New Blog

I'll get the hang of this blog yet. I'm currently into rug hooking and got started when friends in both Wales and in Iowa encouraged me to design some rug hooking canvases for them. I started my first rug in Nov '06 for my grandson that was born February 28, 2007.



I didn't get back into hooking until this fall when my friend in Iowa had me do some more canvases and I started doing 2 rugs I had started in '07, a cat rug and my Greenman rug. The cat got finished by the end of October and I'm still working on the Greenman. He's being done in dyed fleece with a fine hook on Heatherfield cross stitch fabric.





At the end of November I designed and started a new rug for my family based on everyone's Chinese horoscope characters for their year. I designed 28 different characters and arranged them primitive barnyard style on a piece of 44 x 72 burlap. The figures are being hooked in dyed fleece while the background is in dyed recycled wool fabric strips hand cut because I don't have a cutter yet.



I'm also working on a set of 8" dancing stars, tribal sun and moon squares that I will figure out what they're going to be when I get done. I just finished an international trivet swap on Rughookers Yahoo Group and sent my swap mate Elise in the Netherlands a dragon trivet. It was done in my handspun yarns on Aida cloth.



I'm going to be in on Gene Shepherd's hook-in on his blog. Wednesday he showed off all three of the design alternatives I sent him. I was not wild about the original design and had to come up with designs I would hook. http://geneshepherd.com/blog1/?p=1531

Today I'm going through fabrics to use. I think I'll be doing the dragon in a basket first. Yesterday I went to the thrift stores and got about 15 jackets, and skirts to dissemble. Found three great brown plaids for basket--it's hopefully going to look like a pine needle basket, 3 solid creams, 2 light cream plaids, 2 very cheerful red plaids, a solid red, a green wool sweater and black watch plaid. The creams I think are going in the main inner background, while I am still debating on what the outer background is going to be. The greens I got yesterday may or may not go in this piece as I have a bunch of really good dragon greens and leaf colors all ready to go. I think my flowers are either daisies or Sunflowers. Yellows I already have. But kind of low on pinks, purples or blues as they are being held out for other projects.