Hook-In

I attended the Utah Hook-In on Saturday, but sadly, didn't think to take very many photos. A friend snapped this picture of me with the door prize I won - a basket full of yummy wool!

And this is the project I started that day. My sweet DIL said she'd love to have me hook a rug for her, so she looked and looked to find something she liked and decided on a design from West Elm. I will hook MY version of it. It's very modern and definitely out of my comfort zone, which will make it fun to work on. With any luck I can get it finished by Christmas (crossing my fingers!)

Two weeks ago we went with two of our kids and their families to Moab to go off-roading and do a bit of hiking. We had a wonderful time in a beautiful place - people come from all over the world to see our state!

Camera Woes

I have two small, inexpensive digital cameras that I've been using for years when I blog. What are the chances that both of them would decide to quit at exactly the same time? Argh! I know some people can blog from their phones, and since that's the only camera I have right now I thought I'd give it a try on this short post.

I recently made a wooden barn quilt and attached it to the front of the house above the garage door.

It measures 36" square and was pretty simple to make. I used a tutorial I found on the blog of a local gal who makes these and sells them at fairs & boutiques - she also teaches classes at quilt shops all over the country. Her tutorial can be found HERE.

....and it looks like that's all I can post because the rest of the photos I was going to share are all sideways and I can't figure out how to rotate them. If any of you have experience with this and would be willing to share, I'd LOVE to hear from you!

I'm heading to California tomorrow to visit family, and I purposefully timed my trip so I could attend an outdoor quilt show I've heard about for several years now. It's held at the Alden Lane Nursery in Livermore. There are also classes offered, but I will just see the quilt show since I'll have extra people with me who aren't in to quilting as much as I am. I'm hoping it will be a great visit!

Rug Hooking Workshop (Picture Heavy)

Over the weekend I was fortunate to attend a three day rug hooking workshop sponsored by the Utah Rug & Fiber Guild. This year our national teacher was Donna Hrkman from Dayton Ohio - what a delightful lady! We met at a local quilt store.

I chose to work on a landscape rug of a red rock slot canyon in Southern Utah - an area that my husband absolutely adores. I'm hoping that my project will turn out well enough that I can have it mounted on stretcher bars and he will want to hang it in his office at work. If not, oh well! I worked from a photograph so you can see what it's supposed to look like when finished. It's only 18" square, so not a huge rug.

The Guild has always done a great job on prizes & treats for the attendees. This time all 20 people in the class received one of these adorable sheep! He's quite large - can you imagine how much work it was to make so many of these? Love him!

This rich, chocolate cupcake was sooooo delicious to eat - and cute to look at with that little face!

I recently visited my friend Kay who is hooking a rug depicting a church that is right next door to her home. She mentioned that she thought she'd like to make it have stained glass in the windows, so this morning I got out my electric frying pan and attempted to make dye some wool for her that would work as a surprise.

I used only three colors of dye - red, blue & yellow - hoping that they would run together to create orange, purple and green.Turned out kinda dark and muddy, but she might like it anyway. I'm crossing my fingers...... maybe I should have done rows of color instead?

Donna is well known for her portrait rugs, and that is what most of the gals chose to hook during the workshop. After three days solid of working on their projects, most of them had two eyes hooked - which is why I wasn't terribly interested in doing faces - too time intensive for my tastes - plus they had to use very, very narrow cuts of wool to get the details right - a #3 cut.  Jill is doing Marie Antoinette - a long term project I imagine.

Judy was hooking Freida......

Mary worked from a photograph of her granddaughter......

Leah is hooking her hubby & herself......

Brynne recently moved here from CA where she was active with a rug group there. She started an angel rug - might be a weathervane? It's a big one.

Brenda is hooking a sheep that will eventually become a small handbag.

Stacie is hooking a beloved pet dog.....

Tonia worked on one of Donna's patterns of a steam punk pumpkin......

Cheryl also bought a pattern from Donna, but she loves to make sculpted rugs, so this dog has a muzzle sticking out a couple inches from the surface of the rug - he also has a steam punk vibe....

Terri was hooking a rooster in varied colors - one of Donna's patterns also.

Marianne drew her own pattern of her sister with a cat and a computer - her two favorite things!

Coralee is doing a picture of a town on the Oregon coast she visited - great weathered wood.

Jeanette is hooking a rug to go on a window seat near where her grandchildren play when they come to visit - such fun bright colors for the three elephants!

Sandy got a whale hooked, but there is much much more to the pattern she's doing - she works quickly so I'm looking forward to seeing this when we meet again next week - it might even be done by then! LOL

Pat is making a footstool - she's started with these coiled circles and will hook around them until the surface is finished. Can't wait to see this one!

There was a small rug show at the end of the class where I snapped the pictures below - lots of talent in our group!

Over President's Day weekend we spent some time in St. George Utah - usually we escape there for the warmer temperatures, but not this time. We still had a good time - drove out to Glitter Mountain and collected these shards of rock that look like clear glass - very cool! I like them displayed in this small rope bowl that I recently made.

