More Fine Finishes

I recently received emails from two wonderful hookers who participated in my class in Ontario Canada last September:  Here are pic's from Elizabeth and Sandi.

These patterns were developed in class using templates, memories and imagination. I love these two rugs!

Elizabeth's memory rug:

Elizabeth Worrel, Ontario Canada memory rug.

Elizabeth's use of limited colors is very effective in this rug along with a Magdalena style leaf (hit and miss) and the frame of hit and miss around the rug.

Sandi's memory rug and exciting story about it, shared via email with Loretta (Lor) Moore (Hooked on the Lake) and me:

Sandi Percival, Ontario Canada memory rug.

I entered my antique-inspired rug into a Country Fair in Lake Place on Friday to be judged.  We were told we would be called if we won at any level.  Everyone's work was judged over the past two days. I never received a call.  Bill took me to the Fair today and our last stop was at the exhibition of the Art Work.  To my astonishment, and I mean I was totally astonished, I not only won First, but won First in Class and First in Show.  I just stood there with my mouth wide open and tears streaming down.  Since coming home, I keep pinching myself.  Lor, could we ever have thunk this!!!!  My head is so swollen right now that I don't think my pillow will hold it!!!!

Kathy you were such a brilliant teacher....so much so that I was totally inspired to create my own pattern and this project came from my heart.  It is called "Memories" because it represents everything that was near and dear to us at our "Calversan Acres" Farm especially our babies "Caleb" and "Hallee".  Lor this would not have happened if you had not coordinated the rug camp with Kathy.  How fortunate we were.  Thanks.

And my response to Sandi's extremely kind note (above) is:  thank you Sandi for sharing pic's of your finished rug and providing me the privilege of spending 3 days with you and all the other Ontario hookers.  It was a dream come true for me!  I was there to facilitate, but the true brilliance came from within each student!  Your kind comments are humbling.  

On another note, an amazing fact about Sandi's rug is that it is a very small rug; if my memory is correct, it is only about 13"x13" in size.  Sandy was hooking with what I recall to be a 5-6 cut and achieved amazing detail in her tiny rug full of many motifs.  

Tinkering

It's hard for me not to tinker with my hooking.  By tinkering, I mean reworking parts of a rug as I hook the pattern.  I do this quite a bit; more than I'd like to admit.

I was loving my sheep, but I wasn't totally loving my brown background.  It wasn't making my heart sing.  I decided to pull a bunch of the brown background and get out my very large collection of dark worms for an antique black background.  I proceeded to hook a large portion to the left of the sheep to decide if the antique black won out over the brown.

When I talk antique black, it's not really, really black.  Yes there is some black in the mix, but it's more like 25 different types of dark wool that is truly dark brown to black.  My mix includes all kinds of wool.  Some is teal, some is dark olive green, some is tweed, some is nearly straight black or brown and a lot of it is a texture that has brown, black, blue, red or gold running through it.

Here's the differences in the background; brown before (right side), antique black after (left side):

Some of the original brown wool is still in the background on the top, right and under the sheep.  This is all coming out.

I beaded around the gold bird.  This picture was taken while the brown background was still around the bird.  

I'm liking the antique black.  It's staying in the rug.  It is very rich and interesting.  I'll take some closeups of it when I get back to hooking more of it.

Mouse in the House

Continuing with my Canadian experience, we are staying on the lake with Loretta and Gord at their year round lake house residence.  If you regularly read Loretta's blog Hooked on the Lake http://hookedonthelake.wordpress.com/ you know that many critters visit the Moore property throughout the year.  

One of my favorite blog posts Loretta wrote last winter was about the mice who try to visit the house each winter. Loretta and Gord are so animal friendly and loving toward all living creatures they only use a live trap for any little buggers who get into the house.  They also put out some feed for the mice on a blanket (so they can stay a little warm) in the garage area.  After reading one of her humorous posts last winter, I was inspired to make this pattern up in honor of Loretta:  "Mouse in the House"  

I felt it was important to hook this little rug before heading to Canada to honor of mice, and lake houses, and Loretta as a fun story teller of  mice visitors.  So here is a small version measuring 14 1/2" x 8" (rug area) not including the border.

Due to the small size, I did not add the fleur-de-lis shapes on the back wall of the drawing in my little version of this rug.  This pattern was also recently introduced on my website.

I will post some pictures of the finish for this rug and the Beavers for Canada rug in my next post.

If you wish to pin pictures from my blog for Pinterest, kindly give credit to this blog in your pin. 

Kits and Kits, Oh My!

