Magdalena Menagerie Rug Progress - First Dog's Face

I'm home from two weeks away in lovely Arizona!  I am so happy to be home!  I love AZ and we've seriously considered it as a retirement option from expensive and crazy California.  But, as our plane was landing in Sacramento at dusk last night, I could see the San Francisco Bay Delta to the west (lots of water!) and the beautiful snowcapped Sierra Mountains to the east.  I got a little teary eyed and whispered to my husband "I'm a California girl!"  He would love to relocate, but I don't think I can leave my home state, even with the cost of living here!  So did I tell you?  I am so happy to be home!

I have a lot to share via blogging, so please stay posted over the next few days.  First, let me update you a bit on my Magdalena Menagerie (MM) rug.   

Prototype rug



Please don't laugh at my doggie!  He's looking sort of strange right now!


Here are some pictures of the first dog's face to demonstrate the use of multiple wools.

First dog's face; he's cuter in person!

I'm using 5 wools for the dogs that vary from deep gray/brown to black in color.  The wools are a combination of upcycled, texture and texture over-dyed.  All of the wools have been selected because they look old and worn, to help make the rug appear old.
 
I am generally using 8.5 - 9.5 cuts of wool, and mixing the sizes together.

To give the dog's face some definition, I used a 5 cut of beige wool (thanks to my husband, the fine cut hooker). 

Note the simplicity of the outlining detail; it's just enough to define the dog's face, but still quite primitive.  This close-up is over exposed due to camera flash, but it shows the various wools in use.

Black and white to review the values; they are blending nicely.

Also included here is a study in black and white.  You can see the wools are blending well to give just a small bit of lighter to darker value difference, but still with little contrast in values. 

The slight contrast in values will help make the rug appear faded in areas, adding to the old look that I want to achieve.  Using multiple wools will mimic an old rug because hookers' used whatever fabric supplies they had on-hand.

This is only the beginning of the dog and there is more to share because I made quite a bit of progress on him while on vacation.  As the week progresses, I will share more of my MM rug progress and the Karen Kahle workshop I took.



On the Road and a Little Homesick

We've been on vacation nearly a full two weeks; we head for home tomorrow.  I prepared the majority of this blog before leaving home, because I knew it would be accurate, because homesickness always sets in for me, after about 12 days away from home.

We spent our second week away in Sedona AZ, a beautiful part of the country and what I liken to an outdoor cathedral.  I will post some  pictures of Sedona's grandeur once I'm home and can upload the pic's from my camera to my desktop computer.  In the meantime:

While we are away what I miss most is my fur babies. In the morning my two girls often get in my lap together and they konk-out, strewn all over me. That's after they have tried to sneak a lick of coffee from my coffee mug.

Maggie grooms Lulu.

Sometimes it interrupts me from reading my iPad, but when they settle down I can read, cuddle, drink coffee and blog! What a perfect combo. Now if I could just figure out how to hook with this much love on top of me, wouldn't that be perfect?!

Lulu peers out the window to watch birds.

The girls are sisters, one year apart. Lulu, the oldest, was a very aloof puppy and adolescent. We brought Maggie home from our breeder with the hope she would be a more affectionate addition to the family. As it turns out, Maggie is a rag doll snuggle bug.  In fact her attitude is she owns us and must be in one of our laps at almost all times. Now at two years, Lulu has come around to wanting lots of attention too, so we have double trouble!

Now they have quieted down and I can read and drink my coffee again!

Corgis showed up in my life out of the blue, back in the late 1990's. I wasn't even a dog person at the time - I liked dogs, but had no interest in owning a dog. Cats were my thing. But somehow Pembroke Welsh Corgis got in front of me, and I knew I had to have one, or two, or three.  Our boy is 13 and he's slowing down, and we lost our first girl in 2009.  

Maggie is very anxious to learn how to whip a border; she especially loves helping with my dog rugs!

Lulu calmly watches the whipping process.  She's the CALM dog!

So what do Corgis have to do with rug hooking?  Well, if you go to my very first blog you'll read where I could not understand how or why hooked rugs began to appeal to me in the first place, and why I felt driven to learn how to hook.  It just happened; it showed up in my life and so did the Corgis - it just had to be.  I cannot tell you how much rug hooking  and corgis have been a life saver to me and my husband.  I will expound more on that topic at some time in the future.  If you have any stories about how rug hooking has improved your life, or been a life saver of sorts, please send me your comments! 

Hooking on the Road and class with Karen Kahle

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!

A Quick Magdalena Menagerie Rug Update

Day 11 of this rug. 

