The Trouble With W

I've been working on my Iowa Postcard rug in hopes that I can get most of it done by Sauder Village, but let me tell you, hooking these letters has been a challenge.  Here is the rug so far:

So maybe....MAYBE...I'm getting toward being 50% done, but these letters?  They just might kill me.  Things that I can hook in a swirl, or a line, or an outline - no problem.  But hooking in a diagonal line on a somewhat horizontal stripe???  Yikes.

It may not look SO bad from this picture.  In pictures of my face from a distance you can't see the wrinkles either! :)  So let's zoom in a bit:

Here is the W a little bit closer.  NOW you can start to see the caddywhompus rows and loops.  I notice the right side looks a little better than the left side.  I think that's because on the right side, I hooked in straight rows, and then filled in later.  On the left side, I just tried to hook row next to row, moving loops over as needed to fill the space.  Overall, I like the look of the right side better, and may end up unhooking some of the left side of the W.  I'll need to get away from the letters for a bit and then re-visit it.  Now for the REALLY honest picture:

Oy.  Here is that left side of the W, warts and moles and all.  I'm using Gene Shepherd's Roman Sun wool, so there are four different shades of this lovely yellow-orange color. 

I'm hooking them in stripes on the letters.  The color is fantastic, but my rows can certainly use some help.

If anyone has any great tips or methods for hooking on a diagonal, I'd love to hear about it!  In the interim, the next section is waiting to be hooked on my Bee Line 14" Orbiting Frame (which I love, and will have at Sauder Village).  I hope I get an "A" on it!

Dreaming of Cambria...

The good news around Bee Line - Townsend is that we've been really busy in the past month.  The bad news is that it leaves me absolutely no time to hook, so my Vintage Iowa Postcard rug is at a standstill.  I look at it every day, next to my desk, and think "Maybe today...." and then the phone rings or something comes up that needs attention.  It's a good problem to have, but I'm missing the hooking.  I like progress!

Something else I try to do every day is check Gene Shepherd's blog.  I'm subscribed to his Internet Rug Camp, which I love, and get the extended version of the blog.  There is always something interesting going on there.  Maybe not every project is something I'm going to tackle, but I'm interested in the process.  Dyeing, proddy, punch needle....I need to get the basics down first, but I like seeing what the possibilities are down the road, and sometimes looking at these things can give one an idea about how to do a current project a bit differently.

So this week is Gene's Cambria Pines Rug Hooking Camp, and I'm sooooo jealous I can't be there!  First, it's in sunny California, so really, how bad can it be?  The resort looks beautiful, and Gene had pictures on the blog of the wools and patterns he has available at camp.  Pris Butler was there with her Klimdt rugs, which look amazing.  Doesn't it seem like this should be a work trip for me?  Isn't it imperative that I get out to Cambria Pines Camp as a public relations tool for my company, to hook all day and into the night?

It's a sacrifice I would be willing to make.  Maybe after ATHA Biennial next year I can get Cambria on my schedule...

Under The Roman Sun

Buying wool online is a little bit like Christmas - you know what it looked like on the website, and you THINK it's going to work in your project.  The box arrives, and there is a moment where you get to open it and it's so exciting because you get to see the wool and touch it.  Non-hookers will think this is a creepy sentiment, but y'all know what I'm talking about.

Last week I got TWO boxes of wool!  Lucky lucky lucky.

The one on the upper left is called "Snow" and the beautiful marbled one is "Turquoise Jade Spot" and both are available from Nola Heidbreder on her website: NolaHooks.com.  The turquoise particularly is so intense and deep, it's just spectacular.  I don't know what I'm using it in, but I'm saving it for something special.

The next box I opened came from Gene Shepherd.  I'm still hooking my vintage Iowa Postcard pattern, also purchased from Nola, and I've been looking for a multi-hued orange wool to do the Iowa letters.  On Gene's website, I found the perfect wool - his set called "Roman Sun".  It was pretty on his website, so I went ahead and took the plunge since I'm an impatient person by nature, and the nearest shop where I can buy wool is nearly two hours away.

Oh. My. Gosh.

I opened this box and it was like opening a box of sunshine.  Really beautiful wool, the colors were just spectacular.  It just makes me happy to look at it.  As an added bonus, it's incredibly luscious wool, and ran so beautifully through my cutter. 

This piece looked like flames were literally jumping off of the wool.  It was just lovely.  I almost didn't want to cut it....ALMOST.

I tend to use a #7 cassette.  I can't really explain why.  I started with the #7 on my first rug because our top sellers are the #6 and #8 cassettes, and I always cheer for the underdog.  I really like the #7, so I've stuck with it.

And now I have THIS on my desk!  Do you know how hard it is to work with these piles of beautiful worms staring at you, saying, "Julie....you should be hooking...."  I've been working on my letters for about a 15-30 minutes in the morning and 15-30 minutes at the end of the day.  I'm almost done with the "I", and I'm liking the effect of the varying shades of orange in it so far.

