Come On Over!

You are invited to an
Open House
Saturday November 21, 2009
2 pm to 5 pm
~at~
Wooly Woolens
Independence, Missouri
click ~here~ for directions
Janice Johnson will be hosting an open house for all of you out there who are not able to attend camp but would still like to visit. It sounds like a great afternoon! You'll be able to see what the workshop participants have been working on and shop for wool from Janice's astronomical selection (remember...3 huge walls of wool!) I'd love to meet you and you can also pick up some of my patterns (I will have a limited supply with me so if you have your heart set on something in particular, just send me a quick e-mail before November 16th, and I'll bring it along).
The very *newest* patterns adapted from Lori Brechlin's whimsical folk art will make their debut while I am at Wooly Woolens! I'll have He Came Upon A Midnight Clear, Yuletide/Pear Tree, and Sunflower Witch.
It's going to be a really fun Saturday afternoon....I hope to see you there!
I believe the above rug was hooked by Sue Clark at my Wooly Woolens workshop in 2007. If I have given the wrong credit, please let me know).

Diary of a Rug --- Part 4

In part 3 of the dear rug diary, I gave tips about hooking letters. Now that the words are completed, I've moved forward and started hooking the house.

I decided that I wanted to hook my house in a red plaid that had subtle gold lines and a thin black thread running through it. I wanted to hook my house straight across horizontally. I like this effect because the directional hooking gives the feeling that the house has siding or boards. I did not want to outline my house first, even though this is pretty much the usual thing when you are hooking something as big as this. So I created a "reverse outline" (I'm using this phrase for lack of a better one) by hooking around the walls of the house with my background color. I stayed just outside the line that was drawn. Next I hooked in the dividing line that defines the corner of the house. This definitely needs to show up .... so be careful that you don't choose something too close to the value of the house. However, I didn't want the line SO dark that it jumped out. I went to my basket of red scraps since I only needed a little bit....yes, we all have a growing pile of these pesky strips left over from other projects! I found a few strips of a dark red raspberry color that seemed to be the right value. It was a little to the purple side of red, but once I hooked in that single line, it worked beautifully. Now I began to hook horizontally across the house, using my reverse outline and the corner of the house as starting and stopping points for my red wool strips.
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One other point to discuss is the windows. I knew I wanted to hook my windows up and down, the opposite direction that I was hooking the house. I also knew that each window would be two strips of #8.5 cuts. I want the windows to have a place but I don't want them to speak too loudly...they are just quiet little spots, but oh so necessary for the house. I decided that I wanted to use a gray color texture so I dug into my stash and found a small piece of a gray texture that had very subtle orange and red lines running through it. What I really liked about the gray wool was that it appears to have a lot of green tones in it. It's just a dull grungy primitive gray (even though I call it dull and grungy, I still think this is a great wool to keep in one's stash and I'm sort of sad that I don't have more). As you can see, I have been hooking the windows simultaneously while hooking the siding on the house.
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A couple of points of interest as you are looking at my picture above...you can see I've hooked the side of the house right down to where the ground is. I will have to hook my "ground" wool next before I proceed with finishing the side of the house. Of course, that is because a line of the "ground" wool will serve as my "reverse outline" and help continue my starting and stopping point for the red wool.
You might also notice that I've been continuing to work on the outside border of the rug as I hook along.
I will soon need to make a final decision of what colors to use for the door. I am almost to that point!

You're Invited!

Psssst!...look at all that GORGEOUS wool!!!
This a picture of Janice Johnson (left) and me (right) in front of just a fraction of wool that Janice has for sale at her Wooly Woolens studio in Independence, MO. I will be teaching there from November 19th through November 21st. There are a few openings left and I wanted to invite you to sign up! It may be at the last minute but you definitely won't be sorry. Here are a few reasons why:
1. Absolutely the most wool I have ever seen...3 huge walls of glorious wool...all waiting to be fondled!
2. A really fun time with other creative, primitive rug hookers.
3. Some of the best food I have ever had at camp. I am serious, girl! The highlight is Jim's barbecued brisket lunch. My mouth waters just thinking about it. Oh, and the pumpkin cake, and the baked beans, and the salads.....
4. Jim and Janice's down-home hospitality. They make you feel like family.
5. Terrific antiquing in near-by Greenwood. One antique mall is home to the booths of Anita White and Maggie Bonanomi.
6. Three days of color-planning and personal attention from me! I'll help you with whatever you need.
7. Lots of laughs and good times!
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If you would like to experience all of the above or would like some more information, please click on this link: Wooly Woolens
or contact Janice at janice@woolywoolens.com.
Hurry! The time will be here before you know it....so call in sick to work, get a baby sitter, put some dinner in the freezer for your dear hubby, then grab your hook and frame and go!

