We arrived in AZ Sunday and are using traded timeshare weeks to stay in Scottsdale the first week, then we head to Sedona next week. Our Scottsdale timeshare is lovely, and appointed in very contemporary furnishings which is a fun change from our more traditional home furnishings. This is our fourth trip to AZ in 8 years, and we like the state a lot.
I use travel opportunities like this to do a lot of hooking and my Magdalena Menagerie (MM) rug is now well underway. Unfortunately I cannot upload any pictures of my progress on it so I will save those for my return home. I love to hook when we travel, because it forces me to have all my wool selected and cut in advance, so I can just sit and hook away. I do not bring my cutter with me, due to fear of losing it via air travel and due to extra baggage weight. It's enough to pack all the wool! But... of course, inevitably, I do not have some colors of wool that I need, so there are some limitations to work on my project.
There is a good rug hooking community in the greater Phoenix area. Through our travels here and my membership on Rug Hooking Daily I have developed several AZ rug hooking friends. For one, through an email exchange on RHD, I met Dawna. We corresponded for many months, and then I came to a rug hooking class here last January, and we met in person. We are rug hooking sisters now! We keep in touch as pen pals, and tomorrow I will see Dawna in class again for the Karen Kahle class.
By taking last January's class (with Jayne Hester) I met Diane who arranges the classes here in the Phoenix area. Diane does an extraordinary job of hosting 3-4 classes per year, with well known, popular teachers. Diane pampers us too, so the whole affair is lovely.
I had scheduled a special blog post to coincide with the Karen Kahle class that starts tomorrow. I wanted to share pictures of all the KK rugs I have hooked, but something went wrong with the post and it disappeared! I don't know how... I'm still learning this Blogger program, so it was probably operator error.
I am so excited to take another class with Karen; she is my favorite rug hooking artist and I'm sure you can spot her influence in my work. Karen is going to focus on color in rugs, muted color, and all of us will be working on patterns with hit-n-miss hooking! I am one happy hooker about the focus on hit-n-miss. I know I will learn a lot.
Today we are going exploring and antiquing. There are a lot of antique shops here in the greater Phoenix area. This is where I found my first paisley shawl, in excellent condition, at $45! What a find!
So for now, happy shopping everyone!
