HAPPY HALLOWEEN…

to you all… Hope you have a wonderfully ghoulish day! and enjoy all the goodies but watch out – as we get older those teeth become more fragile (take it from someone who has put her dentist’s kids through med school) and all that gooey sticky stuff (yes all the good stuff) breaks teeth and pulls out fillings!!!

Today I am doing another primitive dye class and then getting ready for the Ottawa Valley Spinners and Weavers Guild show in the Glebe Community Center in Ottawa. This is a wonderful show – full of fiber for weavers, spinners, felters, knitters, hookers – and finished pieces. We run Friday night 4 – 8 and Saturday 10 – 5 and Sunday 10 – 4 – Hope you can make it…

HOOKIN …

On Sunday I had a hookin – grey, cold and rainy outside but warm and cheerful and full of inspiration inside! Here are pix of some of the show and tell…

Liz with her finshed Canadian Beaver Rug (which I am hanging temporarily 🙂 in my living room – this wonderful BIG rug is for sale so contact me if you are interested in details… It will look SOOOO good in MY living room though that I am hoping Liz might just forget it is here…

Liz working on her next smaller rug…

Shauna’s Three Kings rug – and Liz’ fingers pointing out allllll the little tiny areas of detail…

Andrea’s future pillow – not ET but rather a sunflower on its side!…

Andrea with her Susan Feller chicken rug – including proddy and quillie…

Suzanne’s picnic basket – hooked lid covers… I love this idea and remembered (after Suzanne spied it on my shelf) that I actually own an antique picnic basket… hmmmmmm food for thought…

Sandi’s primitive cat…

Louise with her new geometric – bigger than she is!…

Karen with her future pillow…

and Karen with her punkin rug – by the end of the hookin she had almost finished a wonderful deep old red border…

Linda with her niece’s future pillow…

Linda’s hooked burlap tote bag (bought at the dollar store and hooked)…

and Linda with another hooked burlap tote in progress…

Susan with her Halloween rug (Starr Rug Company pattern)…

Is it lunch time yet????? 

It was a wonderful fun day with a little excitement! In the middle of the hookin Gord came running in in a panic. Help me please  – I think I am going crazy. I lost a tire! Hmmm that needs an explanation – he was putting winter tires on the car in the garage with the door open and had the last tire standing up on its end beside the car. Came in for a snack and when he went out again the tire was gone! Looked everywhere – no tire in sight! Well out I went to help with the search – nothing! Now tires are BIG and BLACK and hard to miss but this one was GONE! Finally after searching under cars and all through the garage we spied it about 100 yards away in the middle of the trees in the woods. Seems it must have rolled out of the garage door, bounced its way down the stone steps through the field and into the woods. Half an hour almost to find that little escape artist! Needless to say, tires will now LIE on the floor rather than stand up!

Check out this blogspot (in the process of being updated) of my friend and fellow fiber lover Wendo. Wendo does wonderful needlefelted creations – animals being a favourite. She has kits and teaches classes and was one of our guest artists during the studio tour a few weeks ago.

http://wendovanessen.blogspot.ca/

PURSE IS DONE!…

and now back to squirrels…or bears, or hat (and I forgot yesterday, I am also working on the Hex Sign rug from our class last week! another project – might be a bussssy winter!). These purses go together so quickly. Once the hooking of the flap is done I cut and stitch together the body of the purse, press under and topstitch the strap for the purse and attach it to the body of the purse and cut the lining. Then the final work is done by hand – stitching the lining to the flap and stitching the lining to the inside of the purse. I may just have to make another bag with step by step pictures as these really are fun to make and are great Christmas (or other) gifts. Here is the finished purse:

WORKING ON…

TOOOOOOO MANY PROJECTS! I don’t like having too many things on the go – gets me all distracted and stressed. However, I have Beer Drinkin Bears, Squirrel and Acorns, a hooked hat and now a purse – all on the go. Worked diligently on squirrel rug and of course hmmm blue sky background and problems! I find hooking blue a challenge – it is not a colour I feel terribly comfortable with so when I started the squirrel rug I thought blue would work with all the old golds, golden browns, golden oranges and orangey reds. And I am sure it will – when I figure out which blue. The one I thought I would use is once again (like River Otters) too dull and solid looking even though there are about 10 different wools in it. So this morning I pulled out a whole new range of lighter green/blues and will mix that in with the darker blues and see what happens. However before reverse hooking most of my sky I needed a break and decided this morning to hook a purse. Purses are soooo much fun – they are small, functional pieces of art. I can hook one up in a morning (the hooking is done!) and sew it together in an afternoon. So this time NO ANIMALS, no oak leaves, no dull colours. This is a purse for dull grey fall days and cold winter days so it needed some zing. I took one of my Karla Gerard patterns and cropped it down to a wonderful colourful purse flap sized rug and hooked it in darks and brights throwing in some sari silks to add a little zing! So although this is not my usual palette (no pink in my life!) I think it is a fun piece and will make a great purse. The body of the purse will be the same dirty black as the foreground so it will really pop.

