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It's never to late to match colour in Shane's dye kitchen!

4/21/2016

We received requests all the time for custom dyeing to match a particular colour. It could be an old Cushing piece of dyed wool, or a Pro Chem, or something we haven't even heard of. Between the Majic and the Jacquard dyes, Shane can come up with any any colour under the rainbow. Our very own "Dye Master” hasn’t missed the mark yet and we are very proud of him!

A few weeks back we received a letter in the mail with wool samples to match that dated back almost five decades. The client started her project at the age of 18, is now 63 and anxious to finish what she started all those years ago. The print out she sent does not depict the true colours, that was to show areas not hooked. The rug size is 36" x 24". She sent snippets of the actual wool for him to work with and he gets them wet to compare to what's going on in the pot.

She said she was open to ideas because she didn’t think he would be able to match the wool 100% but I’m sure she will be pleasantly surprised when she opens her parcel to find all of the wool a perfect match.

Recently a woman came in with a Persian rug that had worn thread bare in several areas and she wanted Shane to match the colours with dyed yarn. It was a little more difficult in that the wool had a sheen that cast a different shade of the colour from different directions. I thought what he came up with was bang on and the client was pleased. He not only keeps all the rug hookers happy but he's dyed skeins for knitters wanting custom colours as well. He just dyed six skeins of curly mohair for a customer that happened off the street while on holiday and decided she wanted to knit her daughter a purple mohair sweater. Ask and ye shall receive!

I know Shane loves a challenge. It keeps him on his toes and he likes to be busy. He's never happier than when his corkboard is filled with dye orders and his fans keep him smiling. I'm told many times that his name comes up at hook-ins and in the rug groups as the one to go to for quality and consistent dyeing. That's my boy!

5 Comments

A Landlord's Rant

4/18/2016

10 Comments

I’ve been stewing in my own juices. Angry with recently moved tenants and myself, not sure which one I could kick harder but I’d like to kick something!

Younger people today seem to have a sense of entitlement and they don’t take responsibly for their actions, but they sure know all their rights and what they can get away with….knowing how to work the system does not make them right.

We own an apartment building in Mahone Bay on 14 Pleasant Street. Hubby owned this building before we met upwards of 27 years ago and to date, knock on wood, we’ve had few troubles. Yes a year or so ago we had to do a complete overhaul on one unit because a bachelor lived there and didn’t clean for eight years, but he was a man on his own and understandable. This was a couple and only there a year. Forgive my prejudice, but I truly feel that women are better cleaners, at least our generation was, it was ingrained in our genes, skills handed down by our white tornado mothers who went beyond spit polish to the nitty gritty core of dirt.   At least at my house! Thanks mom!

Our three unit apartment building is good and solid, none of the hardwood floors are sagging or running downhill, it sports beautiful moldings and tall ceilings for that traditional look and feel. The building is tall and proud, an Edwardian design, well built and sturdy on her foundation.

The bottom floor of 1000 square feet was rented to a younger couple since February 2015. We don’t ask for references or put anyone through the wringer. I use my gut feeling and I liked this couple. They were young with the entire world ahead of them, good looking, and by all appearances, sweet. Shane thought the woman looked a bit like me in my youth and perhaps I saw myself in her but for whatever reason I was happy they were living in our space.

I love this building. My dream is to live in it someday. When we are too old to maintain our large property and home we planned to downsize there. It has one of the most beautiful staircases I’ve seen. Turned spools and a honey coloured, small grained oak, aged to a perfect patina with a magnificent newel post design rarely seen. I want to open the first and second floor and bring her back to a single family home. This building is the apple of my eye and I like that she’s well cared for by the people who rent from us.

After a little over a year, the young couple gave their notice to move out for the end of March 2016. Not in writing as the lease states, but a verbal statement and being relaxed, small town landlords, we accepted it as an official acknowledgement of their quitting the tenancy.

