The Stitching for Literacy 2010 Bookmark Challenge starts this week! I’ll be collecting handmade bookmarks during the challenge and donating them to a Houston-area library! Please send an email to kat @ crosseyedkat.com (remove spaces) for information on sending in a bookmark. I’ll send a free mini-knotwork bookmark PDF pattern to anyone who sends in a bookmark!

Now the question is, can I stitch while reading a book because I’m getting a backlog! These two arrived the same day:

And then the new Tad Williams book came in shortly after that. The newest Merchant Princes book from Charles Stross came out today and is due to arrive soon as well! Plus I have a couple of books that a co-worker loaned me. I’ll eventually get to them all.

This is a set of three ornaments. The ornaments are four squares made up of a single motif; the sides are then folded in and stitched together to make a three-dimensional ornament. Easy finishing!
Origami Ornaments

Here is proof of my Celtic kick that started this spring. This tree goes with the Celtic Biscornu, but shows the whole tree.
Celtic Tree

This design has been in my head for a long time and evolved a bit over that time. I love how it came out though. The design uses two layers of blackwork to provide shading effects. It is also kind of a yin-yang design. Since I used an overdyed silk, I stitched this using a backstitching technique rather than traditional blackwork techniques.
Cuddly Cats

If you like them, please request them from your favorite needlework shop!

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

namespace myRandom
{
class Generator

{

static void Main(string[] args)
{
Random RandomClass = new Random();

Console.WriteLine(“The first Winner is entry #{0}”, RandomClass.Next(122));
Console.WriteLine(“The second Winner is entry #{0}”, RandomClass.Next(122));
Console.WriteLine(“The third Winner is entry #{0}”, RandomClass.Next(122));
Console.WriteLine(“\nCongrats to all the Winners!!”);
}
}
}

And the winners are:
Helen D.
Evie (probably from New Hampshire)
Denise (probably from Iowa)

Hooray! If you think your name is listed, check your email (and maybe your spam box) for an email from me!

And now for the rest of today’s entry:

Ok , first, who opened the freezer and let fall in? Sunday afternoon it was 85 – Monday afternoon it was 58! I’d show a picture, but my camera-data connection is having problems.

Over the weekend, I had a couple of wacky celebrity sightings: Friday, we had dinner at our second-favorite Tex-Mex place and then went around the corner to the Barnes & Noble. We walked into the tail end of a Kinky Friedman book signing! Since we were there, we went ahead and got an autographed book. Second, on Sunday, I went to pick up some food at the local Whataburger. I happened to be wearing my New Orleans Saints shirt, and the guy in line behind me asked who the Saints were playing (Atlanta, and they won). Then he mentioned that he had played for the Saints! He played on the Saints team in their inaugural year, 1967. Wow. Of course, I neglected to ask his name, but what a weird co-incidence.

While at the B&N, I picked up a quilting magazine and a mixed media sewing magazine, Sew Somerset. I flipped through the Sew Somerset magazine before going to bed Friday night and woke up Saturday with my brain on FIRE! I have so many ideas with combining these techniques with cross stitch. Since Saturday, I have 2.5 roughed out “collection” designs that I’m going to use with these techniques.

Finally, round out the post, I thought I’d introduce you to our local T-rex:

As you can see, he likes to wear rose-colored glasses. He roams the house and migrates from room to room. Right now, the T-rex and the velociraptor are in one room, while the brontasaurus and the stegosaurus are hiding in another.

I got an interesting email from the TNNA organizers today – needing to know if I will be needing or bringing a digital projector for my class. I am hoping this is a good sign that I will get the classes I signed up to teach for winter TNNA. Of course, I wanted the projector for both individual classes and the group class I proposed, so I don’t know which one was being referenced. I will find out next week what classes are approved. Sometimes it is weird teaching a stitching class, since I am an entirely self-taught stitcher. However, the TNNA classes are not just your usual technique classes since the target audience is shop owners.

This weekend, I am hoping to clean and reorganize my craft room/office a bit. Hopefully this will facilitate more designing and painting. Also, I have acquired an additional printer and it needs a table to go on.

The dog days of summer are definitely here. I could tell that there was far less humity when we were visiting Minnesota/Iowa when I got out of the car and got an electrical shock in the summer – that never happens here in Houston until the winter! It hasn’t been raining this week, so it has just been hot and steamy. Sultry is the word when going outside – air so thick it clings to your lungs as you breathe. Deep and rich with oxygen, which is why I have a problem when I visit Denver. On the other hand, I don’t want to do anything but stay inside here!

Having had my fill of outdoor activities while in Iowa, we saw both the latest Harry Potter movie and the Simpsons movie over the weekend. I enjoyed them both. Order of the Phoenix wasn’t my favorite of the books, but the movie was very enjoyable; the Simpsons was terrific (if you’re a Simpsons fan). Luckily, the opening weekend crowds had died out, so the whole experience was enjoyable. It is strange how two other books that I’ve read are going to be in theaters soon and I had no idea – “Stardust” and “The Golden Compass”.

1. I am still alive.

2. I survived a strange craziness known as RAGBRAI (pronounced rag-bry). If you’re from Iowa, you know what I’m talking about. During this craziness, I discovered that there is an inordinant amount of corn and soybeans covering Iowa. More on RAGBRAI in another post.

3. “Snowfight: Yellow” will release soon – probably this weekend.

4. There will be a Cross Eyed Kat trunk show at Needle Orts in Altamonte Springs, Florida, starting about the second week of August and lasting through late August. If you’re in the area, be sure to stop in and see all the models!

5. I have about 70 more pages to read in the last Harry Potter book – don’t tell me anything about it, and I won’t tell you anything either. I drove all the way to South Dakota to buy the book.

6. I didn’t get any new designs done during the Tour de France. (See announcement #2 above).

7. “Post Modern Cats” is in the Herrschners catalogue! here

Ok, I think that is all of the announcements for now. I hope to resume more normal posting now that RAGBRAI is over.

In stitching news, we have a plethora of finished objects starting to pile up (and look – I learned how to do a thumbnail – isn’t that cool!): This is all in preparation for the June Needlework Market aka TNNA. Of course, just because the stitching is finished doesn’t mean there’s no more work to be done. There is still all the stretching, framing, and production work to do. The next two weeks are going to be very very busy.