I've had several requests for rug hooking kits lately.  I'm flattered when others want to hook my patterns and when they ask for a kit that looks like what I hooked it is even more of a compliment.  But hooking for the look I achieve, well that's a challenge to fulfill in a standard kit.

Kits make me nervous.  Kits make me sweat.  I've got to be precise and careful to get the wool measurements correct and do the math to charge a fair price for the kit.  Kits are technical in nature:  precision, math, orderliness!  It is a little nerve racking for me; I even procrastinate in working on the order (who me?).  I want my customers to be happy and not feel I shorted them on wool as they work on their project.

Another aspect about kitting:  I hook "all over the place" and pull wool from here, there and every place I can find it in my home when I'm working a project.  So pulling together what needs to be a prescribed assortment of wool to achieve my helter-skelter hooking style can be a challenge.  No less, I'm going to try to be better about noting how much wool I put in a rug as I'm hooking it and keep a ledger so I  can EASILY make kits when they are requested.

So as I've slowly filled the recent kit requests, I got a little bit smarter and made extras of these three rugs:

• I have TWO EXTRA kits made up of the Bee and Skeps rug
• I have ONE EXTRA of the Can You See Me? rug
• I have THREE extra of the Lil' Scrappy Dog rug

If you are interested any of these kits, please email me at briarwoodfolkart@surewest.net

Here are the rugs I've recently been kitting:

Bee and Skeps - two extra kits available of this rug

Can You See Me? - one extra kit of this rug

I have three kits of Lil' Scrappy Dog too if you are interested.

Lil' Scrappy Dog 

Gone to the Dogs Again!

Me and dogs.  Love them!  While in Tyler TX at the Star of TX Camp, I met a  hooker who also loves dogs.  Kathy from Fort Worth TX saw some of my patterns at camp, and this led to some new pattern developments.

Kathy loves hooking dogs and her canines are well represented as are her grand-dogs too.  To personalize the patterns for Kathy's family, I converted the Magdalena Menagerie pattern to include German Shepherds.

Magdalena Menagerie with German Shepherds by Kathy Clark
www.briarwoodfolkart.com all rights reserved.  Colors for illustration purposes only

After a couple weeks Kathy contacted me and asked me to make up another pattern of her grand-dog, two Akitas and a black Lab mix.  Here are the two prototype versions I worked up for Kathy to choose from.

Akitas and Lab mix with a Magdalena flair by Kathy Clark
www.briarwoodfolkart.com all rights reserved.

Another version is this one and its the one she selected as the final pattern:

Akitas and Lab mix in a simpler background so the dog dominate the pattern by Kathy Clark
www.briarwoodfolkart.com all rights reserved.

I think Kathy is going to have a busy summer hooking all her dogs, but she'll have fun doing so.  Thank you Kathy for sponsoring my business and love of making dog patterns.

If you wish to pin pictures for Pinterest, please respectfully credit The Grinning Sheep Blog for the photos.  All rights reserved on original artwork in the patterns shown.

Heading to Yellow Rose Rug Camp

Although we just moved and would love to sit and be still for awhile, we are heading off to Texas for the Yellow Rose Rug Camp.  The trip has been planned since last June, so here we go on another great adventure.

Camp officially opens on Sunday 3/10 but we are going earlier to spend time in Texas Hill Country.  I've heard so many great things about Hill Country, so it will be a treat to visit the area.

Both Larry and I will be taking a class with Tricia Travis of San Antonio.  Tricia has some great kits based on antique postcards and we will each be working on a kit.  Larry is hooking the flag postcard kit in a 4 cut and I will be hooking the Thanksgiving postcard kit in an 8 cut.  If you wish to know about Tricia, here is a link to her website for her wonderful Country Gatherings Store outside San Antonio:  http://www.countrygatheringsshop.com/ 

I will take lots of pictures to share with you when we return.  Until then, stay safe, have fun hooking and blessed be!

Official Yellow Rose Camp Rug!

Post script at nearly midnight!  Yikes, it is not recommended to move three weeks before you are going to rug camp.  I had to search for an hour and a half to find my hook and scissors.  I tried to keep my hooking stuff well organized through the move, but NO.... it's not so!  I did manage to find one of my favorite hooks and scissors so I'm set, but it was a stressful ordeal looking, looking, digging, digging, shifting stuff around!  I guess this is a calling to buy more hooks so they are easier to find huh?!!  Ya' think?!!

Happy hooking to all!  See you in a couple weeks.

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.

Shep to the Rescue?

If you regularly read my blog you know we are moving to a new (for us) home in an age restricted 55+ community.  This is a lifestyle change we've been considering for over four years.

Google image of one of the open space vistas in our new community.

