Aunt Squared

I have a neice! And my nephew has a sister! And there was much rejoicing! No pictures yet, as she was born half a world away in Germany, but hopefully the happy parents will have a moment in the near future to send us some via email.

In other news, Thanksgiving was delightfully uneventful. We spent it with DH's family and did the usual rounds of visiting, watching football and shopping. The cat survived the long weekend without us and didn't break anything on the Christmas tree (which we had put up before we left). She was very happy to see us back, though. I managed to finish up designing a new piece before leaving so that I could stitch on it during the trip. I didn't get much stitching done on the way down because we left very early Thursday morning, which turned out to be a great idea as there was very little traffic. However, I got a ton of stitching done on the way back home: six hours in a car with excellent daylight is a great time to get some stitching in. I'm liking the way it is coming out so far. This design is going to be stitched almost entirely in silk, and it has some departures from my usual style. The main part of the design is NOT confetti-shaded! (was there a gasp from the crowd?) Instead, it just has large blocks of color. It does keep with my particular way of doing curved edges, though, so you can tell it is a Cross Eyed Kat design that way. ;) I've got to get back to the drawing board, though, and keep those creative juices flowing. It is nice to have something of mine to stitch on, especially since stitch night at the LNS is coming up this week. Actually, this month, I'll have one this week and one next week, so it will be nicely spread out. Other than stitching (and designing), I've also got some finishing to do! I think this weekend, I will be experimenting with making ornaments. I have the cutest fabric and trim, so we shall see how it all goes. Unfortunately, I won't be able to post pictures until after Nashville.

I also need to get busy wrapping presents. The cat's current favorite toy seems to be the tree skirt. She likes to lay on it, pounce on it, spring from it and hide on it. Of course, since our floors are smooth, this inevitably means that the tree skirt ends up anywhere but under the tree. So, some presents are needed to weigh it down. This will just change the game from play-with-the-tree-skirt to hide-in-the-presents. The cat really likes Christmas!

With Cat for Comforter

That is actually the title of a little book by Ray Bradbury, which I need to pull out and re-read. My cat, who is of the socially anti-social type, took very good care of me when I came home with a real bother of a migraine last night. Poor DH, who had to finish putting the last of the lights on our new tree, got barely a greeting, as I just got in from Target with a re-stocking of lights and went straight to bed. I rested there for an hour, then came out to the couch to be somewhat social. I got under the blanket, and the cat just decided that I needed some purr therapy. She curled up right next to me and purred away and became my comforter. We napped a bit as I tried to get through the migraine. DH also pampered me in between putting up lights - he made me a sandwich and brought me crackers as anything else made me nauseous. And so passed the evening, I with cat for comforter, and DH working hard on the Christmas tree. Hopefully tonight I will feel well enough to put the ornaments up!

Theme song of the day

Ever had a theme song that's appropriate for the day? I got into my car and had been listening to Les Miserables and the song "One Day More" came on and it just seemed to be appropriate for me today. My faithful readers will have to tune in later to learn why.

Oh, and my personal theme song? "Its Not Easy Being Green" as sung by Kermit the Frog.

As they say in Minnesota...

If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes. I think Fall/Winter is finally arriving. Rain and wind are supposedly bringing cooler weather (I haven't been outside yet). This, after setting a record high of 86F this week. I feel I must apologize to my Canadian reader for teasing her about the cold weather in her blog the other day; it appears ours is finally arriving. Ok, I'll qualify that as "cooler weather" since we won't have snow or ice and I might not even turn the heater on. I have spent some time in the northern climes (Minneapolis/St. Paul area) and I did get used to the cold, but what really got to me as a Southerner was Spring not showing up until late May! Here in Texas, my tulips will probably bloom in mid-February (and yes, they really are in the refrigerator right now), the leaves will start to turn green in March and the wildflowers will transform everything by early April. That is one of the neat things about traing for the big bike ride we do in the spring - really getting out and seeing Spring.

Ok, enough about the weather, people really read this blog to hear about the stitching, right? Or should I go on more about some hexadecimal to binary conversions I'm doing? That's what I thought. As I've said before, the focus right now is on the releases for Nashville. Additionally, I'm trying to do some planning for next so that there are more releases spread throughout the year. The trick is communicating effectively with shops and generating demand. Not all shop owners are tech-savvy to click links in email, and direct mail can get expensive. Of course, if stitchers demanded the latest Cross Eyed Kat design, that would help, too. :) Back to Nashville and some juicy hints. I'm currently planning on at least six new releases, maybe seven (the seventh is sitting in draft stage on my desk right now). One, is of course the Fantasy Faire 2006 design. Two is a companion to the Fantasy Faire design - these two are so neat I can't wait for them to be released! Three is another "Ancient World Sampler" - who can guess what ancient alphabet it will have? I'll probably do just one more of these, I think a set of four will look nice. The last two are two companion designs that use the fortune cookies previously posted. For anyone who voted on whether the cookie should be open or closed, I'll just have to tell you that the red design came first. And the design in draft stage - well, I'll let that one be a bit of a surprise until it gets farther along, but I'm planning to do the model mostly in silk.