Well two more shows to finish off the year – The Ottawa Valley Spinners and Weavers guild show in the Glebe Community Center the first weekend in November and then the first Saturday in December is the Nick of Time show in Perth. Then ahhhhhh no  more shows for a while! I can paint my walls instead! That usually seems to be my winter past time – painting (or rather repainting) walls.

ANOTHER WEEK GONE…

Fleece Festival last weekend was TERRIFIC! People were walking around with huge bags of supplies – knitting, felting, spinning, hooking – and stayed for hours! I am already looking forward to next years show. So a fun fun day and a busy week that just zipped by. I get so sad at this time of year – fall is my favourite season. I love the colours, smells, lack of heat!!!! and humidity but it is so fleeting. Dock is out so hmmm no more sitting down by the lake which usually means I don’t even walk down anymore. Leaves are falling like snow (oh oh there’s a word you probably did not want to hear yet!). And deer hunting is about to start. That really upsets me because I am a saver of animals and love my deer – even though they treat my gardens like a salad bar! But yesterday was a glorious day! I left early for guild – sun was coming up and shining through the leaves and it just made my soul sing! Here are a few pix of the backyard (or lakeside cause here in the country they call this the front of the house!):

At guild this week we started a class with Carol Shewan on hooking Hex signs which kind of morphed into Frakturs which kind of morphed into Folk Art (based loosely on Pennsyvania Dutch folk art). A 2 part class so yesterday was spent learning about PD folkart – the history and meaning – and starting to draw out our patterns. Colour planning and hooking in the next class but of course I drew mine out, colour planned it and am ready to start hooking. May have to do a second one so that I have something to play with in the next class! Traditional PD colours are reds, blues, yellows, greens all in more vibrant tones on either white or black background but YOU KNOW that is not going to happen! I already have my textured dirty reds, blues, golds and greens picked out on a dirty black background! And although I am going to try my usual 8.5 I may have to slip down the scale a bit to a 7 because I am doing a 14 inch round geometric design. So a few pix of the class in action and next meeting a few pix of hopefully peoples designs and works in progress:

Carol helping Chrissie with her design.

Seeeeee all the lovely brights – but NOT HAPPENING for this lover of dirty colours  🙂

ANOTHER TOUR DONE…. FLEECE FESTIVAL THIS WEEKEND

Well our tour is over for another year. It was a wonderful weekend – cool, sunny skies. Perfect weather – noone was swimming or boating this weekend so hmmm they were all here! It was a busy busy busy 3 days – heck so busy we had one couple show up on Tuesday – the day after the tour ended :-).

So did I buy anything – well this year – for the first time ever – I restrained myself! I KNOW that is hard to believe but honestly I did not buy anything – but my sister Diana (who lives with us) did! Now Di has Downe Syndrome so the value of money (and many other things) is somewhat lost on her. But she earns money for little jobs around the house and she LOVES to buy things! This weekend she picked out one of Louise’s beautiful dolls (thank heavens a smaller one). Usually when Di buys or orders something from one of our guest artists I end up covering at least 50% of the cost because Di will pull out a 5.00 bill and expect change when an item is 40.00! But this year she was on her own. Of course I did notice a 10.00 bill missing from my money later on. I guess she figured I needed to be part of the purchase afterall!

Although I didn’t buy anything this year I did receive a couple of totally unexpected and unwarranted gifts – a wonderful sheep ornie carved by Doug (to add to my growing collection) and the most amazing fish for my garden made out of rakes and pitchforks etc. from Steve and Karen. AND OF COURSE A TON OF FOOD was brought by everyone – we ate soooooo well! and hmmm leftovers are still in the fridge or freezer!

A bigggg Thank you to all our visitors (I know some of you are reading this) who came long distances to see our artists and left with wonderful pieces!

This weekend off to Fleece Festival in Woodstock – a one day show of fleece related vendors – knitting stores, rughooking vendors, fiber vendors! A great show if you are looking for supplies!

