Crazy Fun In The Snow

My son ventured out in the snow on Monday afternoon to shovel the driveway and play with the goats. I thought these pictures he snapped were really adorable! He made a little "snow goat" (note the stick "horns") and placed it on the goat's play-stump. Sequoia is examining it carefully.

Zack and Zion are giving it a curious sniff.....

Zion decides that he ought to taste it......umm, umm, good!

Emma got a little snow sheep of her own. I think she likes it!

Not your typical fiber farm but at least the animals are happy (and just a little spoiled)!

Sheep in a Snowstorm

Here's Lumi and Emma waiting for breakfast this morning.....

Step Away From That Rug!

Quite often at this time of year, I get caught up in the zeal and enthusiasm of rug hooking. This year the Olympics has had me glued to my rug hooking chair. I am often working on one particular object with glorious abandon, caught up in the moment of it all. This is when I have to remind myself of a basic truth...step away from the rug! You see, we are often hooking and focusing our attention on one small area and not stepping back to look at the big picture. Sometimes this sets us up for surprises. I usually pull my work-in-progress off of my frame for the night, and then spread it on the floor in the morning to see what's going on. There are several reasons why I do this. First of all, I pull my rug off the frame so it is not tight and stretched out all night. I learned this lesson the hard way on one of my early rugs as I had near-permanent "bends" and ripples from keeping it tight on my frame for days (or maybe weeks). The good news is that I did get it all steamed out to lay flat but it was quite a job! Now secondly, I do not look at my work until the morning because: A) I am a night owl and hook late into the night; B) if I'm tired and see something wrong before I go to bed, it will keep me awake thinking about how to fix it (you know you'd do the same thing!); C) a fresh eye and fresh mind in the morning can problem-solve much better if something needs to be tweaked.
Right now I am thinking "Spring" and hooking Ah Tis Spring (a Notforgotten Farm adaptation). I love hooking rabbits and I love using lavenders and aquas for spring colors! This morning I decided to really take a critical look at my work so far. What did I decide? The bottom button on the dress is just a little too far over to the left. (Need to move that over. Good thing I didn't hook around it too much.) Also, I originally thought I'd like the dusty purple pantaloons, however now I think that they look a little too "heavy" for this bunny's apparel. I'm going to rip it out and try something else. I could have lived with this for a few days but honestly, I don't think I would have changed my mind...
You've probably noticed that I used quilling again. I've done a lot of that lately and wasn't sure I wanted to repeat it in yet another rug. But the rabbit's dress was so plain and I think the quilling buttons added just the right touch of whimsy. Sometimes these rugs tell us what they want to be!

Have Ye Any Wool Workshop

This is my finished rug "Have Ye Any Wool." If you remember from a couple of posts ago, I was frantically trying to finish my rug before I left for Mississippi to teach the workshop at P Is For Primitive. Well, I'm happy to say that I managed to get it done the night before I left. Maybe I just work better under pressure! I added the little hit-or-miss corners at the last minute. They weren't drawn on the pattern but I think I like the way it turned out...adds a little extra color up at the top of the rug and gives your eye a place to rest up there.

Here's the orange goat with quilling circles. Even though I used a texture for the body, the little circles just added a little more dimension and interest to the goat. The horns were hooked as a single piece of #8.5 cut. I am pleased with the way they turned out.

I hooked my sheep with roving. It is very special roving because it is from my beloved sheep Mikko, whom we lost almost 2 years ago. His wool was more of an oatmeal color and I love the way this little tribute to him turned out (If you want to read about Mikko, check out my blog post...but beware! it still brings tears to my eyes to read it).
~~~
OK! On to a more festive subject....the workshop! Here are a couple of pictures of the happy hookers. I love these next two pictures because it shows all the flurry of activity and all the creative hands busy at work!

This is Mary and Abby, just two of the happiest gals you'd ever want to meet.

This is Deb. She did more hooking and just a little less talking than everyone else...and it shows! Look at how much hooking she got done!

Brenna was adding quilling circles to her sheep.

Candi had just completed hooking her "old goat."

Chris gave her sheep a blue-gray face, and while it is a little hard to see by the picture, it was looking absolutely terrific!

Deborah had gotten some of her letters hooked in. Her letter-hooking was very neat and tidy! Also love the yellow-gold star.

Great progress by Ginger!

Jane had also gotten quite a bit hooked before she had to leave.

Don't you absolutely love the happy little face on Linda's sheep?

I love Windie's gray goat....and don't let Windie fool you....this was probably the only minute that she had a straight face! There was a lot of laughter coming from her corner of the room!

Patricia was hooking Emma's Garden. She is fairly new to rug hooking but you'd never be able to guess that from her rug! She was really rolling along and got a lot done!

Margaret chose to hook Lion and Lamb. She did quilling on her little sheep and the lion's mane was coming along beautifully.

Carol was hooking Home Sweet Home. She did quilling in the inside of the "O" in Home.

And finally, Sue was hooking Merry Christmastime. This is one terrific rug. Don't you love the candy cane "C"???
~~~~

Thank you to Lisanne Miller at P Is For Primitive and all the workshop participants! It was a wonderful and productive week!