We are kind landlords. We are willing to work with tenants on all things that might pop up. We never begrudge a tenant moving out, moving to a house they’ve built or purchased. We don’t view renting our facility as doing them a favour like a lot of landlords that don’t give a crap. We feel the tenant is doing us a favour by living in our rentals so we can build equity in our building until the time when we can move in. We don’t penalize our tenants for losing keys and locking themselves out. I have personally had landlords from hell that were borderline cruel so I can truthfully say we are a walk in the park. When they call we respond. We allow pets; we fix things immediately and follow all the rules to respect their privacy.

Usually tenants take pride in leaving the apartments in the same condition as when they moved in. When we hand over the keys the apartments shine from elbow grease. Really who wants someone to see their dirt and grime anyway, have someone clean their toilets?   To date, most tenants have been decent and respectful and we’ve had to do minimal touchups.

It was very disappointing to discover that the couple moved and left behind enough dirt and grime that it took a professional cleaner, Larry The Cleaning Guy, working along with me, 19 hours to clean the place. We filled a garbage bag with broken items and junk they’d left behind. We found things in closets and drawers; even a tampon was left on the bathroom sink. Really? The tenants argue that they cleaned the place. The mere fact that there was so much to be removed contradicts that statement. It only makes sense that if they’d cleaned they would have found all the stuff we had to remove.

The bedroom floor was filled with bits of this and that, stuff that obviously accumulated under their bed. The floors were filthy; the water in the mop pail was brown in each room.

The stove was a disaster. The oven was caked with burned on stuff, the burners and top of the stove were nasty. The side of the stove touching the cupboard was greasy as stuff on the stove ran down the sides and a buildup of crap behind it. The fridge had enough dust and dirt under it to stuff a pillow! The electric baseboard heaters were filled with dust balls and dog hair. The stainless kitchen sink was really dirty, no luster to it at all. It took comet, SOS pads and a toothbrush to bring back the shine.

The shower was filled with hair from the last use and the drain was packed with it from long term shedding. Tuffs of hair, woven into clumps and matted with soap scum, were sticking up through the holes in the drain, like a hairy beast trying to escape. The new pedestal sink was also clogged with hair; I pulled it out with tweezers in large clumps. The water barely drained, the man is a contractor, surely he would understand it was plugged and taken the proper action to fix it, but no. We bought and poured a drain cleaner that is supposed to dissolve hair.     The sink, less than a year old, a lovely pedestal sink had a crack in the bowl about six inches long, a hair line crack so something must have been dropped in it.

The white plastic cover of the exhaust fan in the bathroom ceiling was covered in a sticky, orangey coloured gunk and packed with dust. I soaked it and scrubbed it clean and I get the feeling that it was nicotine; perhaps someone was smoking in the bathroom with the fan on to keep the smell from permeating the entire apartment but I’m only assuming. I so wish I had taken pictures. The building is supposed to be non-smoking and I told them that when they did the tour. They looked me right in the eye and said that wouldn’t be a problem because they don’t smoke.

The washer was really grungy inside and the dryer lint compartment was full of caked on fluff that mixed with something sticky that took an SOS pad to clean. We had to vacuum out the cavity as it was lined with lint which is a fire hazard.

All of the mini blinds were caked with baked on dust, a real pain to clean if they aren’t dusted or wiped down regularly. The blind strings were stained a golden orange colour as well. My son lived upstairs and told me he saw the guy smoking in the yard shortly after they moved in and on a visit to the building several months later I had to warn them about all the butts in the yard as one will kill a small dog if eaten. Nicotine is highly toxic. They then had a puppy and my son has two smaller dogs so it was a concern.   I asked they put the butts in a can.

The doors all needed scrubbing from dirty hand smudges. They were raised panel doors so the flat parts were built up with dust. There were burnt out light bulbs not replaced throughout.

Nails were left in the walls that were supposed to be removed and three large holes in the living room weren’t filled from something large that had been hung.

