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!

I did have a break over the weekend, though, as we took a short trip to Austin since some relatives were in town for business. We arrived Friday night and went downtown to check out the action on 6th street:

The husband got us tickets to Esther’s Follies, which was hilarious:

Saturday, I made the husband take me to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center since the bluebonnets were still in bloom:

Of course, we saw lots of wildflowers:

Austin is a good bit dryer than Houston, so we saw plenty of cacti in bloom:

I even caught a bee in the act of pollinating!

We had lunch at an interesting cafe where they serve fresh veggies grown in a garden behind the cafe:

And there was a sleepy cat outside:

The afternoon was spent hitting several bike stores in the area. Our first stop was Mellow Johnny’s which is the shop owned by Lance Armstrong:

There were a bunch of Lance’s racing bikes around the store, including a Tour De France bike:

And a Tour of California bike (I love this paint job):

The cross stitch had to go in for a closer look:

This was our third bicycle shop (I forgot to get a picture of the second):

I just wish we’d had our bicycles to ride between the shops! All that walking was hard on my feet! Finally we made it back to our hotel which was close to the bridge that has all the bats.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to see the bats, so we’ll have to go back!

When we got back, I had to get to work finishing all my printing:

Now, everything has to be sorted and mailed out and then I can get back to stitching!

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.

It was rainy when we arrived and while meandering around, we found the lot with all of the team cars. So we hung outside of various buses waiting for autographs. Levi Leipheimer finally came out:

As did George Hincapie:

That’s like hanging out at Pebble Beach and getting an autograph from Tiger Woods before a PGA tour!

After that, we went down to see the race start and all the team cars take off. We toured the expo area set up in Centennial Park. I met the Jelly Belly:

We watched the bike race go by:

I got pictures with two team managers, first Michael Ball of Rock Racing:

And then Jonathan Vaughters of Slipstream Chipotle:

We walked from Centenial Park to Georgia Tech and then back to see the finish sprint. All in all, the trip to Atlanta and the Tour de Georgia was tons of fun and we hope to do it again.

In the meantime, it is just over a week until the start of the Tour de France. Anyone want to join in a 23 day stitch along?

I am going crazy getting ready – although it isn’t half as bad as last year! I’m actually ahead of where I usually am. I have four new charts ready for the Sample It! event, and I hope to actually be showing five new designs. I now have seven (!) different handpainted canvas designs, so I hope to meet some needlepoint shops and expand in that direction. I have half of my catalogues ready, although I need to pick up my price lists from Kinko’s. I still have to wrap up my class information, though. I’m teaching the same thing that I taught at the January tradeshow – a class on Artist Trading Cards and how to do them with cross stitch/embroidery. However, I’m the only teacher this time instead of teaching the class with four other designers. And I need to re-mat several of the models – guess I’ll be busy this weekend!

I’m getting excited about the show, too. It will be exciting to debut the HPC (Hand Painted Canvas) line as well as network with other designers and shop owners. We’re having some great online debates right now about how to bring more stitchers to stitching.

Pictures of the new designs will be shown sometime after June 5th. As a courtesy to shopowners who take the time to visit the tradeshow, I let them get first peek.

I hope to post about our visit to Georgia sometime soon. I finally got the pictures prepped that I want to show, and it was such an awesome trip, I want to share it. Plus, a new design went on the trip (the same one that went to Germany), so that design has been to some interesting places!

Yesterday, I got my wordpress upgraded. And Whoa! there are a bunch of differences. It looks good, but I’m still figuring out where things have been hidden.

In stitching news, I’m am starting the frantic mode for Columbus. I dropped one piece off at the LNS for finishing into a bellpull yesterday. I hope to have the other two that are finished framed by this weekend. If I can get started printing samples this weekend, I’ll be ahead of where I usually am. I’m also stitching on one of my needlepoint canvases. I may take it half done and work on it at the show. I really like the way it is turning out and will try to show a picture of it soon.

That out of the way, Munich was lots of fun! It was a bit of an impromptu trip since my brother only settled on the date of my newest niece’s christening at Easter. Then there was the debate of should I go to Germany or not, plus DH and I already had a trip to Atlanta that couldn’t be shifted, and my brother was heading out of town the day after the christening, so there was a short window where the trip was possible. When I found an airfare I couldn’t pass up, I took it. Of course, the cheap fare meant flying from Atlanta, to Charlotte, to DC, and then finally to Munich. Also returning via Denver and a five hour layover. This trip was mostly familty stuff, although I did get to spend one day showing the stitching Munich:

Stitching at the New Rathause (town hall)

Stitching over Munich (the tower at the Olympic Park)

Stitching goes for a ride in a BMW at the BMW museum.

And to prove I was there, too, here’s a self portrait:

If you look close, you can see the Munich skyline with the Alps in the background.

I felt pretty proud of myself for buying an ubahn ticket, seeing the glockenspiele at noon, and generally navigating around the city center and buying some souveniers only knowing a small smattering of German.

On May Day, we went up to the mountains:

That’s Austria behind me.

The stitching went also:

We took a cable car up most of the way – this made for a slightly easier hike, compensating for the fact that we had a 2 year old and a 4 year old with us.

Friday was spent getting party supplies:

Americans are now available in aisle 4.

I really enjoyed being able to spend time with my nieces and nephew. I don’t get to see them very often since they live so far away. We read books (in both English and German), sang songs, and played on the swings. I didn’t get much stitching done, but it was time well spent.

Can anyone tell what the travelling stitching project was? It is a new bookmark design that is slightly larger than I though it would be. I like how it is coming out, though. I must confess, I packed two other stitching projects as well as yarn to make hats for my nephew and niece. I finished the hats, but only stitched on one project. I also packed my sketch book, but never got that out either! Better prepared than not, I suppose. I should have hunted down a stitching store, but I wasn’t that prepared.

Long story short, DH and I went to Atlanta to see the Tour De Georgia (awesome), then I flew off to Germany while he came home to rescue Mocha (nothing was really wrong with Mocha, she was just being boarded). I visited my brother in Germany and hung out with the nephew and neices. During the visit, I managed to pick up some German germs (this is what happens when an adult comes into sudden contact with three children age four and younger). Munich was awesome, visiting the family was awesome, but the plane ride home was horrible. There’s nothing like a 12 hour plane ride with a fever, followed by a five hour layover and then puking on the final leg home. I went to the doctor yesterday, but all she could definitively say is “not strep”.

So I’m here, but not all here. Pictures and details will come when I feel more like a normal human being.

We ended up at the Contemporary Arts Museum this weekend. They have a very cool exhibit going on called “Design Life Now” which is about the convergence of design and art. There were things like a display of dinosaur robots (the commercially available toys), a video showing Google search usage over the globe, a pictorial depiction of software code looping and the evolution of iPods.

The weather was also fabulous; my apologies to everyone still suffering from Winter – we hit 80F yesterday and it was gorgeous and sunny!

I have some nifty pictures showing my current progress trying to figure out colors for a new design. Unfortunately, the camera is not near the computer. Can I promise them for tomorrow? Sometimes it is easy to choose colors for a design, sometimes I just have to do some test stitching to make sure colors flow, and sometimes the colors just don’t want to cooperate. I’m hoping ot beat them into better submission tonight! I also got some new painting done over the weekend (and set up a magnifier to make it easier on my eyes), so yay! I did get outside to enjoy the weather a bit, while pruning roses and pulling weeds, but it felt good to be outside.