Quilling

For all of you out there who have asked about how to make the little rolled circles that I call "quilling", there is a wonderful tutorial on Ali Strebel's blog about how to do it. I learned to do this technique from her last September. Her instructions are so easy and clear-cut that there is no need for me to show you...just skip on over to her blog and check it out! I used three strips of wool for the rooster's wing (above). Just have fun with combining different colors and textures, and experiment with the number of strips that you roll. I found out that 2 or 3 strips rolled well...but 4 strips...well, not so much.
~~~
I'm back from my Mississippi workshop and have lots of fun pictures to post! I'll save that story (and pictures) for tomorrow!

Just Part of the Flock

Just 2 more days and I'll be on my way to Mississippi! Yikes! I'm STILL hooking on my sample rug but I think I can see light at the end of the tunnel (so I'd better not spend too much time on my blog and get back to work). I worked up this little sheep pillow as a sample for the same class so the students can see what it would be like to use some quilling on their little sheep.

Besides the quilling, I used beading around the border of the pillow. Isn't she sweet? I was having trouble sketching a sheep, so I used a photograph of Emma to draw the body...this is really and truly Emma, personified on my pillow!

Maria Barton has also begun to hook a sheep mat and incorporate quilling. Check out her blog here. I think it's really interesting to compare our individual styles. We each have our own "look". I can spot Maria's hooking style from a mile away.... I love her primitive palate and I'm a HUGE fan of her style and designs. She makes everything look so whimsical and yummy!
Back to my hooking....I'm working with roving....more about this later!
See y'all when I get back!

New Year, New Design, New Rug

In just about 2 1/2 weeks, I'll be heading down to Canton Mississippi to teach another fun rug hooking workshop. The gals who took my Emma's Garden workshop last year asked me to design another pattern for their 2010 class. I have been happily hooking away on my newly designed rug and I'm having a lot of fun in the process!!!
Here is a sneak peek:

The new pattern is called Have Ye Any Wool and features a sheep, goat and rooster standing one on top of the other. The techniques I'm teaching this year include: quilling, hooking two different kinds of eyes, hooking houses, hooking letters, hooking with roving, and hooking stars and giving them nice crisp points (If you've been following my blog, you are already privy to my lessons on hooking letters and houses ~ lucky you!). There might be a few more tips and tricks, depending on what I can think up between now and then. I'm still waiting for my background wool to come in, so some of my hooking progress has been put on hold. In the meantime, I've taken the sheep motif and made it into a smaller pattern...I'm hooking a smaller mat and I'm going to make it into a pillow. This will allow me to demonstrate some alternative techniques for hooking sheep. And maybe do some beading around the edges...this is just so exciting and I'll be showing you more soon!
I love when a plan (and a new rug) starts coming together!

Quite Frosty .... but Beautiful!

I think these pictures say it all....

Don't you love the color of that sky? Gorgeous!

I hope your week-end was spent somewhere cozy and warm...and perhaps working on a creative project that inspires you!
These are the days for hot tea and soft warm wool.
I've started hooking on a new design.....

Did I break a New Year's resolution ALREADY?!?

Happy New Year! I've been reading other blogger's entries and de-cluttering seems to be a common theme amongst most of us in this young new year. There are times that I feel like such a pack rat and I decided that it would do me good to re-organize and de-clutter a little. Yes, that's what my resolution should be ...and throw out or give away all that stuff that just sits around and doesn't get used like it should. And really be selective about what I drag back home....
***
Yesterday, Ken and I headed up to Frankenmuth, Michigan to take some lovely Corriedale fleece to the woolen mill for processing. It's about an hour's drive so we always try to do some other fun things along the way. After dropping off the fleece, we headed to Zehnder's for lunch. They are famous for their fried chicken dinners, but the best kept secret is downstairs from the restaurant where they have a bakery and cafeteria. I love to order their Michigan Cherry Salad with chicken. It's like THE perfect "woman food"...trust me, it is THAT delicious. You'll be dreaming for more.
Then we passed an antique store that I hadn't really noticed before, so we decided to stop and take a peek.....
and I found this:

Gorgeous old bent rug hook. This baby looks really old. I had to have it. Justification: I collect rug hooking stuff. It wasn't too expensive. It's not big at all, and it can fit in a drawer.

Cute tiny little children's book. I have to have it. Justification: I collect sheep stuff, don't I? It was pretty cheap and it's small. Won't take up too much room on a shelf.

Old cast iron holly candle stick holders. I have to have them because they were 1/2 off! Justification: They will look great with red candles next Christmas. They aren't big. And they were 1/2 off.

Marvelous grungy galvanized box with two handles. I have to have it. Justification: It was super-cheap. I love how unusual it is. Maybe I can put something in it. Maybe I can use it to display something when I vend at a show.....