One of the window panes were broken, cracked from one side to the other. There were even construction materials lying around.   There was no care or thought for us as landlords or the building. The mess was left behind for us to deal with. Larry and I scrubbed every surface and dusted away the cobwebs. When we were finished, the place shined, just like it had before they moved in.

The new tenants were to move in the first of April but we had to delay their occupancy until the following week because the state of the place. I suggested they could move boxes and leave them in the middle of the floor for us to work around but they said no and I’m glad because it would have been difficult to work around. So we lost a week’s rent because of it. I had to pay the cleaner, purchase light bulbs and various cleaning supplies etc.

Because they failed to leave the place the way it was found, we planned to take the expenses of cleaning it off the Security Deposit.

They also left the yard in a mess. Two broken wood lawn chairs, a garden with a mesh fence around it that wasn’t cleared of the dead growth for the winter so there is a lot of stuff to dig out and take to the dump. An rickety old wood picnic table will need to be taken away. They had things stored in the back stairwell, a fire escape for the other floors that was supposed to be kept free. The back vestibule was not part of their rental, nor was the front hall, where they apparently stored their bicycles. These common areas are to be left clear in case of fire. They did not respect the rules; they were told the fire marshal would shut us down if they did a random inspection.

After the tenants moved then asked for their deposit back and I told them we were busy cleaning and would get back to them. We wrote out an account of the expenses to ready the place for the tenant, all the things that they should have done before moving out. She said she would not allow us to take their deposit and sited chapter and verse from the tenancy handbook. She said they cleaned and although admitted they left holes in the living room wall, they wouldn’t take responsibility for the state of the apartment.

Like I said, only decent people had rented from us before so we were not aware of the tenancy rule that you have to apply to the director within 10 days of the tenants moving out to lay a claim on their security deposit and even then, it was geared to favour the tenant, not the landlord, so we probably wouldn’t have mattered as the “Ordinary Clean” clause is too open for interpretation.   If there was damage other than the normal wear and tear perhaps we might have had a case. Our way of thinking is that ordinary clean would mean what is needed day to day to maintain cleanliness. Yes, we should have been on top of the tenancy rules, but we’ve never had to use this clause so even if we’d known at some point in the 27 years of being landlords, we forgot it. Another lesson learned the hard way. We seem to live under the black cloud of Murphy’s Law, unlucky that we are!

I suppose we could fight this in small claims court, we certainly have enough witnesses to describe how dirty the place was but who has time for this? And, most of the rules are geared in the favour of the tenant. There is little a landlord can do. So they get to walk away with their full Security deposit and we cleaned their filth. It doesn't seem right!   We not only lost a week’s rent from the new tenant, but the cleaning expense and supplies came to over $300.00 so we are out of pocket on that, which is wonderful with my husband out of work. I suppose people think we are rich because we own a rental property and therefore deserve to be ripped off and taken advantage of. Anyone who owns a building will know better. We feel like we’ve been done the dirty, figurative and literally.

All they had to do was clean the place the way they found it and all would have been fine; I could have continued to think kindly of this couple, perhaps see one another on the street and smile. Now I have to think ill of them, use them as the one big bad example associated with our time as landlords.

Perhaps it’s time to sell the building or only look for older, respectful tenants.

10 Comments

A "Sweet" custom design.....

4/13/2016

3 Comments

We receive a fair amount of inquiries about custom patterns you would like to see. Sometimes we can accommodate your requests if a pattern would be a good addition to our growing inventory. If we take the time to put together a design, we have to be able to sell it more than once. Requests for personal designs, items with portraits and things that are only applicable to their lives is not something we really have time for. For anyone who draws patterns you know how much time they take. A one-off pattern isn’t financially viable whereas a design that would appeal to the masses is. Of course if you want to pay me for a one of a kind, for my time and effort, we could talk turkey, but generally no one really wants to spend the extra money, they just want a pattern.