Our new home (built in 2005) has an abundance of tile flooring - about 80% of the house is tiled.  We appreciate tile as practical flooring for owning three dogs.  Tile is my first choice in majority flooring (with only bedrooms and living room carpeted).  But.... and this is a big "but" due to the amount of tile flooring at the new house:  the color choice for this tile must have been at the height of the Tuscan decorating craze nearly 10 years ago.  While the floor is very pretty high quality travertine, the color and formality adds a decorating challenge.   Remember, I'm a primitive rug hooker.  So, how do you see my rugs fitting on this floor?  Here's a few examples of the floor.... beautiful?  Yes?  Primitive?  No?

Kitchen floor.

This mosaic is at the entry way to the house.  Can you see a primitive rug near this?

Or can you see Shep's World covering this?

A view looking down the hallway and you can see the size of the  mosaic at the entrance area.
This picture makes the tile look a lot darker than it appears in person.  It's hard to adjust the color for a realistic photo.

The tile is very gold.  It is beautiful.  It is practical.  But it is very GOLD, like in your face gold!!  So what's a girl to do?  Enlist your color planning knowledge from rug hooking, of course!

I love decorating a house and in my next lifetime I will definitely go to interior design school.  In anticipation of decorating I've been giving this floor a lot of thought.  And my thoughts are "tone it down!" and tone it down a lot.  You see, I like neutral colors in my house for flooring, counter top and cabinetry.  Then you can add color through paint, decorations, rugs.

In pondering this decorating challenge, I've been studying my color wheel a lot to consider paint colors that will enhance and draw your attention away from the sizable and noticeable amount of flooring.  What is the opposite of gold on the wheel?  What is the complementary color?  PURPLE.  Oh no, I don't think purple is exactly the color for me!  So what will develop here?

I do have a few color ideas besides purple using the colors that prevail in the triad and tetrad combinations.  I've already made an appointment with an interior decorator who immediately reassured me that we can tone down the floor through color on the wall and area rugs.  Phew!  This is exactly what I have been hoping for because replacing the flooring is not an option.  I can't wait to meet with the decorator.  Our first appointment is scheduled for two weeks after we move in.  That's just enough time for the house to be in less disarray from moving and little enough time for me to start pulling my hair out due to too much GOLD!

Everyone says "live with it for a while" then make changes and I do recognize this is very sound advice.  I also think our current furnishings will look a lot better in the house than the previous owner's stuff, so the house will look a lot different once our belongings are in it.  Still, I look forward to adding paint and area rugs to reduce the gold impact and bring more harmony and coziness to the rooms.

So, standby for decorating challenges ahead.  And Shep?  Oh he would love a place of stature right as you come in the front door, but darn, he isn't large enough to adequately cover the mosaic so I'll have to come up with another rug design for that purpose.  

Shep heads for Arizona

I finished up the Shep's World rug in time to take it to AZ for the class I'm taking and the rug show that is part of our class.

The finished rug measures 36 1/2 by 28 inches.  It is hooked in Townsend cut, hand cut and hand torn strips that average 8.5 - 10 cuts.  Some small accent colors (especially black and the rust/orange) have been hooked in a narrow cut averaging from a 4-6 cut.

As a last minute addition I added some random and narrow cut black lines in the rectangular background area around Shep.  The more I looked at the finished rug on the floor I decided the narrow black lines would give the rug more balance to enhance other black tones in the rug.  Here are two pictures showing the rug with the lines and without the lines.  I think I prefer the lines added, but I may still end up removing them.  

Shep with black lines in rectangular background area.

Shep with no black lines in the rectangular background area. 

I had an interesting piece of selvage from one of the wool fabrics used in the rug so I gave Shep a collar.  It is hand stitched on.  I also tweaked his mouth a bit to give a small dark lip line.

Note the addition of a collar strip on Shep's neck.

It is hard to tell from these photos, but the wool selections used in this rug are much more harmonious together than they look in the photos.  This is one rug which doesn't photograph well.  It has a good primitive appearance in person, with far less contrast as it appears to have in the photos.  Here are some closeup shots of the other barnyard critters Shep watches over.

The brown hen below recedes into the background quite a bit on the rug and after hooking the hen I didn't use this color again because of the contrast challenges.  But I decided to keep her in the mix of animals as she is because I like the fact she doesn't stand out a lot which makes the mix of animals more quirky.  

The brown hen is a little hard to see and make out in the overall rug, but this adds to the antique style charm.

Several people have emailed me and commented about the wool used for the cats.  It is an old Pendleton plaid and unfortunately I seem to have used it all up so I cannot photograph it to show what it looks like as fabric.

