Friday, March 26, 2010

More Tribal Sheep Progress

Yesterday 3-25

Today at 1 PM

Today at 4 PM


I didn't get as much done yesterday as I had a doctor's appointment and birthday party for my oldest granddaughter here in SC. Chloe turned 7. Wow, how time has flown. Hope you have a wonderful year this year.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Tribal Sheep

Tuesday hooking

Today's hooking at 1 PM

Today's hooking at 4 PM


I started work on my Tribal Sheep rug the evening of the 21st so I have been hooking on this roughly 2 1/2 days in mainly 3's with a few 8's here and there. I'm using about 5 shades of golds, leftover in browns from the tribal rabbits and black, so a lot more limited palette than on the rabbits. With the warm sunny days we have been having lately I can sit and hook for a good 6-7 hours outside, then do a an hour or so hooking at night while I watch my TV shows. I'm feeling very good about this project and with luck might even done by next week.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Tribal Rabbits Finished!!!



I finished the tribal rabbits at a little after 11 AM today. I really whizzed through this one. I maybe have 4 days total hooking time in this with 6-10 hours of hooking a day as I would hook starting in about 9:30 and keep going fairly steady until 4 PM then hook again in the evening for about 1-3 hours. I used a combo of 3's and leftovers in random sizes from other projects. The back ground evolved as I went along. I had seen something similar to it on a primitive rug hooking calender as a background but wasn't planned out when I started hooking. I hope the colors all work out okay with one another and I think I achieved my dulled palette I was going for. I found out I really need to dye up more browns as I was more limited in a range of browns shades than I was any other color I was using. The mat is 17 x 22 and I still have to finish the edge. I may have to spin up some yarn for this and dye it as I don't think I have anything I can use on it right now.

I'm going to start on the sheep tonight. It's going to have a gold background and I have been going back and forth over whether to do the sheep in black or a different color like blues or browns. The background is going to be more solid though of multiple shades of golds. Backgrounds are still giving me fits and I really agonize over them. I wonder if I can do one similar to the rabbits but not quite as pronounced in the golds so it's a pattern but not an obvious one. I don't want the background to be so busy or stand out as much. Most of my golds are overdyed over camel and tans from suits and skirts. Though there are a couple of pieces that came from the inherited stash.

I'm getting to feel better about my hooking. I'm still disappointed that no one has been interested in purchasing any of my patterns yet. I hope the new designs will spark some interest maybe. I do have a craft show coming up in April and I'm trying to get some rugs for sale for it so I am really pushing myself on getting hooking done now. Maybe showing my work will get people interested here in SC in trying to hook. If it wasn't for all the on-line support hooking groups I would get totally discouraged with it. That and Facebook have been helping keeping me going since I don't have a local group to hook with. Annyway back to cutting up strips....

Friday, March 19, 2010

New Rug and Designs

I just got finished with my SMILE Creative Challenge over on Rug Hooking Daily--wow first rug of the yar finished. But can't show it until everyone else is finished so at the end of March you can see it.

Have started another experimental rug. I'm on a tribal design kick and came up with 2 small canvases to work on. The First I started 3-15 is a pair of Tribal Rabbits and the other is a Tribal Sheep. Both with be done with duller tones towards the brown side. I'm working in a mix of 3's and leftovers from other projects. These are being made with selling them eventually in mind. So they are more decor orientated than I normally do. I'm trying some designs that my kids (late 20's to 40's) would be interested in since they love my tattoo designs and tribal graphics as I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from other people on them too. I doing the backgrounds in a sort of primitive style drawing on what I have seen in books on older rugs and the way they were hooked but putting my own contemporary twist on them. Hopefully this approach will work. The sheep rug I may or may not use some of my sheep fleece on. I'm still debating on that and will see how it goes when I actually get to it.