Not sure what’s going on these days.  I’ve been stitching a lot of Santas.  I think in some ways I’m going to my own little happy place.

Everytime I read the news or listen to it on TV I find myself closing my eyes, shaking my head and sometimes grinding my teeth. So I’ve been needing my happy place more and more these days.

I’ve finished (or near enough I’ll call it done) three standup Santas.

This is a Petei Santa. Not sure what it is called. I call him the Skiing Santa. He needs his beard and a background. I picked the stitches and pulled the threads from my stash.

This is my Bugsy Santa. It is a KS design. Bugsy is our Boston Terrier. I’m not sure what KS Designs actually calls it. I already have a Baloo Santa with a black lab instead of a Boston Terrier. (I’m sorry people, I looked on the web page and couldn’t find the link.  But there is so much fabulous stuff, you’ll get lost looking at it all and may actually find the standing santa with dogs.) The stitches are my own. The threads come from my stash. I’ve got a little ceramic bone to hang from the moon and I’m going to have the finisher add a bow where the ribbon meets the star.

This is the Zookeeper Santa. I can’t find my picture with the beard but I’ve stitched it. This is another Petei Santa. I still need to decide what I’m going to do for the background.  The stitch guide was done by the French Knot in Ft. Worth. I bought it as a kit. I did mostly TFK’s stitches with minor changes of my own. TFK has a sort of random zebra looking background.  I’m not good at random, so I will think about what I’m going to do.

Next up is probably going to be another Petei Santa: the Patchwork Santa.

I got the canvas and the threads from a class I enrolled in many years ago but could not attend. Just recently, I ordered the stitchguide from John Waddell in Texas who taught the class.  I’ve not looked at it closely, so I haven’t figured out whether I am going to follow it or just use it as a general guideline

I’m getting my own little collection of stand up Santas. And I hardly ever grind my teeth when I stitch.