This rug was a lot of fun to hook.  It is more muddy in primitive style than I usually hook and that was a good exercise for me.

I've received a few requests asking if this rug will be available as a pattern.  Yes it will be available but due to my impending move (fingers crossed all escrows close) I'm postponing pattern making until mid March.  I've taken my website and Etsy shops down for the time being.  If you are interested in the pattern please feel free to email me at briarwoodfolkart@surewest.net and I will keep you posted about its availability.

I am scheduled to be back from AZ on January 21st and I will post pictures of my AZ adventures then.

Thank you for watching my progress on this rug.

Closing in on a finish!

Shep's World is coming along and nearing completion.  It is always satisfying to finish a rug.  This one is in the running for binding before mid-week because we are running away to Arizona for 12 days.  We leave on Wednesday.  I will be binding in the car as my husband drives.

While in AZ I will be taking a class with Sharon Smith of Walnut Creek, CA.  Now being from CA, and only about 2 hours from Sharon you may wonder why I would go all the way to AZ for the class.  Good question.  Well, AZ is especially nice in the winter months and we are very fond of the state.  It's a great get-away place for us and I've made many hooking friends there from attending classes and teaching there last October.  Taking a class with Sharon will be lots of fun and a very exciting part of the adventure is meeting up with my friend Loretta (aka, Hooked on the Lake blog).  Loretta is coming in from Canada to take the class. I met Loretta last March in AZ in a Karen Kahle class so here we are rendezvousing again!

Shep's World before the border is added.  

I hope to finish up hooking on Shep today by adding my border rows while at my first Saturday hook-in group .  I have a quirky border in mind and can see it in my mind's eye, but will it actually turn out the way I want?  I will only know once I've hooked it.

I've got my wool cut for the border area, and guess what?  I made a mess cutting wool and it's OK to make a mess for the first time in 4 months!  This is because we received an offer on our house last weekend, we are in escrow and the public showings are over with!  Making a mess doesn't cause the same pressure as it did when the house could be shown at a moment's notice.

Please keep your fingers crossed for us to close escrow in early February.  We've made an offer on a home in our desired community and it will be a good house for holding hook-ins because there is no organized hooking group in the community.  If all goes well we will be moving in mid-February.  I'm afraid to be excited till the check is in hand, but it feels like everything is going to work out this time.

Magdalena Meets Andy Warhol

If you follow my blog regularly, you will know that I've been involved with a group that meets on Tuesdays that I call the Maggie's Girls.  We began as a group focusing on Magdalena's work and while this general theme continues, we are sort of moving on to other designs now, as more time goes by.  But lest we forget Magdalena, I want to share one of the latest Magdalena style rugs to come out of this rug hooking group.  I must give you a bit of background on this rug:

My friend Daniella is a very fine hooker and she tends to go back and forth between hooking either primitive or fine cut rugs.  After completing several fine cut pieces and watching me hook away with my larger cuts of wool, she decided she wanted to go prim again.  She has been telling me that she wants to hook a very, very old looking rug and so I encouraged her to hook a Magda rug along with me.  And so a tale of two lollipop bouquets was born:  Daniella and I started our lollipop bouquet rugs on the same day in the same room, sitting right next to each other.  But that is where similarity ends.

We decided we'd use up all our spare bits of wool and each of us brought lots of baggies full of wool to use in our rugs and to cross share.  After the first day of hooking Daniella went home and proceeded to hook all 70 or so of the lollipop circles in the next 24 hours.  She loved those little circles while I drag my feet on hooking them.  It took me few weeks to hook all of them!  By the next week Daniella returned and all the circles were hooked in luscious colors of wool.  They were not hooked in Magda colors of wool, but in Daniella colors of wool.  And they are drop dead gorgeous.  Daniella kept asking me if the colors were OK or not, since my rug was so different in comparison.  I encouraged her to follow her own spirit and not my lead of using drab, dirtly, old looking wool influence what came from her heart.  And follow her heart she did.

Whaaa-la!!!!  Can you believe this rug?  It is Magdalena on steroids and it is so beautiful.  Daniella took an old design and brought it into the 21st century.  Does this knock your socks off or what?  Don't you just love it?!  I love the spirit of it, the beauty of the colors and it is so fascinating to look at with all the beautiful colors and diversity of wool strips.

Seeing this rug is certainly enough to make me question my use of drab wool!!  I may be changing my tune soon enough!

Magdalena lollipop bouquet with tree stump vs. vase and primarily pastel and brighter colors by Daniella Brooks.

The beautiful artist who made a beautiful rug!

