A Special Kitchen Sink Challenge

I have challenged myself to hook a 35-square "Kitchen Sink" rug in the next few weeks. It will be a special gift for my sister Beth who has been staying with us since January.

In the fall, I realized that she was having cognitive difficulties, and forgetting how to do things that she had been doing for years. Some blood work revealed she had stopped taking her thyroid medication at some point in the fall, and the impact on her brain and the rest of her body was astounding! Who knew that the thyroid is, in fact, the most important organ in your body. It controls everything!

So, after consulting with all of her teams at UHN, it was decided she would not be able to go back to her apartment on her own. After a few weeks in Oakville with our brother-in-law, she came here on January 16th. It has been a roller coaster ride of getting her medications back on track, getting her to her cancer appointments and treatments at Princess Margaret in TO and helping her get back to her old self- slowly but surely. 

Add to all of this a broken hand - the result of a fall while rushing to get to a GO train to her last brain radiation treatment. Thankfully, all of the treatment for the broken hand, including all the casts, therapy and Plastic Surgeon appointments have been here in Peterborough. 

While she has been her, our son-in-law has been looking after getting her apartment ready for her to go back. Because of bug infestations, she lost everything that wasn't wood or glass. So we will need to replace some essential pieces when she goes back. A new bed. A new sofa. New bedding and towels, etc. 

And, if I keep up with the challenge, a new rug!!

I decided to start this on Monday, and jumped right in. Found a big piece of backing, gridded the pattern and got out lots of worms. (For the non-hookers, worms are the pieces of cut wool strips.)

Yesterday afternoon, I had the first two squares nearly done.

And today, I got two more finished. So now there are four!! Only 31 more to do. lol.

This is not my first "Kitchen Sink" attempt. I did a pillow last year that was made of four squares. The colours were a bit more subtle in the first one. 

Luckily, I have enough worms to do many more than 35 squares. And this rug will go beside her bed, so it will be the first thing her feet touch in the mornings, when she gets back into her own bed, in her own apartment. 

I will keep you posted of progress. Who knows if it will be ready, but if I keep up this pace, it will be close. 

W.

If you don't know about the Kitchen Sink method of rug hooking, and you have lots of worms to spare,

check out this video by Lisanne Miller, as she explains the entire process. It was one of her regular videos in her series - produced in November 2023, in response to the flood of questions she received. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg9Q2dT2ZHY