A New Kit For Winter 2009

I've had many requests for kits lately. One of the requests was for a winter design, not necessarily for Christmas, but something that could be displayed all winter long. So I designed this little guy last week-end! The dimensions are approximately 13 1/2" X 13 1/2". I'll be assembling complete kits soon (just in time for gift giving!) and they will be available with either cut strips or uncut wool pieces, on your choice of monks cloth or linen. I will also sell the pattern individually for those of you who want to do your own color planning. This is a small, simple design with so many possibilities! I am thinking of sewing mine into a pillow.
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If you are interested in purchasing this kit/pattern, send me an e-mail or leave me a comment.
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I've also been making progress on my Harvest Goode Things rug, so there will be another diary entry tomorrow!

Trick Or Treat....

Smell My Feet!!!

Goats Wearing Sweatshirts

Is your fall as crummy as it has been in Michigan? It has been so rainy/cloudy/cold for most of the month. That kind of weather is really hard on the fiber farmers...when can we ever get our shearing done before the snowflakes fly? I've been waiting for a good day to roll around, and finally yesterday we decided it was "now or never"....so we sheared the four youngest goats and left the three older ones wearing their mohair until next spring. If there is one thing that I absolutely hate, it is a shivering goat! I HATE IT! I feel so sorry to see them quiver. So I get old sweatshirts, cut off the arms and make a slit in the neck, and dress up my goats to keep them warm! Sometimes we go to garage sales or Salvation Army, and sometimes a generous friend will donate a couple of old sweatshirts for our cause. They are all appreciated and get good use!
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In my travels somewhere over the past few months, someone said to me that they would love to see a picture of a goat wearing a sweatshirt. I'm sorry that I can't remember who it was. So here is a picture for all of you to see...and I hope the person who asked to see it will be looking too....

They will wear their shirts for a couple of weeks until their hair grows out to about 1/2 inch or so in length, then we cut the shirts off of them. Believe it or not, they actually like wearing their shirts!
Now if we could get some fairly decent dry weather in November....my barns are in serious need to be cleaned out! Is that too much to ask for?

Diary of a Rug --- Part 3

I wanted to talk more about hooking letters....
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When I first started hooking, I listened to a lot of people who said letters were hard to hook and they didn't like doing it. I got a pre-conceived notion in my head that I wasn't going to like letters either. I used to feel weak in the knees just thinking about it! Then one day, I just sat down and decided I was going to tackle it....and I found out that letters ARE NOT hard to hook! I actually like hooking them!
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I really like Wendy Miller's philosophy about hooking letters. Letters are just straight lines, just like stems or one-line borders. You can hook a flower stem, can't you? Then you can hook letters! Just hook straight on the lines and don't think of them as letters.

As I said in my previous post, I used #8 strips to hook my letters which gave them more clarity and crispness. I hooked right on the line that was drawn. First I hooked the longer lines of the letter, then I went back and hooked any lines that intersected, for example, look at the "t". Don't cross under the longer lines with your strip...start and stop your strip on either side of the long line. Then I hooked a row of my background around all of this to hold the shape. Sometimes I crowd things a little and hook real close to the letter to help define its shape. This is definitely one time when it's OK to crowd your loops if you need to. Look at the "H" in the picture...its left "leg" is wider than the rest of the letter. While all the other lettering was hooked in a #8, I'm going to hook this wider part with a #9 strip to make it fatter. I could have hooked it with 2 #8 strips but I think that might have made it TOO fat, so that's why I opted for a #9.
You may notice that as I was hooking around my letters, I was getting pretty close to the wavy outside border. I needed to get a line or two of that wavy border hooked in so I could safely continue around my letters.

Here's a great plaid for the wavy outside border. I like it because it is going to bring a lot of the tones that I am using in the main part of the design, out to the border. This will be very pleasing to the eye...sort of helps your eyes "walk" around the rug and ties things all together in a harmonious way. I have hooked two rows of it, as shown in the picture below (it looks dark in the photo, but trust me, it works well and I like it).

So here you have it! The lettering is completed and I didn't even break a sweat! It looks like a lot of brown values going on here but I am going to start working on the house. Once I get some red wool in there, things will start to change dramatically.