Last week we had a request for a Safari design and the client sent along the above picture to show what sort of direction she would like us follow. It had to be suitable for a nursery. We both knew that copyright applied to this particular picture so it had to be different and I told her that we would see what we could do.

I asked Deborah if she would like to take this one on. Deb is a wonderful artist so I knew she would rise to the occasion but she went even farther and blew my socks off. When she presented me with her design the first words out of my gaping mouth were, “Now I can retire”, but that was just me playing the comedian. I really was impressed!

Deborah’s Safari Friends sports a similar feel, but the little animals are definitely her own with added pluses. Her little hippo in the water was a jewel and all her little critters are simply delightful. I can see this pattern hooked and hung in a baby’s nursery for lots of coos and giggles. Grandma, this is definitely a pattern for you, a special heirloom for the new grandchild either on the way or already here.

Our client was very happy and said “sold!” with a big thank-you. Our pleasure!

"Safari Friends" designed by Deborah Sweet. Pattern is 36" x 24"
http://www.encompassingdesigns.com/deborah-sweet.html

3 Comments

Commission, a long time comin'

4/12/2016

4 Comments

Way back in my first year of business, a lady walked through the door visiting from Christ’s Church, Barbados. She was very taken with rug hooking and we chatted about this passion that led me to open the shop. I gave her my five minute demo; she pulled a loop or two and then perused the pattern book. She fell in love with one of Susan Leslie’s designs of Lunenburg and ordered a kit.

Talking a bit more revealed how small the world really is because she was actually my neighbour from two doors down. Her husband frequently travels to Canada on business so they bought a house for his convenience. I’d not met them but heard lots of good things from another neighbour that looks after their house while they are out of the country. I said I would put the kit together, be neighbourly and deliver it to their door.

Roll ahead fourteen years and last fall, the lady and her husband came into the shop to say hello. I recognized her immediately and asked if she had hooked the rug. She replied no, she never got around to it and at this point probably wouldn’t, and would like to find someone to hook it for her. I’m far too busy to hook for hire, but Sue Cunningham, who is no stranger to selling her beautiful rugs, was there and offered to take the project on.

The kit had been lying around for over a decade and a couple of hungry little bugs got into the package, munching on the paper instructions, but the wool and pattern were intact and didn’t have any nasty odors of mildew or moth balls. Sue took it home and stuffed it in her deep freeze for a few weeks to make sure whatever was chowing down on the paper would be dead by the time she was ready to tackle the project.

Sue is one busy gal and after having second thoughts, she passed it to Lorraine who happily agreed to the commission.   The pattern is a beautiful pictorial, the famous Lunenburg buildings and waterfront. Susan Leslie designed and hooked the original and it sold in my shop many moons ago. The rug sported a rich colour palette with its rich red buildings, backdrop of trees and Lunenburg harbour. The rug didn’t hang long before it was sold and off to its forever home. Susan designed several Lunenburg scenes with varying angles of the harbour front and all featured the easily identifiable, iconic red buildings. You can view her other patterns by clicking this link: http://www.encompassingdesigns.com/susan-leslie.html

I am thrilled that Lorraine will be able to transform the kit into the amazing rug it was meant to be.   The family will receive their wonderful heirloom and Lorraine who is a beautiful rug hooker, will be rewarded for a job well done. I’m not sure if it will adorn the couple’s home next door or travel to warmer climates as a memory of their home away from home. Either way I’m sure it will be treasured for many years to come.

I often wonder what happens to kits that are purchased by vacationing wannabe rug hookers. This craft has a way of sweeping you off your feet and putting fanciful ideas in your head.   It’s a budding romance when wool is involved; love at first sight is difficult to deny, but sometimes life gets in the way of our passions and then there’s that road in the nether regions that’s paved with good intentions.   Unless I hear from them at some point, I never know if a customer was seriously in love, or only caught up in the lusty appeal of rug hooking for a brief affair. As my kits walk out the door with a customer on cloud nine, I like to believe they will be as smitten as I was the day I discovered this craft, and look where it led me!

