Crazy Days 7, 8 & 9

On Friday, aka Crazy Day 7, I started another Sampler Girl pattern.  I love, love, love this particular quotation because I hate, hate, hate the heat:

"What dreadful hot weather we have.  It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance."

Talk about understatement.  Anyway, I got quite a bit of it done:

Saturday, I started the Tulip Sampler by Rosewood Manor.  I just love the colors in this one.  Considering I spent most of the day in Pittsburgh visiting an old college friend, I think I got lots done:

On Day 9 or Sunday, I began a canvas piece designed by Cheryl Schaeffer for the Rainbow Gallery.  This will be my Santa for 2011.  Isn't he cute? 

Even though it doesn't look like I got much done, there was a bunch of prep work for this one.  First I had to paint the canvas blue and let it dry.  Then I had to iron it.  And before attaching it to the stretcher bars, I had to straighten a bunch of tacks.  The only tacks I had that weren't in use were badly bent and mangled, ie, totally UN-USEABLE.  Rats!  And of course, I needed to gather some threads for it (I currently  have 2 -- the green and yellow border colors.)

The pattern called for French Blue 18 count canvas.   I only have white congress cloth.  I thought about just stitching it on white but I liked the blue wall.  I thought about making the wall blue with a background stitch but decided against that.  I decided to paint the canvas instead.  This is kind of fun 'cuz I never know exactly what I'm going to get.  I was trying for a lighter blue but the one I got is okay.  I may have to change the color of the chair and ottoman -- I'll just have to see what hits me when I get there.

While I was waiting for the blue canvas to dry and between loads of laundry, I spent some time stitching on my Sticklounge project, Odds & Ends by Tams Creations:

This is such a fun piece but because I made an error near the 3 o'clock position and because I decided to not try to figure out or correct the error, I have been compensating the little objects to get back on track by 6 o'clock.   Since I don't know where the error is, I really hope my circle ends meet.  I'm going to be extra diligent to make sure this comes out okay. 

If not, I'll just put a little charm over the offending area.  What you can't see isn't there -- right.

See you tomorrow ....  go crazy, keep stitching!