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!