Rug Of The Day - Glad Tidings

Glad Tidings

Adapted from the artwork of Lori Brechlin/Notforgotten Farm

Hooked by Deb Nees

 I love Christmas designs more than anything else and I think this is one of my favorites.  It does have a lot of small details so I definitely recommend using lots of different cuts of wool.  You can use wide cuts in the horse and background but smaller strips are needed for the wreath and details on the jacket.  

I taught at Cape May several years ago and Deb was working on this rug in my class.  After class, she went to a knit shop and found some metallic yarn so she used it for the buttons on the jacket and the jingle bell on the tip of Santa's hat.  Genius!  So the next afternoon, we all had to make a bee line to the knit shop to buy a few skeins...I'll bet that yarn shop owner couldn't figure out why there was such a demand for metallic yarn.  Haha!

Deb used sheep curls for Santa's beard, which is totally awesome so I thought I'd talk about that a little bit.  Hooking with curls is fun and easy! Most of the time, I will buy a whole curly sheep fleece and then I have to wash it.  Sheep all have different "textures" of fleece so if you want definitive curls, some of the best are Wensleydale, Teeswater, and Leicester Longwool.  Washing a fleece is a long process....you can not agitate it at all or it will felt...so I carefully soak a small batch in a bucket with very hot water and Dawn dish washing detergent.  Usually 3 wash cycles and then 1 or 2 rinses in a bucket of hot water.  I spin the fleece in the washer to get most of the water out and then lay flat to dry on a towel.  If it's a nice, dry day I will dry outside.  You can never get all the vegetation out and sometimes there are little bits of dirt in there too.  Sometimes a few stains but hey, it's clean and it's lovely for hooking!

This is what a one-ounce portion of Leicester Longwool curls looks like.  It will go a long way in your hooking!

Sometime they are stuck together a little bit by small strands of fleece, so you can either carefully pull them apart or you can cut the strands carefully with scissors to separate the curls.

Sheep curls can really overpack an area if you are not careful, so what I recommend is that you hook the beard area first with a light colored wool.  You can opt to hook the strips a little more loosely so that there are small spaces in between the rows, then you would hook the curls in the spaces between the rows.  Sheep curls are pretty thin so they can get squeezed in practically anywhere. 

Pick out a single curl and hold it just like you would a wool strip. Begin by pulling up one curly end.  Pull it higher than your loops.

Pull up another loop of the sheep curl, again making sure it is higher than your wool loops. Spacing isn't critical so I just poke my hook down and grab the curl...but to get a nice beard, you do want to make sure your loops are high.

When you get to the other end of the curl, pull up the wispy end and let it hang above the hooking.  Depending on the length of the curl, you can get one to two loops before you need to pull up the end.  Here is a curl where I got two loops before I had to end it.

Begin a new curl by pulling up its end in the same hole where the previous curl ended (just like you were hooking a wool strip).  Continue on in this method, filling in the desired area.

Here are two curls hooked into the beard...doesn't that look yummy???

I grabbed a large pencil hook for my demo but I almost always work with an 8mm Hartman because I feel that a wide shanked hook pokes a bigger hole for the curl and pulls it up easier.

I have a limited number of one-ounce bags of Leicester Longwool curls for sale.  If  you want to purchase some, please message me on my website or on the Spruce Ridge Facebook page (they will also be posted for sale there but not listed for sale on my website).  First come, first served.

You can find the Glad Tidings pattern here:

https://www.spruceridgestudios.com/product/glad-tidings-30-x-32/

My computer and blogger are at odds with each other today and I have had a bit of difficulty posting so I apologize if my post appears a little wonky!  I am trying to figure it out but my computer can be pretty stubborn!  Ugh.

Have a great week-end!