Shari, my cohort at Bee Line Townsend, and I will be going to the Hopkins hook-in up in Minnesota in a few weeks to join Martha Reeder from GoingGray.  I'm hoping to be done with my letters so I can buy an accent wool to hook around the shaded parts of the letters.  Of course, I will need to buy too much wool.  It's part of my job description, right?

Signing the Card

One great thing about learning to rug hook is that the rug hooking community is so supportive and willing to teach the newbies.  I find I learn a lot from looking around at other people's blogs and websites, and it helps me to reflect on my work and see what I can do to improve.  Some of my favorites are Gene Shepherd's, Susan Feller's, Rug Hooking Daily, and The Welcome Mat.

The other day I was perusing Gene's blog, and I saw some signed rugs, and I thought, "Egad!  I haven't signed anything I've hooked!"  Since Bucky Bee is technically Bee Line Company's rug I wasn't too concerned, but my sister's Magdelena purse (hooked, but yet unfinished, I have until Dec. 22 to get it to her before her next birthday) is not signed, and my Iowa Vintage Postcard is also unsigned.  I worked to fix that immediately.

Numbers and letters aren't exactly "my thing" yet, but I can read them so at least I'll know when I hooked this piece.  Provided I get it done in 2012, of course!  It looks a little more like a child's vintage needlework sampler than the beautiful, flowing letters I see on some hookers' work, but it'll do.

It's a wonderful thing that Bee Line Company has recognized the importance of having a rug hooker in the company, and so I'm able to do some hooking during the day.  I get PLENTY of ribbing from people walking through my office area while I'm hooking, but I know I'm pretty lucky, so I only have a sharp retort for the fourth or fifth person who comments. :)  Great restraint, I know!  Today was one of those lucky days when I have a little time to get some hooking done. 

I finished my barn and the patch of sky next to it.  My barn is a little slopey, but hey, so are a lot of barns in Iowa!  It's unintentional realism, people!

It's fun seeing the rug start to take shape and get some color in it. I love the pop of red from that barn, and am still in love with that pomegranite wool from LeAnn at Camp Wool in Maine.  When I took my rug off of the frame to take my picture, I realized there is still an issue:

Oh dear.  Once a packer, always a packer?  I certainly hope not!  Looks like I'll be relying on a good steam again for this rug.

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!

Pumpkin Progress

I've made some progress on my pumpkin I bought as a kit from Wicked Wool - it's amazing how much hooking I can get done on a road trip!  I love to read, and sometimes I get carsick when I'm reading, but apparently I can hook without too much trouble, so that's a plus.  My husband and three kids, ages 14, 12 and 8, made a 13-hour drive to Atlanta a couple of weeks ago, and in between cleaning up a car sickness issue with my youngest daughter (yes, it really happened) and determining how much time was left in the van before we arrived in Atlanta, I hooked.

I found that I like hooked pumpkins better than real ones.  They are easily managed and far less messy.

I started out with a couple of rows around the outline of my pumpkin, but I made a rookie mistake and used the brownish wool to do it.  After I had those first two rows, I started filling in ridges with some of the orange wool, and I realized that if indeed I was going to make this an orange pumpkin, I would need to put some orange around the outside.  I wish I would've followed Beth's example with the green pumpkin and hooked my ridges from the top to the bottom, but instead I did the outline first.  Then I added that extra row of orange, so it was starting to resemble a sweet potato more than a pumpkin.  I did the orange, but it took me a good row outside of my pattern.

I then filled in the areas between the ridges with the other wool in the kit.  There were some fun colors in there, and I was really happy with my finished pumpkin:

This is a little far away, but you can see the ridges in it.

This is a little closer to see the colors.  The kit had a neat burgundy plaid in it, and also some strips that are green.  I might not have selected those colors myself, but I like the effect in the finished pumpkin.  This has been a fun discovery in my hooking - taking strips of dyed wool and seeing the finished look when hooked.  I'm always amazed at how different a hooked strip looks from the original piece, and the different dimension the colors and patterns bring to the project.

I've discovered this is the truth-teller - the back of the project.  You can see the areas where I skipped or twisted the wool, and you can see how close I got to the sewn outline.  It's nice to have smaller projects like this so I can experiment with my hooking and get some practice in before I hit a bigger project.  I want to make a number of pumpkins in different colors and styles, but I don't know of a seller of linen or monk's cloth in my area.  There is a terrific store in Williamsburg, The Woolen Needle, also a distributor of Bee Line-Townsend products, but they are about an hour and a half away from me, and it's hard to get out that way often, so I need to find a supplier in the Quad Cities, or stock up at Sauder Village!!

