I did get a chance to work on stitching a little bit and am making progress on the border for Briar Rose: Page 3. I hope to have this finished before I go to the Get-A-Way this weekend.

Did anyone notice that this particular Sleeping Beauty didn’t prick her hand on a spindle? Instead, I imagined she had pricked her hand on a stitching needle!

I’m trying to get some charting done for a new set of designs; just need to find some time to sit down and plan it all out. Meanwhile, I am neglecting my bookmarks! I have a set of three that will be released soon in conjunction with the Stitching for Literacy campaign. I hope to have the finishing for them done in time for the Online Needlework Show.

Now for the random thing you didn’t know you didn’t want to know about me, or maybe you did want to know. Anyway, I thought it would be marginally interesting to share my top 25 most played songs in my iTunes library:
25. “Candyman” by Christina Aguilera – what can I say, Christina Aguilera is a guilty pleasure and this song is just fun
24. “Real Gone” by Sheryl Crow – great road song
23. “Gravity” by John Mayer – I had no idea I played this that much
22. “When I’m Gone” by 3 Doors Down – just a good song
21. “Bad Day” by Daniel Powter – apparently I have alot of bad days
20. “The Saints are Coming” by U2 and Green Day – when I was a kid, I thought this song was about the New Orleans Saints.
19. “A Cheap and Evil Girl” by Bree Sharp – a fun artist just a little off the beaten path
18. “Clocks” by Coldplay – love me some Coldplay. I probably haven’t had their new stuff long enough for it to break into the top 25
17. “Breathe (2AM)” by Anna Nalick – I really empathize with some of the lyrics
16. “You Give Love a Bad Name” by Blake Lewis – the primary reason I ended up liking him in American Idol Season 6
15. “Rock Star” by Nickelback – yes, I want to be a cross-stitch rock star!
14. “David Duchovny” by Bree Sharp – awesome song! “Why won’t you love me, David Duchovny?” Yes, I am an X-Files fan
13. “White Sandy Beach of Hawai’i” by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole (aka Iz) – such a pretty song
12. “No One Else” by Weezer – I’m the girl who laughs for no one else
11. “Daughters” by John Mayer – sentimental favorite
10. “100 Years” by Five for Fighting – makes me cry
9. “Dirty Little Secret” by The All-American Rejects – I liked this from the first time I heard it on Leno
8. “Hurt” by Johnny Cash – for when I’m feeling sad
7. “Vertigo” by U2 – for when I’m practicing my Spanish. 1, 2, 3, 14!
6. “Wake Me Up When September Ends” by Green Day – I sometimes feel like this
5. “Who’s Gonna Sing?” by Prototypes – a catchy song that was featured on an iTunes commercial once
4. “Keep Holding On” by Avril Lavigne – I’m actually surprised there’s not more Avril Lavigne in this list, because deep down, I’m a sk8r grrl
3. “Yellow” by Coldplay – picked up from the Lance Armstrong playlist
2. “Mad World” by Gary Jules – I fell in love with this song when I heard it on a CSI episode

And drumroll please for #1…..

1. “Undone – The Sweater Song” by Weezer – apparently I have an unhealthy interest in frogging knitting.

Having a great big gaping hole in my pants meant that my original plan to go to the grocery store and pick up dinner was out, so DH and I decided to order pizza. I got home and changed and then tried to order pizza. Usually I like to order over the internet so nothing gets misunderstood, however, my computer was at work, so I had to call in the order. It takes several minutes to get through my order (a single large pizza and breadsticks) because I had a coupon and the girl taking my order was a driver and only manning the phone because they were short-staffed. When the pizza arrived there were no breadsticks. Turns out something had gone wrong, they hadn’t put in the coupon and somehow left the breadsticks off the order. Had they missed the coupon and added the breadsticks, I would’ve picked up on the mistake because of the price difference. Anyway, I wasn’t too happy about all this, especially considering my earlier problem with the pants. I called the store back after dinner and they did rectify the situation by putting a credit on our account.

I did get some stitching done last night after all of this. I finished what I could on the green dragon; now I am waiting on some beads. I also still have to do the tree border on all three new dragons. Today I drew up plans for integrating them into a complete set. There will have to be a few tweaks, and I’ll add in an extra goody or two when I do get around to releasing them all together (they’ll come out individually first). Since I didn’t have the beads, I got back to my now week-long neglected second design in my new series.

Finally, here’s a picture of the ATC I received in the class exchange:

I only used my camera phone, so the picture doesn’t quite do justice to the stitching.

We had a fun Halloween. I wore my Doctor Who scarf to work (no one else dressed up at work, so I felt a bit like Pam in “The Office”), but it got hot eventually. I didn’t get any good pictures though, because as soon as I got home I had to get changed for the Haunted House, but here’s a goofy action shot:

I had a Four scarf, waistcoat and jellybabies, and Ten shoes, sonic screwdriver and psychic paper.

