A Fine Memory of a Cherished Friend

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of receiving an email from Ellen who is hooking a pattern I drew  for her with customized dogs in honor of her Cardigan Welsh Corgis.  Ellen saw my Pembroke Welsh Corgi version of this rug in progress and requested the pattern to include her Cardigans.

Here is Ellen's rug in progress.

Oda Mae (foreground) memory rug in progress, hooked by Ellen Ikerd.  Size is roughly 36 x 26.

In the foreground, the brown / brindle dog is Oda Mae.  The sad story is that Oda Mae died suddenly and unexpectedly before the pattern reached Ellen; she was not ill at the time the pattern was ordered.

Still, this has not stopped Ellen from hooking the rug and doing so has facilitated the natural grief process.  Ellen decided to hook the sky as a sunset instead of sunrise.  The project has given her lots of opportunity to reflect on Oda Mae and experience grief inherent to losing a cherished pet.

Ellen, thank you for sharing your photo; I love the colors you've been using and I can't wait to see the finished rug.  I feel honored that you shared it with me and gave me permission to show it on my blog.  Your work is wonderful.  I love the strong colors.

My hope is that additional time will give you the gift to smile every time you look at the rug rather than experience any sadness at the loss of your treasured Oda Mae.

Please note:  I have opened comments to the blog again as some of you might wish to express your comments about Ellen's rug and I've received several private emails from people wishing to comment on various posts.  Comments had been turned off due to unnecessary cyber bullying and I am hopeful that any bullying type person will kindly restrain themselves from the need to be unkind.

As clear as mud!

I've been working on an antique adaption for several weeks, hooking a bit here, a bit there, but not much in big spurts.  Over Christmas eve and Christmas day I indulged myself in making a mess and cutting lots of wool to make significant progress on what I'm calling "Shep's World."

Here's the progress to date, depicting a dog and all his farm yard buddies that he continually watches over.

Shep's World and yes Shep is a dog, not a sheep.  Rug in progress, subject to changes.

I'm rethinking some of the color changes in the background by pulling out the darker wool around the white sheep in the lower right corner .  None of the colors in the rug display well in these photos, but in person the colors blend together much better.  The camera flash makes them either too bright or intense than in person.  Still, I think I like the lighter background best so the lower right corner will be changing.

Here are more pictures of the rug in progress.

A pig from black/gray plaid.

A gold/brown chicken that doesn't show up much due to low contrast.

A funky chicken and birds with lots of mixed background.

The size of this rug as drawn is 33" x 25" and the border will add another 1-2" depending on what I do to finish it off.

I've intentionally worked to make this rug look muddy in colors for an aged look.  I don't work in muddy colors a lot, but I always admire primitive rugs in the muddy tones and low contrast.  I don't know why I find it hard to adapt to a muddy style of primitive hooking.  Its something I'm practicing more, as you can see.

The cut sizes in this rug are 8.5-10 with much of the wool being hand torn or cut.  There is a mumble-jumble to this rug in lines being off kilter, color changing, but that is all intentional.  It really blends more in person than in the pictures.

Trudy from VA is going to hook this puppy too and I can't wait to see what Trudy does with it.  I love how she adapted the Magdalena Menagerie pattern so I look forward to seeing her progress on Shep's World.  To Trudy:  thanks for stepping up to hook another one of my patterns!

Maggie likes this rug a lot too because Shep is a kindred spirit.