NICK OF TIME SHOW…

FIRST SNOW!!!! About 1 inch – everything is white and lovely. And I am in the mood for decorating for Christmas…

butttt when I started to pull out all the boxes I realised that hmmm it had been a LONG time since the house got a good cleaning so that is how most of my week has been spent. There were dust bunnies that I actually could have given names to they were so big! And a few mummified things I could not even identify. No wonder mice like it here – they feel right at home!!! So after much scrubbing and cursing I was ready to decorate. Now I have what some would call the ugliest Charlie Brown Christmas Tree. It is definitely not a “traditional” full beautiful tree – it is scrawny and scraggly (not even real) but is the tree I have always wanted. It is filled with hand made quite primitive decorations – collected over a number of years. The best part is – I just wrap it in sheets and store it in the basement and when it is time to decorate I drag it up the stairs, set it onto an old apple crate and in 5 minutes my tree is done. Well a few branches might have to be straightened out. And of course, every year I look for a few new decorations – hand made by various artists. This year – be still my heart – we have not only a gift exchange next weekend at our primitive Christmas party but an ornament exchange as well! I am expecting 10+ wonderful handmade ornaments made by my friends. There are still gaps in my tree that need filling (oh and I do have another little tree hidden away waiting for decorations!!!).

This week I have also been packing up for the Nick of Time show in Perth. This runs tomorrow, Saturday, from 10 – 4 at McMartin House on Gore Street. It is a lovely little one day Christmas show. This year however, I am located in the basement – hmmm does anyone go to the basement? I hope so – if not ohhhhh Wendo and her felting are across from me and Cindy Keary with Handspun and dyed wool is beside me. So I may be spending a few $ :-)… At least I can be thankful that I am not located beside Ludwig with his handmade chocolate! Hope you can make it to the show…

BACK TO COOKIN…

Another wonderful weekend of inspiration, creativity, laughter, lots of hooking and no cooking – sadly over. We missed some old friends and welcomed some new friends. Our little elf entertained us with his shenanigans and Rose and Jim added a few pounds to our thighs (well except for our size 0 – 5 attendee! :-). I am so sad to see this weekend over with and look forward to the next get together with this amazingly creative group of ladies. Thought I would share some pictures of shenanigans and rugs!

Our Mascot for the weekend made his merry way around the building showing up in many disguises and up to various shenanigans – bathing in bubbles, snacking on M&M’s, asleep in a kleenex box, sitting in his truck surrounded by snowflakes and fishing in the sink – wonder if he caught one of those goldfish!

On Saturday a youngster from camp visited and asked if we could teach her to hook – well with donations of backing, wool strips, yarn, hook and hoop we had her hooking up a storm in a few hours. We knew she was a confirmed “hooker” when her dad came to get her and she said “Dad just let me hook in this last strip”…

Betty chopping off backing and our new little hooker…

Louise making button trees (in between carving a few Santas), France working hard and Wendy giving instructions!!!!… 

Karen brought along a few vintage rugs for sale – made back ini the 30’s by a relative – this one appeared to have been punched and was lovely…

Trish hooking her purse, Donna finishing off a rug and Andrea making up a pillow…

Betty’s second piece ever hooked hmmm A LONG TIME AGO and finally finished into a pillow this weekend…

Oh and we had a store – Wendy brought some of her folkart for sale – yeahhhhh… There were some heated battles over a few of the pieces…

Reallllllyyyyyy????…. (Helen who joined us after a hooking hiatus of hmm 13 years! but like riding a bike she got right back into it!)…

Linda finishing pillows and Sheila working on her glorious Klimt inspired rug…

Betty’s cat rug finally finished – she whipped the scalloped edge in about 2 hours!!! and this is a fairly big rug!…

Betty’s almost finished Fraktur…

Karen was working on making a small piece into a pillow and finishing off this fun penny rug (pattern is the same one that I hooked – see my previous blog post for details on where you can get this pattern)…

Louise actually did finish this rug this weekend – it is huge and beautiful and ready for whipping…

