Today in the Needlework Nutshell (subscription box in the sidebar), I rant about the hype over last weekend’s kick-off to the holiday shopping season. The whole Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday hoopla annoys me to no end; I think it brings out the worst in our culture and too many people.

My antidote is to come up with and share a creative and inexpensive gift idea every day from now through Dec. 24. I have no plan, no list of ideas. I’m winging it, and I think that will be a big part of the fun. I’ll start with a focus on ideas that encourage and promote creativity, embroidery, and/or literacy. I may stray from those themes. We’ll see.

I hope some of you will join me, sharing your own ideas in the comments (or an email, you lurkers), tweaking mine, and pointing us to other project ideas on the Web–heaps of people are doing the same thing, I’m sure.

So here we go with Day 1’s idea.

A hand-embroidered bookmark. Du-uh. That hardly counts, though, unless I’m more specific.

Books are treasures, right? We used that theme for the key bookmark pattern–Books are treasures, reading is the key…. Well, how about the idea that books are treasures and X marks the spot–the spot where you stopped reading, see?

Stitch an X on a scrap of fabric or a piece of paper and turn it into a bookmark. It’s super-simple, but I love it.

If you are stumped about how to finish such a bookmark, you can always do this.

Any old X will do, but look, I even doodled one to share. Take it. Go forth, be creative, and encourage someone to read.

If you do this, please take a picture so we can see it, okay? Send it to mail AT funkandweber DOT com (our email addy is in the sidebar, you know).