I’ll keep you posted on Lorraine’s progress.

4 Comments

The Perfect Carrot Cake

4/11/2016

2 Comments

As Carrot Cakes go, I haven’t met one I didn’t like. There are probably hundreds of recipes as no two taste the same. Some are the true carrot cake while others tend to lean toward a spice cake. All offer a taste explosion and deserve an honourable mention but I’m bias, I truly believe mine is one of the best, if not THE best!

Of course the frosting has to be Philly cheese and homemade; if not I’m afraid the effort is wasted on me. There is nothing to compare to that sweet, succulent flavour that enhances what lies beneath. I prefer my frosting thick; if I’m going down that road I want it to be memorable, I want enough to have a taste with every bite, not some skinny ass layer that barely adds anything to the sensation. I want to drown the cake in icing, if I’m going to lose a toe it better be worth it!

I’ve made two Carrot Cakes lately and I’ll admit the first one fell short of the mark. I had all the ingredients except for the veggie oil; it was late at night so I looked for a substitute and only had olive oil. It was a strong Virgin press, perfect for my salad dressings, but not conducive to a sweet cake. The carrots were grated, I had gone too far to go back so I dumped it in the mix but I could smell it over the other ingredients, its savory pong dominating even the pineapple.

I could smell the oil during the baking. Instead of a sweet aroma permeating the kitchen it was more like pizza dough. Even after the cake cooled I could still detect the olive oil and after it was sliced, I could taste it in every bite. I ate the entire cake knowing I had to do better. Sometimes when I’ve eaten something that doesn’t fit the memory, I have to do it right to erase the bad taste and put it back in proper standing. So last evening I made the second cake with vegetable oil and it was glorious! The smells that seeped from the oven tantalized me and after I’d taken it out to cool, I could barely sleep as the heavenly scent filled the house to the attic. Sugar in my blood at bedtime fights sleep and even inhaling the scent acted as if it was flowing through my veins. I tossed and turned until the wee hours of the morning.

I whipped up the frosting this morning, not daring to cut a slice and break the perfect cylindrical shape. The cake is for company this evening; I’m sharing this time so I don’t eat another whole cake on my own. The icing needs to firm in the fridge and that makes a cleaner slice as the knife glides through. I thought of nothing else and I fought the urge to rush to the fridge and sample my ware until 2:00 pm when I could stand it no longer. I justified my actions by telling myself a convincing lie. The cake should be tested before being sprung on guests. What if something wasn’t quite right? My guests deserve the best so I had to test to make sure the standard is high.

What a friggin dream cake! If only you could scratch, sniff and taste the screen! I give it a 11 out of 10, a second piece confirmed this rating. So the cake won’t be perfectly intact, someone had to do the dirty work of making sure it’s perfect for my guests. Didn’t kings have testers to ensure the safety and edibility of their food? I’m not saying I have blue blood friends, but their well being and enjoyment is my main concern.

As I mentioned above, I’ve eaten a lot of Carrot Cake. A couple of restaurants around here sell a mean slice but the best I’ve sampled is this past boyfriend’s mother’s version, the recipe came from her kitchen. The cake is light in both colour and taste. Filled with nuts, raisins, pineapple and a generous amount of shredded carrot, it is a perfect blend of flavours. The cake is not overly sweet with only a cup of sugar, the pineapple lends to the appeal. I can’t say much good came out of the relationship I had with this woman’s son, but her Carrot Cake recipe stands as the prize for putting up with his antics. She is long gone now but her cake lives on, always reminding me of our meeting.

Not all frosting tastes the same. This one hits the sweet spot in me and I slather it on several cakes I make. There is an Hawaiian Hummingbird cake recipe that sits under this frosting like a queen under a crown. Another share for another time.