Hubby & I have had a new home built and it's nearly finished now - maybe two weeks till we close. After living in our current home for 37 years it's going to be quite an adjustment for us - and the physical move will be quite an ordeal - especially my studio with it's supplies. But we're looking forward to it. Thankfully, we can take as long as we need since we won't be selling our old home until the move is complete - no pressure to hurry, hurry, hurry. It's only three miles away so that helps too. I haven't had a lot of time for reading blogs lately, so I'll go catch up with everyone now!

Home Again

I returned to Utah on Thursday night from visiting my family in California. I took this stitching project to work on during the 12 hour (each way) drive and I did a bit more while I was there. The pattern is a design from Lisa Bongean and was in a recent issue of AP&Q. Lisa used flannel for her background fabrics, but I'm using regular cotton instead. Would have been a LOT faster and easier to cut the pennies with a die cut machine, but I used my trusty old scissors. Whew! Lots of variety in the colors of wool I used. Bought a few colors of DMC perle cotton to stitch with. I usually use crochet thread and it didn't really seem that different to me. I guess it's the variegated thread that makes the expensive stuff more desireable. There will be twelve blocks total when I'm finished - these still need to be pressed & trimmed to size so they look kind of distorted here.

On Saturday I attended our Guild's Hook-In and won this darling pumpkin man that was one of the door prizes. He's even cuter in person. Thanks Tonia!

Before going to California, I joined with the gals who always meet on the 1st Tuesday of each month. I'm making progress on my hit & miss rug.

There were some great projects being worked on. Coralee saw a metal sculpture while on vacation in Washington State and was inspired to hook her own version of a Cranberry Gobbler - very whimsical!

Sandy had her Day of the Dead rug completed......

......and was beginning work on a new floral (sorry for the crummy back-lit photo)

Sharon had finished a wild turkey done in needle punch.

And Stacy was punching a happy sunflower.

I seem to have missed several other rugs so hopefully I'll grab them next time.

Whew!

I'm back! I've been SO busy the past few weeks - first with out of state company - then a vacation - then a holiday weekend - and then childcare. It's probably been close to a month since I even held a hook in my hand, so today when I attended my monthly rug hooking meeting in SLC I was very happy.  Nancy's home was dressed for the holiday with this flag rug on her coffee table - perfect to display at this time of year.

Since I always forget to share my own project, I'll begin with it this time. I am hooking a geometric design from Barb Carroll's book called Hannah's Star. It's usually made as a runner, but I reduced the block size a bit and set them 2x3. I hooked the block in the lower right corner today, and when I pulled it off the frame realized that I had made a mistake, so I'll have to pull out that first ring of orange wool and replace it with a teal like I used in all the others. Other than that, I was happy with my progress. Each block will have similar colors in it, but the wools I use in each one will be totally different pieces.

Myra is making some 6" wool applique blocks that will be pockets for a cute basket - and each one reflects her own interests in watercolor painting, gardening, beehives, sewing and nature. She'll also be doing a sheep and one other square.

Yvonne was also doing some wool applique in anticipation of cooler fall weather that will soon be here (hopefully!)

We meet at Nancy's house and she has been working on a landscape rug loosely based on an original painting her daughter owns. I love the wonky little houses.

The other Nancy who meets with us showed us her recently finished rug. She did a great job whipping the edges on this one. I love the beading around the edge.

A couple years ago she visited Heather Richie in Reeth England and made these two small mats - about 6" square. The landscape represents the scene she saw outside the window of Heather's home.

Our newest member, Susan, had done some shopping at a local quilt store and is well on her way to accumulating a stash. She recently traveled to Pendleton Oregon and was able to stop in the factory outlet there for some shopping therapy too!

While on vacation we rented kayaks for a day and spent a lot of time on the water at Swan Lake in Montana - pretty close to heaven on earth!

I think tomorrow I will be able to spend more time working on my rug and listening to a book that has been waiting for me. Sounds perfect!

Holiday Weekend

We don't often leave town on a holiday weekend, but made an exception this time because of the horrible inversion & pollution we've been experiencing here the last week or two. Hubby & I drove with DD#2 and her family five hours south to sunshine, blue skies and warm temperatures - it was perfect! We explored & hiked & swam & ate out and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Here are a couple of things I saw that during our travels that caught my attention. We stopped at Cove Fort which has been restored to resemble pioneer times and I loved seeing this hooked rug in one of the rooms. Rug hooking was a colonial craft and not a pioneer craft, but it was still fun to see this on the floor of a bedroom there.

Here's a close up of part of the floral diamond.

And we saw a barn star on the side of a house that was nice - not seen very often in this part of the country - I'd like to make one for my home someday.

I've been very busy working on a new quilt for DD#2 - she chose the pattern & the colors - I chose the fabrics. Each block is paper pieced in two sections. Each star is formed by sewing four blocks together, so the entire quilt needed to be laid out before I started any of the sewing.

Lots of trimming involved...

Last week when I met with my rug group there was some great show & tell. Nancy had started a new table runner - it will be symmetrical and placed on a small telephone table in her home.

She just had a bit of yarn whipping left to do on this cute piece that she began & finished since our meeting a month ago.

Myra is hooking a pumpkin rug for a friend with vibrant orange colors.

Yvonne is working on a rug that is in a Pat Cross book (if I remember correctly)

It's good to be home!