Blog Archives

Cone Coven

6/29/2016

Our resident artist, Deborah Sweet has completed another one of the Cone Coven Trio that she previously designed. The little witch in training is adorable with her pumpkin and broom. Hooked using the same colour palette as the Cone Crone, they are a delightful arrangement for Halloween adornments in the shop and would be equally fun for your home.

Deborah is a valuable asset to our team and her artistic skills are thrilling us. She is extremely personable and melds in beautifully with the shop. We are a current and dynamic trio for your rug hooking needs.

Fright and delight this coming Halloween! These adorable witches, with their expressive faces, are packed with personality. Kits are now available for the Cone Crone and the Little Witch in training is not far behind or you can do your own colour planning to bring all three to life with the pattern Cone Coven.

Stay tuned for the magnificent wizard, the third installment of the trio.

View Deb's other designs by clicking this link: http://www.encompassingdesigns.com/deborah-sweet.html

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Big Bottomed Girl!

6/21/2016

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As I sanded the bottom of my boat, the Queen song, Fat Bottom Girls played in my head, although I changed the lyrics to be kinder and reflect the massive size of her hull. She’s beamy and big bottomed, curvy and full.

I’m learning so many new things working on the boat, skills that I’ll put to work every year. Doing a job on a boat is never a one off. There is constant maintenance to keep her looking shiny. Shiny is what motivates me. I’m a crow from the top of my balding head to the tips of my toes. I’m all about that shine, about that shine, about that shine. The hipsters will know this in reference to the Meghan Trainer song, “All About That Base”. Songs soothe me as I work, the boat radio is usually blasting to ease the pain of the labour. A bit of hip hop is the perfect medication for the aches.

I must admit I didn’t think about how much work a boat would require when I fantasized about owning one. Sanding the bottom is about as romantic as a handful of warts. It’s hard work, but necessary and if I tell the truth, fairly rewarding. It’s one of those instant gratification projects, doesn’t take forever to do and results show for your labour. It’s quite physical and my arms feel like they might separate from the rest of me and sometimes my fingers tingle and turn numb from holding a tool with a death grip to rake up and down her bottom, scratching off the old paint so we can apply then new.

I was a trooper sanding the bottom to prepare it for the new anti-fouling paint.   No complaints at all which is about as untypical as it goes. It actually went quickly but I looked like a Smurf, blue from head to toe as the floating powder blew all over me from the wind. I wore a mask of course and my white skin under it made me look freaky when it was removed. Buffing the white gelcoat on the sides with a high powered electric polisher that you have to fight with to stay in the area you want was the rough part. It takes every bit of strength to hold and maneuver. Hubby with his manly upper body strength, managed much better but working over our heads was rough for both of us. Hubby did the bulk of it but I spelled him a few times while his arms rested. There’s no time to pick away at this job at our leisure, the launch date is next Tuesday and there are a million things to do so we forge on, drop dead tired and achy to the bone. I've never been so tired but have never slept so well, the perfect marriage of exercise and rest.

The teak is fabulous. I’ll be a glory stealer with all my 9-12 coats. So if you wonder why I haven't been blogging regularly, I'm out in the barn inhaling varnish fumes. I'm pretty proud of this accomplishment and after all my hard work I want a bit of praise! so if you don’t ooh and awh when boarding, you’ll be asked to leave! Ha!

Hubby does all the jobs behind the scenes while mine are the flamboyant, high profile bits. There is shine beyond shine. Tomorrow we will begin to install the teak. I’ll be varnishing all week in the garage doing the floor grates and cockpit table to be ready for the launch. Steven Scott, my frame guy, wood craftsman extraordinaire, inserted an inlay compass rose to add a bit of nautical whimsy to the cockpit. Then he is going to do the same for the cabin table for a matched set.   the picture is below. It looks a bit dull right now but when the varnish hits it the colours will intensify and the teak will glow around it and there will be a contrast with the bird's eye maple background. Someday someone should write a song about the wood genius of Steven.   He sure keeps me happy with hooks and frames an all else I've ever asked him to do. If you look around the shop his influence is everywhere from the coffee station to our work desks. I joke with Charlene that if anything ever happens to her husband, I don't know who will shed the most tears! I can hardly wait to go home and slap the first coat of varnish on my beautiful inlay!

