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.

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.

How About a Little Magdalena Meow Mix?

As you know, I've been preoccupied with moving my mother to a new assisted living facility.  The move is officially completed today!  I'm exhausted and I tried to take a nap, but I couldn't relax enough to drop off into sleep.  So I tried a little eBay and Etsy retail therapy.  This woke me up enough to feel like blogging so here's a little chat with you.

First, thank you for all your well wishes and comments of late, in support of my caregiver role.  I appreciate the support.

I missed the Magdalena Tuesday group today due to the move and I've been betwixt and between on a little Mag style rug in the animal cut-out style.  I'm not wild about this rug, so progress is slow.  Here's a little peek at progress so far.

Magdalena style animal reverie in progress.  Design is evolving as I hook.  

I couldn't quite bring myself to do the lollipop bouquet again, yet, but I do want to hook it again some day.  All the little circles in the bouquet drive me crazy and are tedious, so I made the lollipop into a rainbow in this design.  It's my favorite part of the design.  It's fun for something different, huh?  As I said, I'm not wild about this pattern and at the rate I'm going I don't know if it will get finished because:  I have a couple new Magdalena style designs I want to do instead!!!

I have been overly devoted to dogs for a long time but I do love cats equally even though I don't own a cat right now.   So over the weekend I decided it's time to give cats a fair shake at Magdalena hooking.

Here's my progress on what I call "Magdalena Meow Mix" and I like both designs very much.  I can't wait to start one!    The colors in these photos are for sprucing up the pictures from pure black and white and are not intended as a suggested color plan for these patterns.

Cats with the famous Magdalena leaf.

Cats with the famous Magdalena lollipop bouquet.

I would love to have some company hooking these designs.  Are any of you interested in joining me?  We could do a rug challenge if you are willing.  If you would like to consider this opportunity, please email me at grinningsheep@gmail.com and chat with me about it.  I'm still turning it over in my mind as to how to take on a rug challenge, but if you like the patterns please let me know.  It might need to be deferred until after I return from Cambria (mid-June) but we could hook together to make up these fun cats!

Yes! We can do Pugs Too!

Lauren from Rugs and Pugs asked about a MM rug in Pug style.  Of course we can do Pugs!  Here they are!  And Lauren, I like your Magdalena style rug you are featuring on your blog, but don't forget those crazy lines all over the place to go "all out Magdalena!"