CARROT CAKE

1 Cup Vegetable Oil
1 Cup sugar
4 Eggs
2 Cups Flour
2 Teaspoons Soda
½ Teaspoon Baking Powder
½ Teaspoon Salt
Mix together then add:
1 Cup Raisins
1 Cup Broken Walnut Pieces
14 oz. Can of Crushed Pineapple (drained but not pressed)
2 Cups Grated Carrot

Bake 1 Hour @ 325*

ICING

8 oz package Cream Cheese
2 Teaspoons Vanilla
½ Cup Butter
3 Cups Icing Sugar

Mix with electric beater

Frost cake and you can sprinkle more Walnut pieces on the top. Enjoy!

2 Comments

If its too loud, you're too old!

4/9/2016

1 Comment

Yet another drive to the airport on Thursday. I swear I could make the trip with my eyes closed. Hubby and I estimate I’ve made that trip back and forth upwards of two hundred times. The road is so familiar, cruising the same patch of pavement, through torrential downpours, in the middle of the night or early morn, beaten by hail, through driving snow and sometimes fog as thick as pea soup. This time I was picking hubby up after his two week trip to BC to assist his 97 year old mom into assistant living.

You would think I’d deplore this hour long drive each way, but I look forward to it. I like being in the car alone where I can fill the air with loud music and not offend anyone. Our speakers are really great, the bass is perfect and I ramp up the volume to a ridiculous setting, flipping between stations to find the old favourites so I’m in a constant state of nostalgia.

I like my music loud. So much so that the beat reprograms the natural rhythm of my heart. My entire body, not just my ears, feels the power of the music, sometimes almost vibrating in my seat. These days, there seems to be so little time on my own to indulge in the preferred high decibels. At home the radio is kept low as not to deafen the pups and at the shop we don’t want to drive the customers away. Sometimes when I work late I crank it, but these days it seems the airport run is my only opportunity to blast the tunes.   Whenever I’m asked what kind of music I like I say “Loud”.   It doesn’t matter to me if it’s Classical, Blues, Rock & Roll, Country, Rap or the oldies but goodies, as long as the volume is in the double digits, I’m in.

Quite frankly most people I know are fuddy duddies when it comes to music. They keep it barely audible.   Aging doesn’t mean we have to turn down the volume; we should be pumping up the jam baby....feelin’ alive....gyrating that couch potato arse!   It seems people lose their sense of youthful play, smothering their wild child with grownup responsibility and worrying about appearances. Screw that! Music is a transporter to another place and time, it evokes memories and makes us feel good and this chick wants to feel good!

I don’t particularly give a rat’s rear what anyone thinks of me when I’m driving to work and a good tune comes on. Today it was Bob Seger belting out “Old Time Rock & Roll”. I beat the steering wheel like a bongo drum while trying to sing over the volume.   I’m sure the folks on the sidewalk heard me coming; the sound is probably as loud outside as inside, like a prehistoric thumpasaurous charging. I’m in for the rush, those glorious few minutes of feeling charged and alive, like a youngin' again, back when music moved my emotions with the power of an earthquake.

I’ve talked about this before....to the over fifty, it seems loud music and dancing is more of an annoyance than a thrill and it gets worse as the number grows. For me, what used to be a staple in my social life, now I can’t find anyone to go to a dance. Even if I could convince them to join me they’d sit at the table fighting back the yawns while I burn up the dance floor on my own. They probably think I’m making a spectacle of myself but I know what to do with a good song. I gyrate, twist and contort my body, feeling the tune to my core. I don’t care if I can’t dance for beans, my feet can’t keep still and that feeling moves up my body until I’m shaking like jello! Right now Katrina & The Waves, “Walkin On Sunshine”, is on Randy’s Vinyl Tap on CBC radio, with host Randy Bachman and my butt is bopping in the chair while I clap and type in rhythm.

