Diane finished punching this fun new piece to hang underneath her shelf. When we designed it we remembered back to our childhood when our mittens were always attached to a cord that ran through our coats and down our sleeves so that we could NOT lose a mitten – hence the cord falling off the rug (this pattern is available). Diane has decided (with a little encouragement 🙂 from me) to hook a rug for every month of the year – 4 down 8 to go! but what fun… next one is pumpkins and gourds and fall leaves for October…
Chris finished triple whipping this lovely rug – pattern available from Isabelle Rollin…
Finally got around to attaching my Tom Thomson to the beautiful box with drawer…
and just finished a LISA FERGUSON punch needle pattern and attached it to a vintage tin file box… I think my rabbit has been rooting for carrots for a while as his nose is a little dirty – kind of like our little chipmunk who comes for peanuts every morning – his name switches from Alvin to Schmutznase(dirty nose) depending on whether he has been “planting” or not…
Today Helen decided that she loves punching but needs to find a new home for some of her finished pieces in order to justify punching MORE. So these stunning, original pieces all hand punched with either Valdani hand dyed cotton threads or hand dyed Merino yarns – are all for sale – please email her at radfordh920@gmail.com if you are interested. Prices are in Canadian dollars and shipping (extra charge) would be from Montreal within North America.
Summer Rudbeckia – 6.25 x 7 inches – $90.00 Cdn.
Spring Tulips – 6.25 x 7.75 inches – $90.00 Cdn.
Blue Hydrangeas – 7.25 x 8.75 – $110.00 Cdn.
Sunflowers – 6.5 x 7.5 inches – $90.00 Cdn.
Winter Squirrel – 8.75 x 8.5 inches – $150.00 Cdn.
After finishing The Canoe I needed a mental break – something that would not be quite as challenging! So I resized one of my rughooking kits into a mini punch needle kit and finished it in two days. I dyed colours similar to the colours in my rughooking kit including one of my favourite primitive backgrounds, Dirty Tan (we know how much I love dirty colours!). This piece is in the process of being attached to a vintage original-red wooden cigar box with a fabric hinged lid (finished piece is for sale on my Items for Sale page) – so it becomes functional and decorative at the same time and allows me to upcycle a lovely old piece of hmm, junk!!!!
So I have listed the mini punch needle pattern and kit on my Mini Punch needle page and am adding Dirty Tan to my hand dyed threads for mini punch needle list.
This was the original hooked rug kit…
and the mini punched piece on the vintage box (not attached but in process)… oooops just realised I forgot to flip him!!!! oh well – they are roosters who cannot figure out where they are heading!….
I have also listed The Canoe as a pattern/kit for mini punch needle (kitted with hand dyed fingering yarns suitable for ultrapunch medium tip).
IS DONE. And I did not even have to take out the chain saw – just got in there and cleaned away some of the broken branches 🙂 . I cannot say it was a fun or easy piece to punch – it required so much concentration and such an array of threads that I had to organize and spread out on an Ikea tray so that once I had punched a few loops in one colour I could switch to the next value or colour and on and on. But I am happy with it (and even happier that it is done) and now need to figure out if I am going to mount it to a wonderful antique box or frame it. I like functional art so the box is really tempting… that way I can store some fun treasures inside the box and enjoy my Tom at the same time…
And now for some tales from the forest – or tails!!! We have been having a wonderful summer – yes hot and humid some days but living on the lake makes that bearable. On those miserable days we work hard on outdoor projects (which Gord is getting rather fed up with as every morning there is a new project added to his list!) and then rush down to the boat and out in the lake for a swim. We discovered a wonderful spot that noone else seems to know about – fern covered cliffs falling into really deep water so I can swim along the shoreline to my hearts content. Have spent a few wonderful days there with our company(ies). Anyway, I digress. One day as we were sitting on the dock momma mink and I think a more grown up baby (mom was black, the other was brown) came loping along the shoreline. Gord starts making this squeaky noise with his mouth and fingers and up pops momma in a frenzy looking around, trying to find the source of the squeaks which sounded very much like a baby mink. Gord continued to squeak and all of a sudden plunk – mom dives into the water and starts swimming towards the dock! Yikes – nothing like a frenzied mother mink who thinks her baby is in danger. I jump up and yell – Gord – she’s coming for us!!!! and run up the stairs leaving Gord on the dock to face the mom on his own. Well, once the squeaking stopped mom was no longer interested and headed back to her companion and on their way they went.
Another day, Diane and I were sitting on the porch punching away when I heard bang, bang, pause, bang, bang, bang. Thinking something was wrong with the boat, I headed to the top of the stairs – boat was fine but I heard Bang, bang again and looked down the stairs to the dock and holy cow – a turtle was banging her way down the stairs. She would reach a landing and the banging would stop and then back down the stairs – bang, bang. Welllllll, we have about 25 steps to the lake and all that banging could not be good for her body or brain so I yelled at her to STOP and ran down the stairs, picked her up and carried her to the water and let her go. Not sure how happy she was as she piddled on me – was that in gratitude – she has been up from the lake at least 6 times this summer digging holes in our driveway and living in our pond. Hopefully, she has not banged her way down the stairs every time she returned to the lake.
So the animals have been entertaining us again this summer. I am sure there will be more close encounters that will provide us with a chuckle.
Diane punched this fun Christmas Tree (guess the heat was getting to her and she needed to think cooooool winter weather 🙂 ). The topper was something I picked up at an antique store – 4 of these in an antique tin along with some other hmmm junk…
and her apple sign rug hung in its place of pride on a wonderful shelf made by Vince…
3 pieces by Linda – first is a Deanne Fitzpatrick piece…
Edie finished a lovely Deanne Fitzpatrick pattern…
and zoom in on the animals to see Andrea’s embellishments – fabulous…
and I finished a mini punch needle that I attached to an antique file box (one of my punch needle patterns by Karla Gerard)…
Yesterday I had a lovely visit with Linda, Dale and Heather. Linda brought some of her lovely quilts for show and tell but for some reason my iPad lost all but one – how disappointing. They were lovely and are up for sale…
Hooked On The Lake 