Getting in the Green

I finally dove in to my green wool purchased from Janice Lee at The Rug Hooking Store, and I have to say that I've been pleasantly surprised.  When I walked into Janice's shop to talk about background wools, I thought I would be going with a darker background.  The original Grannies Flower Garden photo has a dark background:

So I had this in my head. After I started talking to Janice, she took me down a lighter path, with the idea that my flowers are dark enough that they would be lost in a background that dark.  Janice pulled a lot of wool off of the shelves, but eventually I settled on my variety of greens.

As always, it was fun cutting.

I favor the #7 cassette in the Bee Line Art Tools Cutter.  This much wool got a TON of lint in my cassette, on my cutter, on my tote table, and all over my desk.

I sometimes wonder if I should be wearing a surgical mask to cut wool, since I'm sure my sinuses are packed with lint by the time I'm done!  As always, I cleaned out my cassettes with some canned air.  I know there are some people who are very against this, because they feel that canned air gets moisture on the cassettes, but as long as it isn't the bottom of the can when actual liquid spits out, I think it's fine.  I'd rather get my cassettes very clean, because having them packed with wool will make them stop working faster than a little moisture!

I started hooking in the background, and I was a little dubious, but the more of the wool I hooked in, the more I loved it.

Janice suggested that with my lighter flowers, I do an outline in a smaller cut wool. I did the green flower outline in a #4 cut, and I think it worked out nicely.

Now? I'm eager to get the rug finished and see how it looks!  Maybe by Sauder Village....

Spring Has Sprung

It's funny that after my post the other day, where I mentioned my lack of skills in color planning, I visited the Bee Line Facebook page and saw an article posted by another rug hooker about color planning.  I read the article, which was terrific, but didn't save it.  I just went to Facebook to look it up, but after scrolling through my timeline for about 10 minutes, I gave up. However, a shout-out to the universe to whomever posted that wonderful color planning article, because it made me stop and think about my Grannie's Flower Garden rug.

I actually dug through the wool I have and planned some color!  From the article I read, and from looking at the picture of a completed Grannie's Flower Garden, I'm doing some triangular formations of color.

I'm sort of winging it, but I noticed in Nola Heidbreder's hooked picture of this rug that there are definitive triangles of color... variations of blue/green, red/pink, red/orange...and they actually make the rug rather geometric.  My life seems to have so little order, it's nice to feel like maybe there is some order in my rugs!

I do notice the centers of all of these flowers are the same, which lends some consistency.  I'm rather inconsistent, so my centers don't match.  Here is what I have so far:

I have taped little bits of the wool I want to use for flowers, an idea I took from seeing other hookers do it.  It's a great way to remind myself what I planned to go together, since my memory isn't exactly the most reliable form of record!

I haven't selected a background color for the rug yet. I know it won't be light or creamy, and I like the brownish color Nola has on the photo of the hooked rug, particularly since I won't be hooking any brown flowers.  I like navy blue too, but that might blend too well with some of the colors I'm planning to use.

What methods do you use when color planning your rugs?

Tickled Pink

After a long hooking drought, I'm happy to say that I've had the opportunity to be busy hooking again in the past week, so I've been able to make a little bit of progress on Grannie's Flower Garden.  So far, I have three lovely flowers on one side:

And two new ones have bloomed on the other side:

I'm loving picking the colors for the flowers and the centers, and it's a nice Springy rug, which we will need around these parts because on Friday we're getting a cold front and maybe scattered snow showers.  WHAT!!?!?!

I did something a little different in the centers of the two new flowers - I used pinking shears to cut the wool to see if it would give it a little more texture.

I couldn't really tell on the navy blue center, but on the orange center I could tell a difference, however subtle. It created a sort of "ruffled" effect in the center of the flower. It was interesting to hook with the wool this way, because pulling it through the linen had sort of a "thunk-thunk-thunk" feel, and it was a little more resistant, but I like the final look:

And after the entire flower was done:

It made me wonder how that would have looked in my Iowa Postcard rug on the trees - in Grant Wood's painting "Stone City", some of the trees are round and puffy, and some of them are jagged.  It would have been fun to hook the postcard rug the same way, with some of the trees being rounded and some having points sticking out of them.

I looked through some of my issues of Rug Hooking Magazine, ATHA, and The Wool Street Journal, and didn't see any articles about hooking with wool strips that have the edges textured.  Have you hooked with edged wool, or seen any rugs that have been?  Would you hook with wool that has a textured edge?  I'd love to hear some thoughts from other rug hookers.

New Rug: Grannie's Flower Garden

What a busy crazy month it's been at Bee Line - Townsend!  We've shipped out EIGHT Trunk Shows in the past three weeks, chock full of wool cutters, cassettes, tote tables, and our new frames, so things are really hopping out there in the hooking world!  That said, it has left me no time to hook. Boo!