Yikes! Be still my heart!! A vintage shoping cart with wire baskets (OK, it came with just one but I have plenty of other wire baskets that will fit perfectly). Yeah, it's yellow...so what? I have to have it!!! Justification: I've been looking for one of these babies for a while. Sure, the wheels are missing but do I really need them? Maybe I can find replacement wheels? Maybe I can use this to put stuff in when I vend at shows!!! It was really, really inexpensive! It folds up so it won't take up too much room to store it.
***
Darn! There goes my de-clutter New Year's Resolution, right out the window!
****
After the antique store, we did make another stop at Pottery Barn Outlet. I was a very responsible shopper there. Look what I got:

Lovely rattan baskets that fit perfectly on my desk. I cleaned up my odds and ends and stored them in the baskets. That would be my start for de-cluttering.
***
Maybe I'd better stick to my resolution of binding all of my hooked rugs that have their edges "temporarily" pinned in place....

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....

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you a warm, wonderful day with family and friends that is full of fun surprises and special moments!

Diary of a Rug --- Part 6

Oh my, how time flies! It seems like just a week ago that I posted my last "Diary" chapter. I haven't had a lot of time to rug hook since I've been preparing for the Holidays but recently I have managed to sit down for a few precious moments in the evening to work on my rug a little bit. Thanks, everybody, for hanging in there!

The next element to be hooked in my Harvest Goode Things rug was the little outhouse. Someone suggested the color blue. I had to think about that for a while but then found a great gray-blue striped wool..."that might work" I thought. Then I found a very odd shade of rusty red wool while digging through my secret stash...."that might work, too!" for the roof. I wanted to hook this little building like the house, straight across. So first I had to put in a row of background for my "reverse" outline. Then I hooked in the roof. I just outlined the roof and kept going around and around until it was filled in. Next I hooked a single #8.5 row for the chimney and hooked a single line of antique black for the corner of the building.

This picture shows the reverse outline process and the gray/blue wool being hooked straight across directionally. Notice that I had to hook one row of the ground underneath the outhouse to help keep everything in place.

The door and moon were scraps pulled from my leftovers from other projects. I wanted to hook these in first before I hooked the rest of the building. The moon is a very dark bronze (didn't want it to show up too much, but didn't want it to fade into the building) and the door is a reddish orange/gold/brown texture, which shows up nicely against the blue too. I continued to hook straight across, even when I got to the moon.
(the outhouse looks like it's leaning but I think it's the angle of the camera...sorry!)

Here's the finished "privy." I do really like the blue color and I think it's a keeper!
I have finished hooking all of the background and most of the brown outside border. All that is left to hook are the pumpkins and the ground! I really didn't think I'd be hooking pumpkins at Christmas....LOL!...but this will be a fun area to play with. I'm going to dive into those scraps again to come up with some pumpkin outlines and then fill with all kinds of wonderful colors...some might be orange values but I'll leave my options open for some other colors too.
***************
Merry Christmas!

Upcoming Classes

This is me at a Quilt show in 2008, teaching little Rachel how to rug hook. What a joy for the both of us...Rachel was smitten with learning her new craft and I was overjoyed to be able to teach her! I loved her enthusiasm and perseverance.
I am offering rug hooking classes here in my studio, beginning Saturday, January 16th. If you are interested in joining me, click on this link: classes This will take you to my Schedule page where you can read all the particulars. You can also download a class flier by clicking on the "Download a flier" link on that page. Why not start out the new year by learning a new craft, brushing up on your skills, or just getting together for a few fun hours with like-minded friends?

Merry Christmas From My Barn to Yours!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Starring Kris, Emma, Bryce, Willow, and Lumi!

Rugs From Independence, Missouri

I had a wonderful time at Wooley Woolens with Janice Johnson and all the gals who took my workshop. The rugs were turning out fabulous and the food was absolutely delicious! We had a show-and-tell and I thought I'd show you some of the rugs that were color planned and hooked from my previous workshops at Wooley Woolens.

St. Nick is shown above and hooked by Sue Clark in my workshop in 2008.

Sue Clark hooked Give Ye Thanks for my workshop in 2007. As you can see, Sue is a terrific rug hooker!

LaDonna hooked Wool Garden in the 2008 workshop. Her colors are so soft and wonderful, just like spring!

This version of Give Ye Thanks was hooked by Kathy Simmons in 2008. I love the background on this rug.

Rhonda Timberlake hooked Pearl, May and LaVerne in last year's workshop. Her bright colors are absolutely wonderful in this rug!
~~~
All of these patterns are available on my website. Just click on the pattern name and you can check them out.
~~~
Big, big thanks to Jim and Janice Johnson for all their hard work! It was another successful year!

A Holiday Show

Just like one of Santa's elves, I've been busy creating some wonderful goodies for the
All The Trimmings Holiday Show.
Saturday December 5, 2009
10 am to 4 pm
Chelsea Fairgrounds
20501 Old US 12
Chelsea, MI 48118
You can go to the All The Trimmings blog to check out the other artists and their wares.
I found some great holiday gifts last year for my sister and my husband....and a couple of things for myself too......
Admission and refreshments are free!
I hope to see you there!