Colour at Play

This past weekend, we got together with four other couples at one couple's beautiful new cottage on Kashe Lake, just south of us. They took down the original cottage and built an incredible place on the property they have owned for many years, to make lots of space for their grown children and multiple grandchildren. Having a dozen people there at once is no big deal for them.

The focus on their lifestyle is all about playing, so I created this colourful little piece for them as my hostess gift. It seemed more suitable than a name mat in this particular instance. And red is their accent colour. So I just went to town with bright colours that will appeal to even the youngest "player".

We moved it around the great room looking for a good place to put it while I was there and when I left it was sitting on the right side of the stone hearth of the fireplace. I am sure they will find a perfect spot for it.

This word "play" also factored into the hooking of the piece. I used sari silk, roving, yarn, and wool and hooked everything nice and high. Then I outlined the lettering with sparkly jersey fabric.

When I got home from the weekend of eating, drinking, singing, dancing and generally making merry, I spent some quiet time figuring out how the Beekeeper's Quilt all comes together. And I decided to take a stab at it.

It is surprisingly easy construction - just stitching the points of the hexapuffs together and tying them together, leaving short tails on one side. That is how you can easily take one out if it gets damaged or dirty and put it back in. Like lego.

Here is a start - only 35 puffs in there at the moment. I am already really liking it and it is nice to have a break from the knitting. I love all the colours in there and it's fun choosing which one to place where, without being too anal about it.

Since I have a quilt on the sewing list and lots of little baby things on the knitting one, I had best get motoring on this assembly. But it sure is fun to play in such bright colours.

Challenge Mat Update

For those of your who already have a subscription to Rug Beat you may have already seen the update in the challenge. For those of you who don't, here's the latest on my rug:

A little mix up, due to me thinking I had another couple of weeks (when in fact I was a week late) meant that I scrambled a bit at the end to get something for Candi Derr to include in her update on Rug Beat.

Here is what I sent:

Here is what I said in the update:

As you can see, I have boxed each of the words (or two) and used a different font and treatment for each one. I had originally planned on doing them as word tiles that I could arrange around my studio in any shape I wanted (kind of like giant fridge magnets), but I decided that was just too much finishing, so I grouped them all together.

The fonts that I used mostly came from a website called dafont.com, where you can download fonts for personal use for free or make a donation to the creator. If I were to make this into a pattern, I would pay for each of the fonts used, so as not to infringe on copyright. I love, love, love the "cat font" which is the second HOOK at the bottom right.

I have used all kinds of textures - sari silk, wool slub yarn, roving, sparkly jersey, lots of recycled kilt plaids and 'as is' wools. I did the word "WILL" in proddy after having pretty much decided to do a proddy border - only the top edge us done thus far.

I think this will become the "motto" for the studio. It will hang in a place where everyone can see it.

What did I LOVE about this project? Everything!!

I loved that there were at least 25 patterns in my notebook before I settled on this one.

I loved finding all the fun fonts.

I loved figuring out the relationship between all the words and fonts.

I loved hooking each of the blocks. Once I decided on separating them with the black and white tweed, it sort of gave each tile its own personality and I felt free to "go for it" on all of them. (I may change the second tile "what you", but am going to wait till I am all done the border before making that decision.)

I loved the exercise of trying to create a bit of a colour plan. Using a print of the original design, I played with coloured pencils till I was sure that each of the colours appeared more than once and then went from there. Each tile is like its own little mat and I tried to do one each morning, but not in any order. Sometimes I would just get the actual words done and then save the backgrounds for later.

I love doing the proddy border. It is so much fun and is the best way to bring all the colours from inside the mat to the edge.

Here are a few close ups of the different "word blocks".

Sari Silk lettering, recycled kilts

Roving, yarn and recycled wool

Slub sky and wool letters

Random plus signs - all wool

Sari Silk lettering

Proddy lettering

Feels like the 60's doesn't it?

Glitter lettering, yarn and recycled skirt wool

Cat font- what else can I say.

It really was a fun, fun project. I learned something from every single block. So it was definitely a Challenge - even for the Challenger.

