Turning over a new leaf - or stock - or spear.

Well, here is the start of my veggie rug for my cottage kitchen.
The inspiration for this design came from a quilt book called "Pieced Vegetables" that had templates for veggies using straight seams and curved seams. It had almost every vegetable you could think of and I loved the colours the designer chose for her veggies. As soon as I saw the book, a rug started percolating - or should I say "stewing" - in my head and this is the result.

I decided to use yarn for this rug, partly because I think it will be easier to care for but also because I have tons of yarn to give me all the bright colours in the veggies. When hooking with yarn, you can use all kinds of weights by just doubling the lighter weight ones. I decided to do a long shape for presence on the floor, so I have an unusual proportion of 18" x 40". The other factor that helped determine the size is that I had two pieces of rug warp left on my roll and one of them happened to be 24 x 46.

The arrangement of the featured veggies in the centre I refer to as my "chopstick veggies". Remember that two-fingered masterpiece we all played on the piano as a child? If you think of the two carrots in the middle as the start of the chopsticks and move outwards to the corn, you can actually sing the song - should you ever decide you want to. (Who knows where that crazy thought came from.) But for some reason, it was the design inspiration and I think I'll leave it like that - with the mirror image centre veggies. Around the outside will be potatoes, eggplants, peppers, radishes, onions and tomatoes. Smaller, rounder shapes to offset the tall ones in the centre.

I hooked three of the centre veggies, and was in a hurry to see how my background choice would work. It didn't! That old rule of not using a medium tone for backgrounds always holds true. The wonderful tweedy grey that looked like the countertop was so blah behind the asparagus, I changed my mind and opted for black there instead. It makes a wonderful, dramatic contrast to the colours in all those featured veggies.

I will try the grey again as a "field" for the outside veggies, being careful to make sure that these veggies colours are not midtones, so they will separate from the background. And I think I will have to hit the red keyline a bit harder and echo it will black to take the black to the outside of the design. I will do another red line at the outside edge, followed by a couple of rows of black and whip it in black.

It's fun hooking with yarn. It's fun hooking an original design and it takes me back to my less disciplined natural state - which is very different from the Oriental. I'm looking forward to watching this rug evolve. Unlike my Oriental, this one will be filled with little surprises - and lots of learning I'm sure. As to the subject of veggies overall, do you think this rug was influenced by the nutrition seminar I've been attending once a week for a few weeks? Hmmmmmm.......all these good carbs...