This is the first rug Daniella has bound on her own.  The yarn is very pretty with the rug.

Betty coaches Daniella on binding.

 Here are the three lollipop bouquet rugs together that have been produced by Betty (top), Daniella (middle) and me (bottom).

This just goes to show you can teach an old dog new tricks!  Might we all want to reconsider using primitive colors and just go bright?!

Achieving "Old as Dirt"

My Magdalena lollipop bouquet is coming along and is close to being finished.  I have hooked quite a bit since last Tuesday's Maggie's Girls meeting.  Even though I'm retired, it is hard for me to find lots of free time for hooking, but I did spend some concentrated time on this rug through the weekend.

I have had some mixed feelings about the rug, but I am increasingly feeling better about it and am most happy with my efforts to get an "old as dirt' look.  I think I've said this before, but sometimes I don't like my rug until the final 5 minutes of hooking it.  Or sometimes I don't like a rug until it's bound.  Funny huh?!

As I've mentioned in prior posts, I'm incorporating some alternatives to wool into this rug.  So far my dyeing efforts on plain cotton have failed miserably and I do appreciate several comments I've received on how to improve the dyeing efforts.  But in the end, I'm not sure it's worth the effort to try to dye my own cottons, so store bought quilting fabric seems to be the best alternative. 

Above, I have added some Sari Silk to the rug in a few areas.  It doesn't shine when you see the rug on the whole.  I selected a color that is muted in tone more than bright, as Sari's can be.  

Above, in keeping with olden times when materials on hand were used, I have incorporated a mish-mash of wool selections into the background around the circles.  The wool is all of similar value, so it blends together well.  I believe this type of hooking adds to an old and aged look.  The yellow appears a little brighter in this photo, but it actually blends in well when you see it in person.

Above, here is a closeup of one of the cotton fabrics I've hand torn and hooked into the rug.  I like the tattered look but the strips of cotton are a bugger to hook compared to wool strips.  The antique rugs I own have lots of homespun and cotton fabric in them.  Remember, whatever was on hand was used.  Our fore-mothers were good at being utilitarian in purpose.

Above, another few rows of cotton fabrics hooked among the wool fabrics.

Above, the pinkish tone is the flour sack dish towel I tried to dye rust color.  The cotton only took up a bit of the color, but it has blended nicely with my other background wool selections.  Actually hooking with the dish towel fabric has been my favorite of all the alternatives to wool.

So, now you know most of my secrets!  Are you going to try them too?

My Rug Camp Rug Post 3

I am adding one more post on my rug from Cambria Pines Rug Camp, then I'm going to highlight the other/better half of the household which is Larry's rug from camp in my next post.

At the present moment I have decided to put my Corgi dogs antique rendition aside and I will continue work on it at my next camp:   Hooker Hill Rug Retreat http://www.woolpoppies.com/

In this past week I've made some changes to the rug, before setting it aside.

I am satisfied with how I've hooked Gracie into my rug but Piper has been through about 4 transitions in his face.

The first face was very cutesy and had a heart shape to it.  My friend Gail noticed the heart shape first, then it stood out to me once she asked me if I had intentionally hooked the face with a hidden heart. Some people do this - adding hearts into their rug in a sort of hidden way.  While I like the idea of doing this it was not intentional and I actually wanted to reduce Piper's cutesy look.

I superimposed a heart shape in the photo above to show this random shape in the rug.  Below, is a photo to show you the changes Piper's face has gone through since I returned home from camp.  Now before you look at this photo carefully, you have to know that Elizabeth Black was teaching at camp.  Elizabeth is a master at animal faces hooked in fine cuts and her students were doing magnificent work.  So as you can imagine I didn't carry my rug all around camp to show it off because my dog faces are very PRIMITIVE.  Remember, I don't do fine cut hooking so my guys will be prim.

Here are the changes Piper's face has gone through after version one above.

The order of these faces are:  face 1 (with heart super imposed above), face 2 on the left of the trio of faces above, face 3 in the middle and face 4 on the right is currently in the rug.  You can see face 4 is cute like face 1, but not as cutesy and not heart shaped?  I think that's the face that's going to stay in the rug.  Just as a reminder his is real-life Piper's picture again.

You can see in the picture of the three faces above that the right ear has been redrawn a few times.  After hooking the original drawing on the pattern, the head looked strange without more of a profile to his face, so I tweaked the pattern.  Here's my original mock-up of the pattern for reminder's sake and you can see only his little nose was going to show.

This is as far as I've gotten so far on this rug.  It is my most favorite rug I've ever hooked by far!  But my corgis are in it, so how could it be otherwise?!