing, photograph, charts for “Hopping Over”
11-12. Photography and charts for “Iris Biscornu”
13. Decide how many copies of older charts to bring and print them
14. Possibly make other stuff
15. Pack it all up
16. Decide on promotional event stuff

Whew! Hopefully it will all get done! I’m hoping that some of the designs that came out in the fall will also be popular. Then I need to get to work on the remaining Advent calendar ornaments, get back to Briar Rose, and work on some other designs that are vying for attention.

In the meantime, we’ve got company coming this weekend and the Superbowl is next weekend (Geaux Saints!). No wonder I’ve had dreams about forgetting something!

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)

1. Complete the finishing on the next Advent Ornaments
2. Pin and frame Briar Rose: Page 4
3. Pin and frame Ambigram Alphabet
4. Photograph Ornaments, Briar Rose and Ambigram.
5. Finish stitching super-secret project due October 1
6. Finish stitching class project due before November 1.

I think that is a long enough to-do list for the next week. It doesn’t even touch on working on the other two designs I have in progress that I’d like to get done for Nashville, setting up my virtual booth for the Online show in October and working on some other design sketches. This designing job is alot of work!

I’m definitely not promising to get everything on that list done by next week, but a start would be good. We’re also in the midst of a major late-summer “spring cleaning” at the house. While it does take me away from stitching, I do like having the house in order.

Then there’s the Beatles Rock Band, which I hear calling my name! If I sing “Come Together”, will everything magically get done?

This design has no shading:

It isn’t really meant to be realistic.

This design has some shading (mostly in the snow):

If the snow had all been stitched in white, it probably would look ok, but it would look more flat.

I tend to use confetti as a blending technique, to blur lines of shading. If I were using paint or pencil, I would actually blend the colors so that there wasn’t a line delineating a color change. I can’t really do this with thread (well, I could blend the two thread colors, but that’s even more work than confetti), so I use confetti stitching to randomize the color change a bit and make it more realistic.

You can see this technique highlighted in many of my dragons:

The wings, body and tail of the dragon use three shades to make the image more three-dimensional. The three shades make use of confetti stitching in the transitions to look like shading. As a side note, the penny uses more banded shading and less confetti because that is what a shiny penny looks like!

At the extreme are my Mini-Impressionism designs, which are designed to have a pixelated look that is remeniscent of impressionist paintings. These are meant to be looked at from 5 feet away or more:

Really, confetti stitching isn’t that bad! It is all just counted cross-stitch; confetti stitching just requires a bit more counting. So please, don’t curse designers as you stitch! Just push through and enjoy the results at the end!

The Tour de France was most of July and finished with TdF cupcakes:

We had a bunch of company in late July to mid August, which meant I did far less stitching that I usually like. However, I did get to see “The Phantom of the Opera” (again).

I went to DFW and saw the cattle drive at the Fort Worth Stockyards:

(Who’s thinking “Saw varsity’s horns off” with me?)

We took my five year old nephew to his very first Major League Baseball game:

Note to self: next time, try to see an Astros game instead of a Rangers game. We have this nice thing at the stadium called a “roof”, which is used not just to keep rain out, it is also used to keep A/C in when it is hot outside!

DH rode in the Hotter n Hell hundred bike ride in Wichita Falls:

And I stitched.

I did finish two projects, Briar Rose: Page 4 and the 13th Advent Ornament.

I uploaded this picture of Briar Rose: Page 4 in mid-April:

Which means I probably started in late March or early April. And it took five months to get to this:

Not too bad, considering I worked on several other pieces in that same time span. This design will be available at the October Needlework Show, so ask your LNS to pick it up!

The 13th Advent Ornament won’t be available until January 2010.

I picked up the large Ambigram Alphabet from the finisher. Now I just have to do the finishing work on the small one and get it ready. That one will also be ready for the October Needlework Show, as will the next three Advent Ornaments (10, 11, and 12).

I’m starting to plan for Nashville 2010 releases. I’ve got two fairly largish pieces in the works that I’m hoping will be finished in time and several other designs in the works for 2010. Then there are some small things I have to get ready, plus a class piece to design for the spring. Things are just busy busy busy around here!

To catch up on the last couple of weeks:
There were Tour de France cupcakes (only yellow this year):

I did have a weekend of stitching, and Briar Rose went from this:

To this:

Now I just have the border to do!

Mocha “killed” her string toy and then “ate” it. She doesn’t really eat it, she just drags it to her foodbowl and then metaphorically eats it:

Now I’m going through Tour de France and stitching withdrawal (been too busy to stitch in the last week). Maybe I can hide away for a couple of hours this weekend and at least get my stitching fix. I’ll have to wait until the Tour of Ireland for my cycling fix. I have managed to get a couple more Christmas ornaments designed, so that is good news. Right now, I have more ideas in my head than time to get them out. Then they end up competing and nothing happens! Hopefully, I’ll be able to whip them into a nice line soon!