Definitely Brag Worthy.

I received an amazing "photo to mat" mat on Thursday. This came from someone who took the workshop, did her first mat, but has done this second one all on her own.  I asked for permission to brag about it - on her behalf - and she said yes.

It's awesome. See for yourself.

This is the photo.

This is the mat.

She has totally captured the image - in fact she has improved it. The cropping in the mat is better without the dead centre paddlers. The dog is absolutely adorable - the face without a face is totally working. And I love the shorts and the movement in the water. So great!!!!

The lucky recipient of this mat was getting it this past weekend. I am pretty sure she will be absolutely beside herself - I know I would.

And I feel pretty confident in saying there will be a few more lucky friends in this gal's life who will get that special once-in-a-lifetime present. 

Word Up

Well, Canada Day weekend came and went, with ho hum weather that really didn't encourage me to go "in" the water. I did get "on" the water on the paddle board and the pedal boat, but it was never warm enough for me to submerge.

Both offspring were here, daughter with future son-in-law and son with two other large meat-eating friends. So much food was consumed and I am pretty sure the Beer Store saw a little spike thanks to the folks at 319.

While people were sleeping in, I snuck down to the studio and did a little bit of hooking. Funny - every project that I was working on involved "words". For some, the words/letters are the entire design, for others only part, but it seems to be all I have been doing for the last little while.

I love words - having made my livelihood with them. I love fonts. I love lettering - and I am learning to love hooking them. It's something that some folks find intimidating, but I think it's like handwriting - practice makes perfect.

Here are a few of the words of the weekend:

This is the centre of my primitive mat inspired by my class at Loyalist.

A little hostess gift, which I hope the 'hostess' is not seeing ahead of time.

One of the words in my challenge mat from Rug Beat.

Lots more words left to go on the challenge mat - and lots more hooking on the Prim mat, but it is fun moving from project to project and font to font. I will definitely be adding a "words" class to my teaching portfolio.

Prim but Not Proper

I am still unpacking from my Primitive Class at Loyalist last week. It was 4 wonderful days with a class of exceptional students. They truly made the experience for me, and I thank them once again for making me feel so welcome and so special.

My take on this Primitive Class (hence the clever title) was Primitives with a Technology Twist. We shared all the wonderful resources that are out there on the internet to help create a one-of-a-kind primitive rug. Since rug hooking has evolved, as have the fabrics we would "up-cycle" today, these have their own distinct personalities, adapting the primitive style.

I took pictures of each of the students and their project. The pictures are not the best quality of the rugs. For better ones, please go and visit Christine's blog. Hers are taken with a really good camera and totally highlight the rug, not the creator.

Here are my stellar students:

Cindy with her little Irish cottage with mossy roof.

Carol with her moose runner, close to my heart.

Deborah with her Maude Lewis design.

Christine with her not-so-primitive "selfie" in contemporary "as is" fibers.

Mary Anne with "Iggy" the adorable piggy.

Jane with her bird with the amazing background.

Maribeth with her gorgeous goldfish.

Harley with his moose. This was his first class.

Nancy with her husband as a boy being chased by a goose and rescued by a pig.

During the 4 days, we also did some "onion skin dyeing" and some "marrying and marbleizing", so I decided to create a little mat out of all the wool that we created. That is where I came up with the title
'Prim but not Proper' and put it in the design. I also have included a motif from the 9 projects that were under way.

Here is the pattern, for which I will share progress shots.

I can't wait to share pictures of these student projects completed as well. It was fun designing and studying the Primitive Rug fundamentals - and then adapting them where we saw fit. I am sure a few of the purists might think it is not good to "stray from the basics".  But we sure had fun doing it.

Fun with Fonts.

Every time I do a class, I try to come up with a coordinating idea for name tags. I think they are not only fun, but important - for my "short term" challenged brain and for the students, who may or may not all know one another.

In keeping with my upcoming class, which is Primitives, I decided to make somewhat primitive tags. With a little something extra. I printed out the names on printable fabric - in my new favourite font "sunshine poppy" - and then ironed them on to some "upcycled" wool.