Speaking of nautical flair, I’m hooking a compass rose rug for the cabin floor.    The rug is coming along nicely although I’ve not had much time to work on it.   But I’m not in a hurry, after the boat is in the water the evenings will be free so I’ll then do a blitz to get it done. I’m really loving the colour plan, especially the background. I’ve been saving two yards of a special wool that I purchased ten years ago for a a sometime project. I can’t remember the wool jobber but they had a couple hundred yards of this delicious blue plaid that looks like Nova Scotia tartan when hooked up. It sold for $5.95, can you believe that price? I knew it would be phenomenal so I bought 100 yards but now I regret not buying more. It sold and I knew if I didn’t stash away a bit I would be sorry someday and now the time is perfect as we keep Nova Scotia Tartan polar fleece blankets on the boat for the dogs to lie on so the rug will blend in beautifully. The wool hooks perfectly as I knew it would, sometimes you can feel a piece of plaid and know that there will be little fraying and perfect cuts. Wool to drool over and die for!
I really love this particular design. I created it for our home about a decade ago and Jean Morse hooked it as a gift to me. She was a special lady and I think of her often, especially when I enter hubby’s study and walk on the runner in front of the French doors. The colours match the study, greens and golds with some rust. I dyed all the wool for her so it is a custom job to match all his furniture and painted walls. Several customers have hooked this rug in stunning colour palettes, each time is a masterpiece. I personally always wanted to see it done with a lot of red so that’s my plan for the boat.

I had to make a few changes to the overall size of the design to make it fit the space. I shortened the length and widened the width so it sits perfectly in front of the cabin table. In the off sailing season it will lay in front of our front door as the colours work beautifully with our furniture and living room carpet.

5 Comments

Hidden Messages

6/14/2016

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Several months back, Sue Burton-Kelly contacted us to ask if we could modify our owl designs into a nighttime scene for her granddaughter, Ingrid Mae Kelly born December 29, 2015. She wanted three owls on a branch, a nighttime scene with moon and stars. She wanted them to represent a family, papa owl, mama owl with the baby in the middle. We had the owls drawings already used in a Christmas Stocking, chair pads and a bell pull so it was a quick modification. The pattern is popular but I was happy that she hooked it first, considering it was her inspiration that brought it to us.

I was delighted at her colour choices. This rug absolutely glows as if bathed in the moonlight! Being a night scene her palette sits very comfortably under the darkened sky. Shots of red, softer blue, and those delicious deep blues are yummy. Hits of green in the leaves and that gorgeous orange really top off the scene. Well done Sue!

For me colour sits first and the design second. Any piece of art, clothing, dishes, flowers or a rug for the floor grabs me with the use of blue. Customarily blue is for a boy but as a child I insisted on a blue bedroom so its been a favourite for a long time. My eyes are blue and I was quite insulted when I first heard the song "Beautiful Brown Eyes", and took it personally when they sang, "I’ll never love blue eyes again".

The hidden message on the back of the rug was a delightful surprise. I’d not heard of it before and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how it was done. I enlarged the photo so I could clearly see that the words were hooked and that stumped me. Several people on FB asked for an explanation and Sue was very obliging. Here is what she had to say.

Thanks for all for all the compliments on Ingrid rug. I learned about hidden messages from Bev Conway, Middleburg VT. She's the one who developed the method. Here it is in a nutshell. Write your message in reverse on your pattern. (So it reads correctly from the back side.) Hook it very low with a small cut (I used a 4) and a color with enough contrast so it shows. Hook high around the letters leaving only 1 thread between. (I used a 6 close to the letters, then switched to 8). Keep hooking higher around packing the loops a little tight. Eventually you have enough loops around the letters that they close over the top of them and they don't show. It takes quite a few rows around the writing for it to disappear but it really does work. Have fun giving it a try.

WHAT IF I FALL? OH BUT MY DARLING, WHAT IF YOU FLY?

5 Comments

Tess Ellation

6/9/2016

1 Comment

By Guest Blogger Charlene Scott

I saw you drew off the pattern for my mat and thought it would be a good idea for you to have a photo of the finished piece. I enjoyed designing this rug and although it might look simple, creating a tessellated drawing takes a lot of thought and manipulation of templates until you get it right. When finished, they looked like pinwheels or propellers so I called it Pinwheel Parade.

I tried to do each pinwheel in a different colour and as I gravitate toward the brights all the dull and dark ones were banned. I think it would be a terrific stash buster and an opportunity to use up a lot of leftover wool ends and worms. I did all the pinwheel tips a contrast colour as it reminded me of the way pinwheels are made with the ends turned over and pinned in the middle. This is, so far, the only mat I have done to fit a specific place so that is why it is long and narrow. I think this pattern could be interesting done in black, white and grey. I think it would also make interesting chair pads.