Oh, and I'll gladly take any design requests under advisement.

Where has the week gone?

I don't know where last week went, but I'd better write something before this one disappears as well. Stitching last week was fun - both stitch nights were well attended. I am almost finished with the Dr. Seuss design, which means I really have to get something else out of my head an onto paper, otherwise, who knows what I will end up stitching on. I have several small-to-medium sized ideas that I think could be done before Nashville and several large ideas that need more time to work themselves out. I also need to get several ornaments finished up, and I bought a bunch of fabric to make a Cross Eyed Kat quilt/banner, so that project needs to start soon as well. Of course, the mathematics of figuring out what size squares to make the blocks of the Cross Eyed Kat maximizing the use of the fabric available can be a bit boggling. Which brings me to my next topic.

This week, at the day job, I've had to look at a lot of hexadecimal data (if you don't know what hexadecimal data is, well the short of it is, it is number system that is base 16 instead of base 10 and is very handy in computer where 8 bits can be represented by one hexadecimal number). So anyway, all this data has me totally geeking out, so here are the top A ways you know you're a totally geeked out cross-stitch designer:
A. You've honestly thought about doing a calculus-based cross-stitch design
9. When the call goes out for Beta testers of the design software, you hesitate simply because of the number of items you might find (and the retesting involved)
8. If challenged, you could count to 10 in base 10, 2, 8, or 16 very quickly (any other base would be possible, but slower).
7. You know the answer to the Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe, and Everything
6. You've read graffiti on the walls in HBO's "Rome" series (Ok, not computer related, but I'm a bit of a literary geek, too).
5. You suddenly realize you wrote your first computer program over twenty years ago, and no, it wasn't on a punch card, and yes, I'm only 30.
4. You've thought about mapping algorithms in relation to planning shortest-path routes while stitching a single color in a Teresa Wentzler design.
3. You know of at least three flaws in your cable box's DVR firmware (besides lacking the cool TiVo sound effects).
2. Yes, all of the geometry formulas on your cross-stitch designs are mathematically correct.
1. You look at OFF on and oscillator and wonder why it has 255 marked on it with a leading zero for a full minute before realizing that is the off position.

The weekend was fairly busy as well. Went to the movies Friday (saw Jarhead). Did mundane things on Saturday like get tires replaced and oil changed on the car. Sunday, DH and I, along with some other friends did the Tour de Doughnut bicycle ride. I only did 28 miles, while DH did 55. Here I am waiting for the start:
My trusty helmet Turtle is almost cut out of the picture - it shows that I'm slow, but steady! This was the first bike ride I've done that was timed. Every rider on the 28 mile circuit was competing for a prize and the fastest riders would get a prize. Five minutes was counted off of your time for every doughnut you ate at the rest stops. I could only eat one doughnut. Also, the lines were long at the first rest stop, so I had a really impressive finishing time of about 2 hours, or 216th place (pre-doughnut calculations). It was fun, although warm, since it felt more like April than November, but we enjoyed the conditions. I saw some beautiful dewy spiderwebs that might look neat as a cross-stitch design... :)

Stitching week

I'm one of the lucky people who lives reasonably close to more than one LNS. In fact, I remember on one occasion visiting three in one Saturday. Sadly, two of those have now closed, but a new one has opened. I believe there are at least five cross-stitch stores in the greater Houston Metro area (counting Richmond and Leauge City). They're a bit spread out, so I don't know if it would be possible to get to all five in one day (and one is mostly a quilting store). There are also a bunch of needlepoint stores and yarn stores in town. Anyway, back to the two LNS's near me. They both have an evening stitch-in once a month. One happens to be the first Wednesday of the month, the other happens to be the first Thursday of the month. Unfortunately for DH, this typically means he gets neglected two nights in a row the first week of the month!

So I must dash - I have my stitching with me, but I just realized I want to pick up my finished Ribbons to show off. Then I have to stop and get some dinner on the way to the LNS.

Unfortunately, I don't have any new designs to stitch on, so I'll be working on a Dr. Suess pattern that I'm close to finishing. It is some obligation stitching that needs to get done, anyway. That's not to say that the new designs aren't getting stitched on - they're all at the model stitchers. I just don't have one that I've saved for myself like I usually do.