I worked door duty for the night and it really got busy between 8 and 9 pm. I think people were done trick-or-treating by then. I had to stand out by the edge of the driveway to give away our candy, though, because people who didn’t want to go to the haunted house didn’t come up. It was really interesting to see all the different reactions of people going through the haunted house. There were the pre-teen girls who screamed the whole way through, the teens who were non-chalant about it as they tried to be cool, the teens who looked terrified to walk down the first corridor, and then the adults who generally enjoyed it. We also had the little kids who either wanted to go in, or didn’t want to come close. Some would peer down the first corridor as if deciding whether it was scary or not. The three questions I answered the most were: “Is it scary?”, “How big is it?” and “How long did it take to make?”. The answers to those were “Of course”, “The size of a garage” and “About a week”. We finally shut the whole thing down at 10 pm Halloween night.

Saturday was a busy day as our new furniture was being delivered. Since we’d been working on the Haunted House all week, we hadn’t had a chance to clear the room out. So everything came out Saturday, the floor got vacuumed, and any remaining surfaces got dusted. After the workmen delivered and set up the furniture, I had to dust again because the new stuff was dusty! We still haven’t moved everything back in and I have a bad feeling that this is the beginning of a major house cleaning in the works. Saturday we worked the Haunted House again, then watched the end of the Texas Tech/t.u. game, which was a nail-biter. We’re not usually Tech fans, but we’re Aggies, so that makes us anti-t.u. and it makes us happier when they’re not rated number one.

Sunday I was up early (thank goodness for the extra hour) to go to the quilt show with some ladies from my LNS. This is what the line looked like 20 minutes before the show opened:

Five minutes before the show opened, the line wraped back on itself two more times!

I found some cool finishing fabrics and was able to find some other things for Christmas gifts. I really love looking at all the colors and styles that are available in quilting fabrics. That, and the embellishments really fire up my creativity. By the time we had shopped the whole festival, then looked at about half the quilt display, I had hit sensory overload.





Senses overloaded yet?

I did manage to get a smidge of stitching done and I’ve now finished restitching the section I had to frog last week. This week I have stitch-ins Wednesday and Thursday nights, so I should get alot done. And I really have to finish my second ATC since the exchange is this Thursday.

Just a reminder if you want micro-updates on what’s going on here in Cross Eyed Kat Land, you can look for me on Twitter.

The set of pictures I took can be seen here.

We’ll probably be hanging out at the haunted house Thursday and Friday. I’m going to give away all of our Halloween candy Friday so that it is out of the house. I have a bad habit of eating it before Halloween.

It was a nice distraction from frogging this:

I don’t like the way the reds are working out, so I plan to redo that section.

Oh, and my DH managed to stumble across the fabric I was looking for the other day. Not before I cut another fat quarter in half and started stitching. Oh well.

Me, I’ve just been stressed out over that and generally an emotional wreck.

I’m trying to look on the brighter side, so here are some good things from the past week:
(1) “China” made it to Hoffman’s in time for the opening of the Olympics.
(2) I’ve made some progress on my Ravelympics project:

Yes, it is knitting, but it will turn into this scarf soon!
(3)
Ok, you can’t read the odometer in that, but at the time it said “000070″. We got a new car and sold the Jeep, so that’s very exciting and fun to drive! It is a Subaru Outback, so still keeping transport space (required for biking and cross stitch), but with better gas mileage.
(4) Watching the Olympics.
(5) Backordered canvas arrived – which means I can finally finish up the June orders.
(6) I posted off a project for a model stitcher! Yay! I’m really hoping to have three new designs ready for September. One is finished and the other two are at model stitchers.
(7) I’ve been doing a bit of charting and sketching, so that is always good. I’ll get back to stitching after the Olympics, because I totally want to have my scarf finished for Halloween.

Right now I’m trying out the wordpress app for the iPhone. So any strange missspellings are the result of inadvertant finger taps. Now I just need to be able to post pictures taken with the phone on the blog.

I’m supposed to go to the grocery and get some printing done, but instead I’m enthralled by Olympic water polo. Ok, enough typing, back to figuring out what’s for dinner next week.

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.

Anyway, I reported the story of how the stitching went to a high school graduation over the weekend:


Wow – graduating class of 2008! Now I do feel old. Also, everything is bigger in Texas, so there were over 660 in this graduating class (mine in Louisiana had 203).

In stitching news, I am very nearly ready for the Columbus TNNA tradeshow. Tonight I have to pack, put fluff on my Sample It! packs and figure out if I’m forgetting anything. I can’t believe I’m not running around town frantically, or running the printer late at night! I even played a video game last night and stitched!