I have finally had some time to sit down and work on the Magdalena Menagerie (MM) rug pattern.  I am making myself stay with the immediate area of the lollipop bush, circles and the immediate surroundings.  I do not like the circles!  They are very tedious to hook. 

It feels like I'm not making any progress, but in counting the circles, I only have 27 left.  I think I started with 60, but I'm too tired to count them all again.  I am almost ready to head for one of the crows as a relief from the circles, but that would be breaking my ground rules.

I am grumpy about doing the circles, but I have a large rotating frame from The Needleworks by Charlie Fitzsimmons and it is a beauty.  How did Magdalena ever hook all the circles in her lollipop bush?  Yikes, she must have been a patient woman!  Magdalena, are you watching me?  I hope it is giving you a good giggle up in the heavens above us!

I don't care much for the vase or whatever it is that supports the lollipop bush based on this picture, but it looks better in person than with the camera flash.  It will stay in for now because it looks old when you see the rug in person, but it may come out and be replaced yet. 

Here's a copy of the same picture in black and white to show value changes.  Some circles may have to be reworked as I progress further due to value issues.  It's too early to tell.

Please note:  research I've conducted indicates antique rugs created before 1923 are no longer subject to copyright law and this is why these rug patterns are offered for sale by commercial rug hooking vendors.  Before replicating any antique rug pattern, please attempt to determine the date of the rug's origination to be consistent with copyright.

Hit-n-Miss Hooking - The Charm of Antique Hooked Rugs

If you've followed my blog from my humble beginnings, you know I’m crazy about antique hooked rugs.  A common characteristic of antique rugs is hit-n-miss hooking.  In the case of Magdalena Briner Eby, she took hit-n-miss to a new extreme, with a bit of a Rorschach look to several of her rugs. This trait is what makes Magdalena’s rugs interesting and easy to identify, and so very intriguing to me.  I can't wait to get to the hit-n-miss aspects of my Magdalena Menagerie rug (see post from 1/6/12) but I still have to hook those lollipop circles before I will let myself go on to other areas of my MM rug.  I hope to get some lollipop circles done today.

I have been "experimenting" with hit-n-miss for a long time and whenever possible, I add it to my rugs.  I have to admit, while hit-n-miss has no rules to it (MY KIND OF HOOKING!) I find it a bit intimidating.  I usually get a little too “intellectualized” about adding hit-n-miss, and I fret about it looking out of place.  Here are a few notes from my exploration of hit-n-miss hooking: 

·       There are no steadfast rules about hit-n-miss hooking; you can make your own rules!

·       It’s a great way to use left-over worms (cut strips of wool) from finished projects.

·       You can go as crazy as you want, or as subtle as you want, it’s your rug!

·       Throwing some of your lines of hit-n-miss off-kilter will give your rug a more primitive look than hooking completely straight lines throughout the rug.

·       Using similar value strips will help tone down the busy impact of the hit-n-miss.

·       Using strips of different sizes will add primitive appeal and allow you to slip in some pieces of wool that may seem a little too bold for use.

·       Hit-n-miss can go large or small in a design and takes numerous forms.



I’ve added pictures of a variety of hit-n-miss designs to show examples of its use in rugs.

Note the number of colors used in the hit-n-miss and its randomness.  We might not call this pretty, but it is very interesting.

Hit-n-miss used as a border and scroll. 



Note how orderly the hit-n-miss is in this rug.  The rug has a lot going on in it and the hit-n-miss almost becomes the quiet area of the rug.  It's use in this rug contributes to the homey feeling of the rug, adding charm from yesteryear.  I also think the hit-n-miss in this rug ads a sense of being in the woods, mirroring the texture of tree bark consistent with trees in the center motif.

This rug is what I would call hit-n-miss off the charts!  It is used throughout the rug and even in the horse, to some degree.  What an imagination this hooker had!  The lollipop bushes in this rug are fascinating like pin wheels.  While there is so much going on in the rug, isn't the variety of hit-n-miss amazing?!  I could look at this rug for hours, but I might get a little (more) crazy after doing so!

 

The border of this rug influenced  one of my rugs because I love the randomness of the hit-n-miss hooking, but it doesn't domintate the rug too much.  The free spirit hooking surrounding the tranquil horses is just the right touch of old for my taste.

Here is my rug, the time-worn Welcome Cats popular among many hookers as an antique rug rendition.  I went with much more subtle colors than the horse rug, as you can see.

I love how the hit-n-miss border worked out on this rug, and at the time it seemed quite bold to me, but it no longer seems bold with more experience under my belt.  This was one of my earlier hit-n-miss experiments.  Cynthia Norwood helped me with this rug at Cambria Pines Rug Camp.  Cynthia is a great teacher and author of the book Creating an Antique Look in Hand-hooked Rugs. Take a class with her if you ever get the chance!