Then, I made a little wool sandwich with black wool and blanket stitched around the outside, stuffing some dried lavender in at the end. I added a button to each one from my button jars and tied some hemp string around the button, so it can be worn lanyard-style.

Here's a close up of mine - the prototype with too light floss - and a tad blurry.

And here is the group shot - with the hemp string tied around them.

I was very happy to come up with a practical idea for the lavender, which I dried and saved in the garage for "someday". I will do some plain ones with the rest of it when this is all over. (The blank is in case someone shows up at the last minute.)

And this project was not the only fun with fonts I was having in the last while. In deciding on a design for my "challenge" mat for Rug Beat, I spent far too long on a great website called dafont
It is a website where font designers put their wares on display. They are available for free download for "personal use" - or you can make a donation. (Note to self: go back and do that.)

Be warned, this place is incredible and you can get stuck there for a LONG time. I had so much fun looking at so many fonts. Can you believe there is such a thing as a "cat font". Yep, there is indeedy - and I used it in my "challenge" mat. Here is a little sneak peek:

I was grinning like the proverbial Cheshire you-know-what the whole time I was hooking this. Hopefully, you don't have to look too hard to see the fonty felines. Hint: in the O's, the head is on the left and the front paws and tail complete the circle.

It is an incredible resource for rug hookers who use words in their mats and don't have great "penmanship" LOL.

When you have some time to spare, go and and have some font fun yourself.

A Busy Past Few Weeks

That is my excuse for my absence. Not an original one, but an honest one.

First there was the Annual in Kingston, which was great. Every year has its own little quirks and this one was no different. We stayed in an older conference centre that has been updated and was quite good from an accommodations point of view.

The rug show was excellent, though my pictures from my iphone do not support that statement. I am very disappointed. I wonder if it was because I only got to see the show on Sunday when it was open to the public and I was constantly zigging and zagging around other viewers? Or just bad photos.

At any rate, I  had a definite favourite rug and a picture that is good enough to share. It did not win an award, but it was definitely a crowd favourite!!

Isn't it delightful? It was hooked by a member of London Ontario's Simply Hooked branch and is called "For Lynette". It is a compilation of her children's artwork - Jacob, Kate and William. I love every single thing in the rug, from the colours to the borders. It is the kind of piece that would make you smile no matter how many times you looked at it.

Since I am preparing for a Primitive class at the end of the month, my head is definitely in that space right now and perhaps that is why I adored this so much. I have to go through my kids' artwork and see what I can come up with.

The Primitive lesson planning is also seeping into a "challenge mat" that I have to design for Rug Beat. They published an article I wrote on the Challenges in a Challenge - and asked me to come up with one to go with the article. Obviously, I will have to participate in my own challenge, so I have a few ideas in mind - one being a Primitive treatment and one being anything BUT.  If you want to see what the challenge is, click your way over to Rug Beat.

My other incredible news is that I am going to be a "Grand" - before the end of the year. This is very exciting for Rick and I and for Laura (daughter) and her partner Kris. It all happened a little faster than they were planning, but it was definitely planned. What a wonderful Christmas it will be.

So now all those hexipuffs have a definite purpose and a "due date" lol.  And I can see a lot of hooking, knitting, quilting projects over the next several weeks, months, years.

This is definitely a club in which I am happy to become a member.

Victoria Day After

It's a sleepy Tuesday-as-Monday kind of day here in the woods. We are getting much-needed rain, so the house is dark and makes you feel like going for a snooze.

The weekend was quiet here, since both kids had other places to be. The lake was pretty quiet, though we did have neighbours up on either side. The kids on the right all went into the water and on the water. The son on the left said it wasn't bad - but we did the water testing and I know it was 19 Celsius. Not swimming temp for me quite yet.

This week will be a day short and very busy getting ready for a business lunch in Toronto on Thursday and then leaving for Kingston early Friday morning for the OHCG Annual in Kingston. I am doing a tutorial-type workshop on Saturday which means dragging along a lot of stuff - again! We hookers do not travel light.

This week's post is a mix of this and that. I am working on a hooking project, but can't share it just yet, so have some other goodies for this post.