Wow, now it’s the Jackson Five’s “ABC”. How can any anyone sit still?

I’ll be listening to music until my arthritic fingers can no longer fiddle with the volume knob.   I definitely won’t be sitting in a lazy boy waiting for the end but when it comes, hopefully someone will slip a radio into my casket set on Flashback 70’s for a bump and grind send-off.....I'll get a horizontal groove on until the batteries wear out!

1 Comment

RUGLORIOUS!

4/6/2016

3 Comments

During the life of a shop owner, the biggest perk is experiencing the sweet eye-candy of a customer’s creative mind. You take our patterns and add your personal touch, bringing each design to life in glorious ways. A rug is a merger of the design, inspiration and wool plus the gifted hand to bring it all to fruition. I want to thank all the fabulous rug hookers that make our patterns shine; you certainly make us look good.

I am especially touched to see one of our designs hooked, and I’ve misted up plenty over the years. My mascara runs and the sentimental part of me becomes all gooey inside as I choke back the swell of awe rising in my throat.

Thank goodness we have unique visions. The eclectic pool of talent we swim around in keeps life exciting and visually appealing. From the simplest plan to elaborate explosions of colour, all rugs are amazing and their makers need to be applauded.

Saturday was a spectacular eye-candy day. I was misting and moaning while several rugs paraded before me. I try to express my excitement, offering much deserved praise, but there are not enough words in the English language to sum up the emotion that these rugs evoke. Then I got to thinking, there isn’t a word that gives justice to some of the masterpieces I’ve seen. No singular word packs enough punch to tell it like it is without embellishing with piles of adjectives.    Beautiful just doesn’t cut it and it’s so overused it no longer conveys enough heartfelt sincerity. We need stronger verbalization, a word that climbs the highest mountain, reaches the mysterious ocean depth, a powerful word that encompassing our emotions when seeing a rug that is beyond awesome.

Saturday, I was in the car heading home after a wonderful day of hooking and bearing witness to the skills of women in this glorious fellowship when a word popped into my head.   RUGLORIOUS. A combination of rug and glorious; a word that means magnificent, wonderful, splendid, celebrated, superb, famous and outstanding. So from now on when a spectacular rug enters my door or is shown on Facebook and it surpasses my wildest imagination for design and boasts rich saturation of colour or intricate fine shading, I will declare that it’s Ruglorious! A word that sums up its masterful splendor. Let Webster’s pick it up and place it with other synonyms of praise and grandeur.   Let us share this word to describe the amazing rugs our friends and fellow rug hookers create. Let’s pass it around and save it for the rugs that touch our souls and move us to tears. RUGLORIOUS!

Below, Chris Hay's poppies. She has only been hooking for two years and all I can say is too bad for us! Can you imagine what she would have created if she’d been at this craft for a decade? I can hardly wait to see what comes off her frame next. She ordered our “Shirley” pattern.....I‘m wowed even before she pulls a loop!

Andre came in to show me her progress on our “Blueberry Jacobean” pattern (above) and be still my heart. Any designer’s patterns can take my breath away but the thrill and excitement of seeing one of my own, especially with this kind of brilliance, spins me over the top.

Andre’s colours have given this design life. She transformed black marker lines with brilliant strips of wool, taking it from drab to fab. Ruglorious! I look forward to seeing other versions of this pattern with different colour plans; each one is always special and truly a wonderful surprise. It inspires me to create more beautiful patterns so all you talented rug hookers can make me cry.

Chris Hay's poppies. Big, bold and beautiful! Perfectly shaded! Ruglorious! Below is The Wooly Mat-ters. Such a rich colour palette.

3 Comments

It's never to late to match colour in Shane's dye kitchen!

A Landlord's Rant

A "Sweet" custom design.....

Commission, a long time comin'

The Perfect Carrot Cake

If its too loud, you're too old!

RUGLORIOUS!

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