In the cat below, the hit-n-miss is very standard straight lines.  I was able to add the dark (black) strips because the cats are black; otherwise the black strips would be too bold and disruptive.  They would cut your eye up as you roam the rug, but I think they work well due to the cats. 

Both of these cat rugs have gone to live with a woman who has 16 cats!  She really appreciates my cat rugs!

On my next blog I am going to share more about hit-n-miss hooking and tell you some very exciting news too!  Standby for more from the Sheep!

Please note:  research I've conducted indicates antique rugs created before 1923 are no longer subject to copyright law and this is why these rug patterns are offered for sale by commercial rug hooking vendors.  Before replicating any antique rug pattern, please attempt to determine the date of the rug's origination to be consistent with copyright.

Rug Hooking and Eating - a Natural Combination

No hook-in is complete without some wonderful muchies, right?  When we gathered on New Year's Day (see the blog posting for January 6th) we had a pot luck and I made the main dish.  I wasn't sure how this dish would go over with the ladies, but there was very little of it left over by the end of the day.  Normally the ladies eat light, but I was surprised and delighted to see many of them return for seconds on this modification of Shepherd's Pie.  This version uses butternut squash instead of mashed potatoes as the topper.  The butternut squash gives it such a yummy taste.  Even for those skeptical of squash, you will be saying "Yummmmm!!!" with this recipe.  It is hard to stop eating it!

I reviewed several on-line recipies and concocted this mixture by mixing ingredients from a few recipies.  This might become one of your favorite comfort foods.  By minimizing the oil, butter and heavy cream, it makes the grade as a very healthy dish for the diet conscious. 
  

Butternut Squash Shepherd’s Pie

Butternut Squash Topping

1 medium sized butternut squash (2-3 pounds)

2 tbsp. butter

1/4 cup heavy cream

A dash of salt and white pepper

1) Heat oven to 425 degrees F.

2) Slice the butternut squash in half and scoop out seeds.  Place two halves on a baking sheet.  Place in the oven and bake for 1 hour or until squash is tender when a knife is inserted.  Let cool.  (Note:  many grocery stores now carry pre-cut butternut squash in the produce section, or if you are lucky enough to have a Trader Joe’s nearby, they carry both one and two pound bags of pre-cut squash)

3) Scoop flesh out of the butternut squash and place in a food processor with butter, cream, salt and pepper.  Pulse the mixture until smooth.  Or you could do this by hand since the squash will be nice and soft.

Pie Filling

2 tbsp. olive oil

4 large leeks, thinly sliced, use only the white (or about 1 cup)

2 - 3 carrots, peeled and chopped 1/2"

2 - 4 stalks celery, chopped 1/2"

3/4 cup frozen peas

1 1/4 pounds of either ground turkey and/or ground beef, or equal parts mixed together

1 large clove garlic chopped

1/2 tsp. fresh rosemary, chopped or a good pinch of dried rosemary crumbled

1 1/2 tsp. fresh thyme leaves or 1 tsp. dry crumbled

Pinch freshly ground nutmeg

Salt and pepper to taste

2 tbsp. all-purpose flour

1 cup chicken stock

1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs (these seem to be optional, but I think they help to wick moisture from the squash topping as it cooks) 

1)    In a large skillet add olive oil, leeks, carrots and celery and cook on medium low for 10 minutes until softened.

2)  Turn heat up a little and add ground turkey, rosemary, thyme, nutmeg and salt and pepper and cook until turkey is browned.

3)  Add flour and chicken stock and cook for a couple of minutes until thickened.

4)  Place meat and vegetable mixture in a casserole dish and top with butternut squash topping.  Sprinkle with bread crumbs.

5) Bake in a Pyrex baking dish (large 9" x 13" casserole size) at 375 degree F oven for 45-55 minutes until top is nicely browned and mixture is bubbling hot. (Note:  I place foil over the topping after about the first 20 minutes to keep it from browning too much)

Serves 10 as a main dish

Learning a New Rug Hooking Technique

Today my first Saturday rug hooking group met, and our valued member, Dianne Tobias, showed us how to braid so we can add braiding to hooked pieces.  Dianne is part of the talented trio who authored the incredible book Combining Rug Hooking and Braiding. 

Diane and I met over Craigslist, of all places.  It's a long story, but basically I was surfing the web and landed on Craigslist.  On a lark, I keyed in "rug hooking" as a search on Craigslist.  Well low and behold, Dianne had posted a "wanted" ad for a Fraser 500 rug hooking cutter.  I happened to have an extra Fraser that I wanted to sell.  It must have been divine intervention for us to meet!  I emailed Dianne, we corresponded, and soon we met for lunch to talk cutters, hooking and braiding.  During our first meeting, I talked Dianne into spending the extra money for a Bee Line Townsend instead of purchasing the cutter I had for sale.  I knew we were going to be friends and I wanted her to have the best tool for stripping wool!  We hit it off immediately and I invited Dianne to join my hooking circles. 