The small mat called Tess was a fun piece. When I created the shape, I turned it around and looked at all angles and suddenly the ponytail leaped out and I instantly thought of a cartoon character. I only hooked four repeats as it was enough to show how they all fit together and it was only meant as a bit of fun. However it could be made larger or repeated many times for an interesting effect. As it was a tessellation, Christine’s suggestion to call her Tess Ellation was spot on. These two tessellations, combined with my Birds in Flight is probably the end of my exploration of this style for now. So many ideas, so little time.

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Doing a 180....

6/7/2016

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There’s no shame in changing your mind. It's a woman’s prerogative and something I'm quite familiar with. The mental street isn't a dead end and there's no ticket for pulling a U turn. I have an idea, the gears begin to grind and then I keep expanding on it until I’ve taken it as far as I can, adding this; taking away a bit of that and sometimes the end result doesn’t have any resemblance to the original thought.

For my Mother’s Day, month of May commemorative rug, I visualized a beach glass soft palette for a shabby chic vibe. I wanted to experiment with a white outline, go the polar opposite to what I generally choose. Every rug I hook I take it in the opposite colour direction of the one before. I like to mix it up and expand my colour planning skill. If hooking for my house I’d be pressed into the primary colours as I would need to match and coordinate appropriately, but for the shop, I’m free to play with ideas that are outside the box of my primary constraints.

At the hook-in before last, I pulled my first loops beginning with the soft Beach Glass tones from the bundles Shane dyes and it didn’t take long to realize the goal I was hoping for wouldn’t suit. I want this line of monthly patterns to blend and stand out boldly and this one would have faded into oblivion. So I switched gears and started from scratch.

After the hook-in I had wool at home for one of the Alphabet rugs so I pouched it, pulled out all the work except for the white outline and started hooking it again. With the introduction of medium tones of orange, green, fuchsia, golds and a delicious lavender background, it started to pop like fireworks.

Now the pillow sits proudly next to Easter’s soft pastel tones and fits in as if it belongs. A row of pillows of the month with their varying palettes will really dress up the shop with new eye candy.

Now on to Father’s Day. I’ve been distracted by eye problems and boat pressures but I’ll get caught up soon.

1 Comment

Foxy Loxy

6/2/2016

3 Comments

I wonder how rare it is to look out your front window and see a fox no farther than four feet away. The only thing between us was the pane of glass and his fear. Out of the wooded area behind the house you could tell he was skittish, his head darted back and forth alert for danger from all directions. He was magnificent, I say he because I was close enough to distinguish his sex.
The only other fox I’ve seen in all my days was a tatty one, molting his winter coat and skeletal. On a trip to Lunenburg, I braked to watch as he trotted across the road in front of my car. He was very sad looking. His head hung low and his step lacked pep. He was either old or sick or both but definitely not happy.

The fox outside my window was vibrant and lush and similar in size and look of a medium sized dog. They sport an interesting face with their pointed nose and dark eyes, very spiffy in their dapper fur coat. My mind imagined petting him, the tail looked as soft as a feather boa, no wonder the rich and famous covet their fur. I prefer it stays on the animal and wear a faux fur guilt free.

He looked right at me at one point and all I could think was “wow”. A children's memory surfaced and this Foxy Loxy seemed to say, "No, Ms. Little, the sky is not falling!" Such a rare and close up sighting left me in awe. I wished my cell phone had been handy I would have snapped a picture but as I ran for the camera he was on the move. He seemed to have a purpose as he immediately ran next door and down the end of their driveway to bury his nose in the bushes. There must have been something there, the scent of which was carried by the wind because he was on a mission and determined. He dug a bit before a car drove by and scared him off. He then ran up behind the house and was gone. The camera I grabbed had the wrong lens so I couldn’t zoom in for a close-up and what I did capture isn't worth showing as it looks like a red blur on a background of grass, but then I found this photo on the internet that looked exactly like him.

I came away from the experience feeling kind of lucky. Wooded creatures don’t present themselves often. We get a lot of deer that seem to like posing for pictures or being stared at from windows but smaller critter sightings like rabbits, fox, raccoon and porcupine are rare.   In my 57 years I can count on my left hand the sightings; that’s two raccoon, one porcupine and two fox. I see plenty creatures that have fallen victim from tires along the highway, but as far as live ones go I’ve not been very fortunate. To gaze upon the beauty of nature is a privilege. Nature certainly knows how to create beauty everyday!

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Cone Coven

Big Bottomed Girl!

Hidden Messages

Tess Ellation

Doing a 180....

Foxy Loxy

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