First my little Bolivar story from Friday.

Let me begin by saying that I LOVE LOVE LOVE my Bolivar, but it hasn't been feeling well for a few weeks and despite my best efforts to administer first aid, I was just not "cutting it" (no pun intended). When I spoke with Bruce at Bolivar, he made a suggestion over the phone, but somehow,  instead of helping, I made things worse - if that was possible.

Enter Walter!!!! He is the very handy husband of one of my students. She suggested before I shipped it off to the east coast (I can't imagine the postage to send it there), I let her hubby have a look. And yes indeed-y, he was able to solve the problem and put me back in the cutting business. Walter - I love you. Note to self: move "handy" up the list of things to ask for in the next husband (AS IF!)

The rest of the weekend was spent in full black fly avoidance, sewing and knitting. I have now got a few knitting projects on the go, and they are triaged into categories such as "Perfect for TV knitting", "Pay Attention While Knitting" and "Knit While Repeating the Pattern, Either Out Loud or In Your Head". Needless to say, the last one is a bit of a stinker.

Here it is - it is called Void and is a Norah Gaughan pattern - not particularly difficult - but with slippery yarn, dropping a stitch means starting over!!! So far, after 5 starts, the back is done and one sleeve. Now the front is under way and I am only allowing myself to work on it where and when there are no distactions.

This is the Perfect for TV pattern. It is called Relax and the hardest thing was finding the perfect yarn. I finally did - in Peterborough - and it is a merino, bamboo and linen blend in a creamy white. Here is a picture of the pattern.

The Pay Attention is the ongoing parade of "hexipuffs" for the Bee Keeper's Quilt from Ravelry. The pay attention part is to keep remembering not to cast off the puffs before stuffing them - I can't tell you how many times I have done it.

My puff count is now at 132!!! And I have divided them by colour to get an idea of proportions.
I am still so far from the total that I haven't even really contemplated the construction, but am pretty sure I would like to have an even number of puffs in all colours. (That picture is from Ravelry, not my actual puffs.) And I have not done any of those cute little duplicate stitch puffs.

Hopefully next week's post will be jam-packed with rug news from the Annual.

Such Devoted Sisters

My friend Elizabeth, who happened to organize the Orillia Photo to Mat  workshop, was very excited to try and do a mat from a photo of her sister and herself. It was a challenge, but one she was willing to rise to, since the relationship she had with her sister was very special indeed.

She recently lost her sister but managed to find two photos from a recent visit.

Here is the photo that she started with.

And here is the wonderful memory mat she created.

I think she definitely captured the essence of each of them - the eyes have it, I suppose.

And although she originally had hooked some of the detail of background from the photo, she decided to simplify things and focus on the faces. A wonderful decision in my estimation.

I am sure the journey of hooking from this photo was very bittersweet. But Elizabeth has created a mat that captures the closeness of the relationship in a medium that brings her joy.  It doesn't get much better than that.

Thanks Elizabeth, for letting me share. 

A Mountain of a Mat.

At a R.U.G. meeting this past Saturday, one of my students from last fall at OHCG school held up her photo mat for Show and Tell.

Here was her original photo (or this might have been a print out of the photo).

And here is her mat.

I think she really did a great job in capturing the shadows and the light. Mountains are hard enough to photograph, let alone hook.

Great job Lorna. I do feel very proud when I get to see them finished!

My Latest Photo to Mat

This is the little mat that I started before heading to Orillia, so that I would have something to work on if we hooked at night.

We didn't hook at night, knit instead, so I wanted to finish the little bit outstanding before starting something else.

This is from a picture my husband took in the fall -  me sitting outside and hooking. It was a perfect day - the sun was warm, the light was beautiful, and I hooked for a couple of hours down close to the water.

This was the original image.

Although the sunshine on the deck was nice to see, I decided to crop in a bit closer to the action.

 So this is the composition I used for the pattern - actually getting rid of a bit more of the trees.

And this is the little mat, which measures about 9 x 12.  It is hooked mostly in 6 and 8 cut and from whatever was in my stash.

Now that is a memory worth hooking.