Since my Iowa Vintage Postcard rug is done (yay!) and is awaiting steaming, I bought a new pattern from Nola Heidbreder at Sauder Village Rug Hooking Week to start.  It's called Grannie's Flower Garden, a Cactus Needle pattern, and is 19 1/2 x 27.  It's just a charming little pattern, full of bright colors and happy shapes, that is do-able in a shortish period of time so I can feel an enormous sense of accomplishment. 

Once again,  I wish I had a color planner in the office!  The background in the picture seems to be some variations on a dark brown/tobacco color.  I used a beautiful chocolate wool on my Magdelena purse, which I would love to use again, but ran out and I can't remember where I bought it.

Having a blank, unhooked pattern is a bit like having a new crayon box at the beginning of the school year - it's a blank sheet of paper, full of possibilities. 

I looked at the colors on the photo above, and then looked in my wool basket, and started pulling a few things out to see what works.  I'm trying to mime what I see....a punchy color in the  middle to center the piece.  Like colors somewhat equidistant from each other, or anchoring either side.  The same wool in the center of every flower for some consistency.

Hmm.  I like how this has started, but I think I want it to be a little more fun.  Maybe a bright red pomegranate background? I think I'll start hooking the middles in that lovely Dorr green plaid, and the non-red flowers, and see where it takes me.

The "I"s Have It!

I posted last week that I opened my wonderful packages of wool from Nola Heidbreder and Gene Shepherd, and even though it was so lovely I was almost loathe to cut it, I still did.  Cut it.  With my Bee Line - Townsend Cutter, of course, with a #7 cassette.

Worms!  Worms!  Worms!

I started hooking the letters to see how the colors worked together.  The reason I purchased this Roman Sun collection of wool from Gene Shepherd is because I wanted the letters in the rug to have a variation in the color without having definitive layers of color.  I wanted it to look less "candy corn" and more like an Iowa sunset.  I started at the beginning - the I in Iowa.

While I can still see some color layering, it isn't as obvious as the photo that came with the pattern.  I wanted the orange, but I wanted the colors to blend a little bit more.  The color in this wool is so vibrant and fun, it brings a lot of energy to the rug.

The other thing I like about this wool is that it looks a bit like some Iowa corn.  Obviously I don't have the straightest rows or most even loops - that's for a few years down the road, when I can look back on some of these early rugs and chuckle to myself and say, "Oh, I remember when I really struggled with uniformity!"  ...That does happen, right?... but for now I'm enjoying the actual hooking and seeing where it takes me. 

I'll be back when I have a full set of four Iowa letters!  Have a great week!

Lessons in Unhooking

I feel like I hit another hooking milestone today - I have begun unhooking.

When I first started hooking, I couldn't understand why people would ever, EVER pull loops out unless there was a major crisis.  As a rookie, I work so hard to get those loops in there that the mere THOUGHT of pulling them out makes my heart hurt a little.  But yesterday, that all changed.

I hooked my tree line in this beautiful green wool that I love so much, only to discover halfway through the tree line that I don't have enough wool.  DRAT.  I had already hooked the outline on the trees, so I knew I was going to have to pull some of it out.

I'm going to blame a lot of my rationale for what happened next on Susan Feller, from Ruckman Mill Farm, and author of the fantabulous new book, "Design Basics for Rug Hookers". 

Susan may not KNOW I've been stalking her a little bit at shows, but I have.  The secret is out.  I've watched her do tours at Sauder Village, and give advice to other hookers on color choices and hooking styles, and it's because of Susan that I have pulled out a lot of loops in the last 24 hours.

You can sort of see what I'm talking about here.  I love the dark green trees, but ran out of that wool.  I had already outlined all of the trees in the darker wool, but I have this other wool with some lighter tones, so I thought "I'll go crazy and mix it up!" I pulled out the loops (gasp!) along the top outline and replaced it with the lighter checked wool.  I thought I'd stick with the lighter green on the left side, because that looks like the side that has light, hence the shadow on the barn.

So I put the lighter wool in, but then I thought about Susan.  She talks about movement and what would things be doing in nature?  Would this lighter tree have a dark splotch in the middle of it?  Possibly, but it would look more natural without the one row of light green wool going vertical.  So I pulled it out.

I re-hooked it with darks, and then some dark patches in the light.  Close-up I'm not sure I love it, but from a bigger perspective it seems a little better.

I think I like it better.  I will probably need to add a little bit more of the light green to make it look less choppy, which is still a shame because I loved the trees with the dark green.  But now is not the time for regrets, but for moving forward.  I thought one should only pull out loops in a major crisis, but I've realized that not completely loving or at least believing what you hook looks real does constitute a major crisis that requires the pulling out of some loops.  This is all an experience in my journey to learning to hook. 

I'm off to finish hooking a row on the border today.  Not sure about the clouds - would you hook those in white?  In cream?  Other suggestions?