Hope you all had as wonderful a Thanksgiving as we did…

TEMPTING TOUR PIX…

Some photos of my amazing guest artists work this weekend – Louise Bergeron, Steve and Karen Henderson, Cindy Laneville, me, Doug Purdy, Janet Whitham, Lionel Purdy and Wendo Van Essen! Hmmmmm where do I start with my purchases!!! 🙂

HAPPY THANKSGIVING…

And I am sooooo giving thanks that the TV spot is behind me. Dropped into the quilt store en route to doing the TV spot and the owner said – oh I can do your makeup for you – to which I replied I AM WEARING MAKEUP! Obviously it did not work well cause when I came home and watched the recorded segment I wondered who the old goofy looking woman was! I thought I looked bad in photos but TV not only adds 10 pounds (well I personally think it adds 30!) but also adds 30 years! I don’t look like that! ;-)! At least the interviewer, Bill, was fun and allowed me to get in my “hooker” joke and asked me if I was going to be demonstrating all weekend!

Today my artists arrive to set up for the tour and I will post pictures tomorrow of their wonderful work. In the meantime, off to work on squirrels and bears so Happy Thanksgiving weekend to everyone (well Canadian Thanksgiving anyway). Here are a few fall and Thanksgiving rugs I have hooked over the years:

NEW DESIGN…

So I am on a roll with animals. Enjoyed Riverus Otterus so much that I decided to do a squirrel rug – well prompted probably by all the squirrels outside planting acorns from our oak trees. This little guy is harvesting and planting and prepping for the winter. Little does he know that those acorns are going to grow into big oak trees. So lets see how much this design changes as I go along. I am doing a dark navy and golden brown sky (love how navy makes all those warm fall colours just pop and mixes sooooo well with golden browns). Then the squirrel – well a bit of artistic license here as I am doing him in all golden browns and our squirrels are either grey or black – hmmm maybe this is the red squirrel!). These 2 colours are amazing together – the navy is dark and dirty and the golden brown has a touch of orange in it so mmmmm complements! The formulas for these 2 colours is shown below – dead easy and works up well every time over a mix of wools. Will work on this piece this weekend  (notice all the oak leaves – prompted by the river otter rug).  We are on a lake surrounded by 70 foot tall whispering pines, maples (very few), birches and oak trees. So I figure all my animal rugs will become part of my Wolfe Lake Vignettes!

Dirty Navy:

3/16 Prochem 413 navy

3/16 Magic Carpet black

over 2/8 fabric. I of course dyed up a yard and used a wonderful brown based wool for my navy so that by not stirring I end up with some areas of brown showing through the navy.

Old Golden Brown:

8/16 Prochem 199 golden yellow

8/16 Prochem 560 chestnut

over approximately a yard of mixed wools – tweeds, plaids, browns etc to give me a wonderful variety of golden browns.

QUILT SHOW PANIC AND STUDIO TOUR…

Whew what a weekend. The quilt show in the Glebe was lovely – not huge but some amazing quilts. Unfortunately my camera ended up MIA. Saturday morning I hopped out of the car and Gord took off merrily on his way to golf -WITH MY HOOKING BAG IN THE BACK OF THE CAR – hooking, frame, hook, scissors, lunch!, water, camera. Thank heavens I had my money and my glasses! Running after the car hopping up and down and yelling GORD STOP! did not work! Even had passers by running after the car. To no avail. Gord was blissfully ignorant until he got to the golf course! Where he discovered my bag – and hmmm did not come back! So I learned to hook in my lap – nottttt an easy thing to do. I remember that an amazing hooker who used to live in Quebec apparently started off hooking without a frame and using a latch hook. I am wondering if this is a myth cause it is tough! Finally someone took pity on me and brought me a wonderful lap frame so  I was happy again but I still had nothing to hook. In the end  I wripped open one of my kits and hooked REALLLLLY SLOWLY (it was a small piece that I could have finished in about 2 hours!). Sunday I finally had my camera but noticed that noone was taking pictures so did not either as I thought perhaps they were asking people not to take photos. So unfortunately nothing to show….

This weekend is our studio tour – I have 8 artists (including myself) here for the weekend. What an amazing bunch. A folk art carver, wood turner, weaver, mosaic glass maker, salvage artist, felt artist, doll artist and me! I will post pictures once everyone has set up – to tempt you!!!! Oh heck why don’t I tempt you now – check out our website (google Westport Fall Colours Studio Tour and click on studio number 2). This Thursday if you are in the Kingston area I will be doing a spot on Live at 5 on CKWS. Ugh – I hate doing live spots. Usually during the tour on the Saturday morning I (the hooker) meet the radio guy in the parking lot behind the arena! We do a live radio spot plugging the tour but heck I can go in my PJ’s with bed hair! For TV – hmmm I guess I will have to dress up in something besides my comfy Pj lounging pants and paint on the missing eyebrows!