Trish worked on her beautiful Penrose Tile rug…

This amazing rug is by Sheila and was inspired by Gustaf Klimt’s paintings – it incorporates wool strips, yarns, sari silks, gold threads…

Linda shared her most recent burlap tote bag and finished 2 small mats as prodded edge pillows…

A pattern by Patti Armstrong hooked in a day and a half by Wendy…

Wendy’s table runner brought for show and tell – now she is thinking of doing a series of seasonal ones…

OOOOPS  THE BIG KARLA GERARD BY WENDY IN MOSTLY YARNS  (don’t know why this came out soooooo big!!! and blurry – must be that darned photographer again)…

France hooked most of this in 1 1/2 days and had started on background before leaving…

A series of Andrea’s finished pieces!!! She hooked a tree and finished off 2, finished 2 pieces as pillows and was putting binding on the goose…

Yup the same Patti Armstrong pattern but hooked very differently by Andrea in mostly yarns…

Helen’s Flying Angel (don’t look at the start date in the lower right corner!!!… 

Donna’s penny rug started and finished…

Donna’s Spirit Woman (another Patti Armstrong pattern but with adaptation for more “mature” hookers i.e. gravitational and dietary input!) finished off this weekend…

Donna’s Rughooking Daily 24 x 24 Challenge finished off…

Trish’s purse which was actually finished by Sunday afternoon…

My Woolen Memories pattern finished and just waiting for either a braided edge or overlapping tongues and yes I also worked on Squirrel which I hope to finish off today and post with MUCH CHANGED BACKGROUND…

Linda’s footstool – even though I think I posted this one a while ago I thought it would be interesting to see that this is a mat in a footstool made out of a recycled crate from the Liquor Store – ahhhhh imagination!!!!!…

CAMP IAWAH RETREAT…

Well classes are finished, one final little Christmas show in a few weeks (oh make that one week!!!! – the Nick of Time show in Perth) but this weekend I am off to our annual (well now semi annual) hooking retreat at Camp Iawah. A group of us have been getting together on a semiannual basis for a weekend of Hooking – no Cooking! We hook and eat and inspire each other in our craft – it is a weekend I look forward to every year. So next week I hope to have lots of pix of show and tell to inspire YOU as well. But what am I going to work on this weekend? Will I finally finish off Squirrel rug, Beer Drinkin Bears, a commissioned Hat, Raven pillow – nope! Started a new piece yesterday – I felt I had lost my touch and needed to get back to my usual colours and style so pulled one of the patterns by Woolen Memories that I have not sold and yesterday started hooking. I wanted all the motifs done so that I could just take along background and not think too much on the weekend (not that I have ever been accused of that!). Unfortunately this pattern was so much fun I could easily have finished it today:

I am considering a lambs tongue appliqued border or a thick braided finish…

This week I dyed up a beautiful smoky blue. You know I am not big on blue! but I love this colour. I did it over a varied base of natural, oatmeal, tans, light plaids, grey herringbones, dirty yellows, black and white tweeds… and it gave me a wonderful array of clean and bright, dirty and old. The formula is dead easy:

8/16ths (half a teaspoon) of Magic Carpet Blue

4/16ths (quarter of a teaspoon) of Prochem 413 Navy

over 1 1/2 yards of mixed wools. Remember the older looking base colours (i.e. tans and beizes) will give you more aged final colours and the clearer colours (blue greys and naturals) will give you brighter cleaner colours.

In attempting my year end clean up I have decided to have a sale on a few seasonal kits so if any of the following interest you they are 30% off. Just send me an email and I will let you know the size and price…

FINAL SHELBURNE 2012 PIX…

AND A FEW MORE SHELBURNE 2012 …

who is that old guy in the picture?…

love the idea of attaching a piece to birchbark!

my feelings exactly!!!