My next step on my pumpkin is to cut around the edge, and sew the fabric on the back of it.  Then I fill it with rice or popcorn kernels, get the stem in and finish it off!  I also like this project because I won't be doing any binding.  Yay!  I have to admit, binding is my least favorite part.

I'm off to make this pumpkin 3-D.  I hope that's as easy as hooking it was!  I'm interested in other 3-D hooking projects - I have a sculpture of a pomegranate that I purchased from an artist friend of mine. 

It's about a foot tall, and now I'm dying to hook it.  It would be a fun one to do because of the variation in color in the reds, and I'm interested in dyeing.  Looks like I need to pop some popcorn and watch Gene Shepherd's dye videos at Internet Rug Camp!

But first, I have a pumpkin to finish.



And The Project Is....PUMPKINS!

Even though I already have the pattern for a new rug, circles within squares, I've been distracted by something a little more fun...

Pumpkins!!

Aren't they cute!?  I bought my pattern from Wicked Wool online, and just started hooking it today.  Beth, the owner of Wicked Wool in the Seattle area, showed me a darling green one that she hooked, and I'm starting the orange one.  Mine will not have the adorable face, I will be lucky to have a nice solid orange pumpkin and save the face for the next one, but the kit I bought has the different shades of orange and a cinnamon stick for the stem.  I'm loving the white Cinderella pumpkin, and the spider is very cool.  Beth has a fun and funky website, I love visiting Wicked Wool!

I met a local hooker, the lovely Julie Bohl, for coffee and some hooking.  It's funny, we drank coffee and talked about rug camps and this is how much hooking I did:

At this rate, I'll be done by Halloween 2012.

 

So the lesson here is that I need to teach myself how to drink coffee, hook, and talk at the same time.  I know it's possible, I see you all do it at Hook-Ins, but I don't see a video on Gene Shepherd's Internet Rug Camp about this topic, so I might be on my own here.  Gene?  It's time to get the camera out.

 

Here is the kit that arrived from Wicked Wool with my darling pumpkin in it:

 

 

It has a veriety of orange wool strips, the pattern, the instructions, some nice pictures, and a cinnamon stick for the stem.  It's looks very easy, and the pictures are really cute.  Here is what Beth's pumpkin looks like when hooked:

 

 

So cute!

I'm hoping for the same effect in orange.  I will be so thrilled if mine turns out anything like hers, but I might be in luck because I am a Bona Fide Packer, and this project loves packers!

Now I need the video of Beth making this pumpkin while talking to people, drinking coffee, and maybe refereeing fights over which kid gets the remote.  Actually, if there is a video about refereeing which kid gets the remote, I might need that one too.  Now I need TWO videos.  Or two remotes.  It depends on how much trouble I want.

I'll post my pumpkin when I'm ready to move on to the next stage.  Not sure how much more hooking I'll get done this week, my family leaves on Friday for a week in Atlanta and Nashville.  If anyone can recommend a video on how to have a calm, happy 13-hour ride in a minivan across the country in the heat of July with three kids and a cranky husband, I'm all ears. 

 

Thank you, Steamer!

I would like to stop and thank whomever in rug hooking's rich and long history stopped to steam their rug for the first time.  I must admit, I thought to myself, "Self, how big a difference can it really make?"  The answer is...

LOTS.

I'm not sure that you'll really be able to see much of a difference in pictures, but I'll try.

Here is Bucky Bee before steaming:

Here is Bucky Bee after steaming:

Here is a close-up of the blue loops before steaming:

Here is a close up of loops after steaming:

And here is a picture of the Queen of England giving my first rug her royal blessing:

The Queen Bee, as I like to call her, has a solar panel in her purse so she is always waving at me.  This photo is also of the loops pre-steam.  Here is a picture of the same area after steaming:

It's still my "First Rug", so I know it is all full of moles and freckles, but I'm pretty excited about it.  I have to say that one thing I noticed about steaming is that it smelled!  Maybe my white towels need a little more detergent, but otherwise, wet steaming wool does NOT smell like brownies or flowers or sunshine.  Even my dog George, a 110-pound Standard Poodle, got up and left the room.   Strike one for the lesson book!

My next step is binding and whipping.  (I love rug hooking, the terms are all so very risque and perhaps a little bawdy. I'm sure the Queen would approve.)  I have been so very, very lucky with all of the terrific rug hookers I've met who have given me advice on my hooking, and now I have found the ultimate treasure, which so many of you before me have discovered - Gene Shepherd's Internet Rug Hooking Camp!

For the totally worth it price of $36 for a year, I signed up for the camp, and guess what?  In addition to galleries full of photos and a very informative blog and lots of other goodies, he has instructional videos!  Who-hooo!  While I do own a copy of The Rug Hooking Bible by Jane Olson and Gene, and I love it, I do better watching something than reading.  This video collection is the best thing ever!

I'm going out tonight to buy myself a Chibi needle and some binding tape, and let the whip-stitching begin!