In the beginning of our friendship Dianne would only described herself as a braider and not a hooker; but after a few months, one day  she slipped and said "I'm a hooker."  I remember feeling a flush of happiness that she now viewed herself as a hooker, and I never let her forget she said it!

If you have the current (January/February 2012) issue of Rug Hooking Magazine, Dianne has an article published in this issue on the use of velvet in rug hooking.  She loves adding velvet to both her hooked and braided pieces. 



My first braided piece, still in progress.


OK, so now on to braiding.  Dianne asked us to bring a small hooked piece, preferably circular, for learning technique.  With incredible patience, Dianne led us step-by-step as we created braid to add to our hooked piece.  By combining the use of  written instructions in her book and hands on demonstration and experience, we learned the introductory basics of braiding.

I have to say I am amazed at all the "technical" aspects to braiding and I got overwhelmed pretty quickly.  I cannot say at this point  I will have a long future with braiding.  It did not come easy to me and there are many technical aspects to it as an art form.  I love the look of it, but my free spirit has a hard time with anything that is too structured and orderly.  So the jury is still out on whether I'll be able to call myself a braider.  We had a very fun time and I am even more in awe of Dianne's talent!  She is offering some of her braided baskets on Etsy, and here is the link to see some of her work:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/Detobias?ref=pr_shop_more

A New Year and a New Rug to Hook

I hosted a hook-in here at the house on New Year’s Day with my Wednesday night hooking group, a lovely group of ladies.  With a new year, I decided to start a new rug! 

My new 2012 design is an antique adaption influenced by the amazing rugs of Magdalena Briner Eby. 

If you are not familiar with Magdalena's rugs, she is probably one the most famous hookers in history.  Magdalena's rugs have been identified in numerous books on antique hooked rugs.  The recent book Rug Hooking Traditions with Magdalena Briner Eby authored by Evelyn Lawrence and Kathy Wright has brought all of Magdalena's rugs together in wonderful pictures and historical narrative to share Magdalena’s extensive hooking history.  Magdalena was a hooker extraordinaire - both prolific in hooking and definitely free in spirit and expression! 



My pattern drafted onto primitive linen.

Here are some pictures of my Magdalena Briner style rug in progress; I will add more pictures as the weeks go by.

In drafting this pattern, I added the features I like best about Magdalena’s rugs – animals, crows, large leaves and the lollipop tree/bush - but I used my own version of dogs.  Magdalena’s dogs are generally very prim and obscure, so these dogs have somewhat defined features, yet they are still very primitive. 


First day hooking the lolli-pop bush.

The lollipop tree in this pattern has about 60 circles in it.  Oh, I just love doing those circles, ha, ha…. Not really.  They are a pain.  Fortunately I have a rotating rug hooking frame for the circles, but the pattern is so large, it is hard to turn on my frame.  I am tackling the circles first (and naturally from the center of the rug) to get them out of the way.  I can’t wait to hook other parts of the rug, but I am buckling down to get those darn circles finished and saving the rest of the rug as a reward to myself!  The final size of this rug will be roughly 56” x 30” when finished, and probably my largest rug to date.  I’ve wanted to hook a Magdalena style rug for several years. 


When I am contemplating the effort to hook a really old looking antique rendition, I ruminate (don’t you love that word?!) on it for months in advance.  Then, suddenly, I draw out the pattern and go into my very messy wool room, and start pulling some of my purposely dyed “old as dirt” wool for the project.  A rug like this may have as many as 60 different wools in it.  Many people ask me how I get such an old look to my rugs.  It is a combination of selecting old and worn looking wool from off-the-bolt, combined with dyeing wool to look old.  Truthfully, it is something I do by intuition.  I don’t know if I could compile the same mixture of wools a second time, for the same rug pattern, because it is such an "in the moment" intuitive process.  Once I'm ready to pull wool, I practically go into a bit of an altered-state in my mind, picking out wools that look old.  I am enchanted by antique and primitive rugs and it comes naturally for me to gravitate to wool that looks  old as dirt. 

 

Please note:  research I've conducted indicates antique rugs created before 1923 are no longer subject to copyright law and this is why these rug patterns are offered for sale by commercial rug hooking vendors.  Before replicating any antique rug pattern, please attempt to determine the date of the rug's origination to be consistent with copyright.