AND MORE SHELBURNE 2012…

Finished piece by the youngest hooker at the show…

The youngest hooker at the show – started at age 5!…

MORE SHELBURNE 2012…

Sooooo have you picked favourites yet? Well just to mess with your choices a bit here are a few more – hmmmm do I see a theme here i.e. mostly wide cut primitives – that would be the photographer! There seemed to be fewer rugs this year but what was there was wonderful…

SHELBURNE 2012…

I know everyone has been anxiously waiting for the pix from the show. Should I tease and say my camera failed? NOOOOO. Actually this year I recharged all my batteries so no excuse except to say that as usual I was overwhelmed. I was told by one friend – yes pix but ENJOY the rugs as well! Another friend asked if I could try to get the labels included in the pix so that people would know who the hooker and designer were. Wellllll I tried! My skill at taking photographs is somewhat limited – usually I clean up photos to make them straight, crop them and enhance them but this time as much as I could I tried to get the label in – sometimes stepping on peoples toes to get far enough away to get some of the amazingly HUGE rugs into the photo and sometimes getting so close that my nose practically rubbed the rugs. But I am sure despite the flaws in my photos you will enjoy the rugs.

Had a wonderful time away – got to go to my little primitive store and oh my god it was full of primitive antiques as well so… hmmm came home with a table. Not sure where I will put it but it was so nice and the price was crazy so I could not leave it behind!!!! Also got some antique red tin sconces and some U.S.A. made Christmas decor so I was happppy.

Now to share those rugs – this will take many days folks so keep coming back for more:

SNOWMAN PATTERN…

Sooooo I would like to introduce you all to the designer of the fun fun little snowman runner I hooked this past weekend. Lynda Hall of Primitives by Lynda is a designer of patterns for wool applique which also easily translate into rughooking patterns. Lynda can be found on her blog at http://www.primitivepiecesbylynda.blogspot.com and her website http://www.primitivepiecesbylynda.com where YOU TOO can find this paper pattern (Cold Days) and either do it as a wool applique piece or a hooked rug or heaven forbid BOTH!

Well off to pack up for the trip – sooooo excited to be going to the rug show… have a wonderful weekend and look for pix end of next week of all (well not allllll) the wonderful rugs from the show…

AHHHH TECHNOLOGY…

It never ceases to amaze me how much we rely on technology these days. When it goes down I am totally lost. My IMac which I love and know how to use hmmm to about 30% of its capacity went down again. Three new hard drives in 3 years! Thank God for warranties and wonderful Apple Stores where they do all the work cause I am a techno idiot. Don’t even know how to use our cell phone! My lovely big Mac (which in my frustration I was calling my rotten apple) is back and so am I! Did not bother taking pix at the show this past weekend because I knew I would not be posting them for days. But I did take a picture of an amazing rug the other day when Patsy and Gillian came for a dye class. This is Gillian’s version of a Bev Conway pattern done beautifully in number 4 cut..

The Glebe show was wonderful – much quieter than in previous years but still a lot of fun and fulllll of amazing yarns, rovings, unspun. I always look at shows as an opportunity to talk with people about rughooking and meet up with friends I have not seen in a while as well as being my “hooking time”. I saw people that I have not seen since I was in Arizona in January – all the way from Halifax (well not all that way to see me!!! :-)). And I hooked 2 pieces – finished them off on Monday. One is my hex sign which I have now attached to a wonderful old cheese box that I bought at my grungy crackhouse antique store. It had already been painted and distressed in perfect black over red! The other piece is a small snowman runner that originally was a wool applique pattern in the very first issue of Primitive Quilts and Projects. I started doing it as a wool applique and realised – holy cow I can hook this faster! So it is hooked and I love it.

So this weekend we are off to the Green Mountain Rug Show in Shelburne Vermont. I am sooooo excited! Must remember this year to take LOTS OF RECHARGED BATTERIES. No more of those made in China things that only last 2 pictures! Then off to New Hampshire to one of my favourite towns – Portsmouth. I look forward to this trip every year as we meet up with good friends and just have such a great time and of course I take along lots of hooking projects. The inn we stay at in North Conway does not object to me coming down at 5:30 in my Pj’s with my hooking in tow – I sit in the living room sipping on day old coffee from the urn and hook for hours until everyone else gets up!