Diary of a Rug --- Final Chapter

Yesterday was a wonderfully laid-back Christmas...we opened gifts and sat around in our jammies all day. The goats and sheep got apple treats and the dog got some extra scraps in her dish. Basically, we all did what made us happy. I did a lot of rug hooking and finished my Harvest Goode Things rug! Here are pictures and tips to share:

I decided that I wanted to dig into my scrap piles to hook the pumpkins instead of cutting into fresh pieces of wool. The pumpkins are small and I wanted to vary the colors a little so they were not all the same. I found some orange scraps and also a light green heather for "white" pumpkins. I had to mindful of color value since the ground is such a medium neutral tone (it tends to make other similar values sink and fade away). I needed to outline each pumpkin so the accent lines would give some shape and definition, and they wouldn't just look like orange balls. I found some nice outline wool in my scraps but a lot of my scraps are cut in #8. I outlined and filled the first pumpkin with some of these #8 cuts. However when I was done, I thought the outline was too thick and overpowered the pumpkin too much. So I ripped out the outline and hand-trimmed it to a smaller size (more like a #6). Once I hooked it back in, the difference was astonishing! So all the pumpkins ended up with #6 outlines and then filled with #8 strips. Once each pumpkin was hooked, I put a line of the ground wool around it to hold its shape. Finally, when all had been hooked, I went back and filled in the entire ground area....
Voila!
The
rug
was
done!
(drum roll, please!)
*
*
*
The finished rug:

Now mind you, I consider this rug "done" even though it hasn't been steamed or hemmed yet....Some of you who know me (wendy!) know that I'm a "professional pinner" and tend to avoid hemming until it is absolutely necessary.
Hemming is just not creative....
don't ask me to explain my bad habit any more than that.
Maybe there's a New Year Resolution evolving here....