More From Green Mountain

The rugs at Green Mountain were amazing.  As a Rookie Hooker, I have to say that at times I am completely blown away by rugs, and at other times I can get a little intimidated.  As I tell my husband, rug hooking is like 3-D chess - the more you learn, the more you realize you need to learn, and a lot of thought goes into every move.  When Bee Line first acquired the Townsend line, we had a lot of lovely phone calls of encouragement from the rug hooking community.  One call in particular stands out to me yet today, and at the time I wrote down what the caller said and have it taped to my desk.  A woman named Claire called and was talking about our taking over the Townsend cutting equipment, and I said that we know we have big shoes to fill, and here is what Claire told me:

"Comparison is the theif of joy."

Isn't that so true?  And it applies to many things.  So when I feel intimidated by some of the amazing work out there and think, "I'll never be able to make something like that", I think of Claire and her simple but true statement.

With that in mind, here are some of the amazing sights I enjoyed at the Shelburne Museum.

Doesn't it look like Santa's beard?

LeAnn Hodgson of Camp Wool,

one of our terrific distributors, who had an

amazing booth right across from me.

Our booth - not nearly as pretty as LeAnn's!

Marion Brown, who coordinated the vendors and did a terrific job, accepting our thanks!

Double Paisley by Sharon Townsend - look at those cut-outs!

The view driving into the museum...a rug waiting to happen.

Walking around the front corner....

Lisbon Tiles by Cyney Passavant.

Espalier Pear, hooked by Kathleen Bonilla, designed by Beverly Conway.

I love this bluebird!

Lobster Fantasy, designed and hooked by Melina White.

Crocodile Mola by Norma Batastini - it was so colorful!

Runway Flowers, designed by Davey Degraff, hooked by Janice McKnight.

Since I don't want to crash anyone's computer with too many photos, I'll post the rest of them this week.

Green at Green Mountain

Hello all!

I'm lucky enough to be at "Hooked in the Mountains", the Green Mountian Rug Hooking Guild show in Shelburne, Vermont.  The show is in a stunningly beautiful round barn:

Vermont is beautiful, and lives up to all of the cliches about the Green Mountain State - quaint, bucolic, charming.  The barn has three floors, and this week the top and second floors are full of rugs, and the lowest level is full of vendors.  Here is the second floor before the rugs for the show were installed:

This is the basement before the vendors came in:

The only thing prettier than the scenery and the museum are the rugs inside.  The lovely Katie Lane opened the show for Bee Line - Townsend, and I arrived on Tuesday night after some...er...interesting air travel.  We've had a number of cutters adopted at the show, so more happy hookers in the world!

Tomorrow I'm going to get lots of pictures to post on the blog.  The barn is gorgeous and the people here are amazing!

My First ATHA Biennial

I can't believe it's been a month since I attended my first ATHA Biennial!  Where has the time gone?  I will tell you that getting there was a bit of a challenge.  Katie Lane from Townsend Industries and I boarded our flight from Moline to Detroit, then changed planes in Detroit to Baltimore, and then Baltimore to Lancaster.  What a trip!  We had horrible turbulence on the first two flights, the second one was overbooked and they had to check my carry-on, and then the third flight looked like this:

Yes, that's the pilot, washing the windows.

And here is my seat - my knees are on either side of the pilot's chair, and another passenger is riding shotgun with a steering column in her lap.

Very....um...intimate. 

How about the compass mounted on the windshield? 

I want to see fuzzy dice.

When we finally arrived in Lancaster, our flight was late and my luggage didn't make the hop in Baltimore, so I was suitcase free, and we were already an hour past the end of setup time for our booth.  Fortunately for us, the fantabulous Norma Batastini was in charge and had all of our boxes at the booth and the security guard was aware of our arrival and let us in to set up.  Three cheers for Norma!

As expected, the rugs were exceptional.  Here are some of my favorite rugs - I am crediting them best I can, but if any of you see any mistakes, please let me know at jstamper@beeline-co.com:

"Dad", designed and hooked by Cindy Irwin. 

I attended a three room schoolhouse in Nebraska

from grades 1-6, so this one spoke to me.

This one is called "The Ladies", and I thought I was being so clever

to take the picture WITH the names of the designer and hooker,

and of course, I can't read it.  This is a beautiful rug,

and I love the light background.

This was a fun and spunky rug,

"There's No Place Like Home" by Yvonne Hynes. 

The shoes even glittered!

Absolutely LOVED "Red Haired Woman"

by Churchill McKinney.  Isn't she fabulous!?!

This was the eye candy wall

in front of our booth. 

I felt like every time I looked up

I saw something new.  The reds were fantastic!

I also should admit that I have a major thing for footstools, and there were some I drooled over at the show.

This is the "Square Pocketfull Footstool" by Cindi Gay.  LOVE.

I didn't see a name card on this amazing footstool,

but I love it so much I have to show it anyway. 

My apologies (and appreciation!) to

the designer and hooker of this stool.

The Big 'Un.  This is "Penny Ottoman",

hooked and designed by Lynda Garay. 

It is stunning.  And big.

I'm working on a rug with circles right now...no, wait, I'm LOOKING at a rug with circles and scratching my head because I'm too intimidated by them.  Maybe while I'm in Vermont next week at Green Mountain I will make some headway on that rug.

Here are our booth neighbors, Gail and Deb at RHM.  I get so excited when I get my new issues!

We had three of our amazing distributors vending at the show, and I had dinner with Susan Feller of Ruckman Mill Farm and Martha Reeder of Going Gray (and her sister Liz and brother in law Jerry), and lunch with another distributor, Gene Shepherd.  Terry Dorr, you are on my meal list in Vermont!

Martha and Liz, in a rare moment of quiet in their booth.

Susan Feller works her magic at the Ruckman Mill Farm booth. 

Terry Dorr, selling some of the hombre wool.

The show was just crazy busy, with so many people to meet and things to do.  And the rugs...oh, the rugs.  I wandered into one of Laura Pierce's classes and the portrait rugs people were working on were amazing.  Just a fun get-together of the rug hooking community that of which I am slowly learning.  Names and faces are starting to come together, and I'm starting to recognize people's work without seeing the name.  But no time for hooking while I'm in the booth!  Maybe in Vermont....

Katie and I left the show on Sunday morning at 6:30 a.m., and lo and behold, the airport was shrouded in fog.  Our flight on the tiny plane was delayed by an hour, which made us miss our connecting flight in Baltimore, which put us in airports for the next 14 hours.  Oy.  We finally made it back to the Quad Cities at 11 p.m., happy to be home, but looking forward to the next ATHA Biennial, taking place at Long Beach, CA in 2013!  If you want to support the next Biennial, go to ebay.com and type in ATHA 2013 and look at the items you can buy - I'm loving Jane Olson's needle case!