You always want to be careful cutting the burlap to minimize fraying.  Any cuts made crooked across the gain will fray like mad and you could loose a great deal of the outside border needed for binding the edge.  

Cutting will be done with scissors by carefully following the grain, or an easier way, is to put a
small snip where you want to make the cut and then pick up one of the burlap fibers and pull it
through all the way from the other side.  The burlap will gather up but that is okay, just keep pulling until you reach other side.  This will leave a gap between the weave that you can follow with your scissors without having to scrutinize so closely.    

Once your piece is cut out always zig zag the outside edges to prevent fraying….some people even use masking tape.  

That's all for today folks.  Been watching too much TV and staying up too late to be clever.  Crawled out of bed at 10:00 this morning and feel like I've been hit by a truck.  I won't make it to work until noon.  Someone said the other day....you aren't really late until to get there.   Boy, the thunder is really loud.  Must be directly overhead as I felt that one in my bones!

Happy Halloween everyone!   

How to Use Red Dot

 1.     First draw your idea on paper.  This allows you to easily make changes until you perfect your design.  If you work directly on the burlap with a marker mistakes are permanent and make for a messy pattern.   

 2.     Place the red dot medium over the drawing and secure with stick pins or tape so it doesn't shift while you work.    

3.    You will be able to see your drawing through the red dot very clearly. Trace over all the lines of your pattern with either a pen or ultra-fine tipped marker.  Now your design will be on the red dot medium.

4.    Position the red dot over your burlap and secure it with stick pins. 

5.    Trace over the lines with a Sharpie marker or any marker with a point. The ink from the marker will bleed through the red dot and absorb into the backing.  After you have traced over all the lines remove the red dot and you should see a perfect replica of your pattern.  Now go over the lines on the backing with the marker to darken them.   Don’t press too hard with the marker when working directly on the burlap as it is a rough surface and will wear off the tip fairly quickly.  The tip is what gives you a fine line on your design, keeping it neat and detailed.  Once the marker gets too dull it will make thick lines.   

 6.     Except for objects with straight lines or borders all of the lines of a pattern can be transferred using the red dot medium.  When transferring pattern that has straight edge you have to establish that first on the backing before you position your red dot to do the inside design.  The straight line  will need to be drawn by hand with a pencil.  For instance:  If you have a design that is 15 x 15 you would leave a distance of at least 3” along the outside edge so that the pattern will fit in your frame.  This would mean that you are working with a piece of burlap that is 21” x 21”.  (If you want a wider edge you can make it larger)   Take a ruler and measure  3” in on one side, find the closest channel in the grain, take a pencil and drag it along that channel until it reaches 15” in length.  Then on the end of that first line make  90* turn and  drag the pencil in the nearest channel until you reach 15” in length.  Do the third side of the border and then close off with the fourth side.  You will be using your ruler to measure each line so it is a perfect 15" x 15" square.   This will give you a nice straight outer edge for your pattern and make hooking so much easier on as all the holes will line up.  if there is a border on the pattern you would have had to consider that in your measurements.  If the pattern is 15" x 15" with an inch border around the outside you would have started with a piece of backing this is approximately 23" x 23" so you would have the excess 3"  all around and a design that measures 17" x 17" in total.  

     All geometric patterns like inch mats and anything with squares or straight lines are drawn by hand by dragging a pencil along the grain.  Make sure the pencil is somewhat sharp as when it gets too dull it won’t lay in the channel of the grain.  After you have your lines drawn you can then drag your marker along those pencil lines to darken them.    

Any time you have a design with a house surrounded by trees and shrubs you would transfer everything with the red dot accept the house.   You use the drawing on the red dot to see where the lines should be below it,  find the closest channel (straight row) in the backing grain,  rub the pencil along the grain through the red dot, then lift the red dot on one corner and you will see where your pencil had made a faint line, go over it with the pencil again to widen the channel and then use the marker to darken it.  Follow this process for all the lines on the house, including the door, windows and roof.    A bit of preparation and taking the time to do it right means hooking in straight lines....so much easier than trying to hook a line that goes on and off
the grain, correcting it to the left and then to the right; your line ends up looking like a drunk staggering his way home.   

Not all pattern manufactures produce their designs by hand.  Most companies have them stamped which means lines that are not on the grain.  Enquire before you buy, especially if there are a lot of straight lines in the design and especially if it is an oriental pattern as that means hooking in all horizontal lines....you will be cursing!!!  Before you fork over your hard earned money ask, "Is this pattern straight on the grain?"  When I first started my business I was a bit green and bought designs from pattern houses.  Most were stamped and so crooked my customers wouldn't buy them so they hung on the racks until I recycled them, using the back of the pattern to draw on and hook projects for the shop.  A costly mistake for me, so I decided that I would only sell my own designs, all hand drawn, perfectly straight on the grain and even though it's labour intensive, with some patterns taking over two days to produce, the product speaks for itself.  

We are almost finished editing the new dye book "Dye Me To The Moon" and will be taking it to the printers next week.  Shane is busy cutting swatches to be attached to the labels as soon as everything is printed.  We're all pretty excited!  If not for Shane this book would not be possible, he not only did all the work but he also created most of the formulas.  Momma is very proud!

I have a beginning class of 12 students on Sunday so I'm busy making kits.  The shop is full of wool dust from all the cutting.  Hooking isn't the tidiest hobby in the world.   Like eating crackers in bed you have to keep the vacuum handy.  I'm by far the messiest rug hooker, according to hubby that is, who wonders why I don't work with a garbage can close by. I say it slows me down!  Hook with a frenzy, hand sweep the ends to the floor and then clean it up later.  I beat to a strange drum.  Some people use a plastic container with a slot in the top to collect the ends but I like to pretend I'm allergic to plastic so I can't have it around.  Truthfull, in a house filled with traditional furnishings, a white plastic container stands out like a sore thumb.  Guess I'm anal.   Most who know me will vouch for it but I just take that as a fabulous compliment!  

Speaking of plastic, I'm still trying to figure out a way to hide the kitchen fridge, the massive white elephant that's always in your face.   I think about hooking my Country Sampler pattern and attach it with magnets just to hide the gleaming whiteness of it all.  Tried to conceal it with small magnets holding biz cards, notes and reminders but that just meant aa different kind of ugly.  Someone once said, I should get a sickness so I'd have something real to complain about.  Maybe that's why I got diabetes?  Ah well, that's life. 

To be fair one has to cover both sides of the coin so I'll spotlight the gripper frame inext.   She is a very lovely girl and in a perfect world we would all love to have one but there are pros and cons to this as well, although nothing to shed any tears over, unless of course you're bleeding! 

Don't we love our gripper frames!  So easy, so slick to move your backing around.   Not all gripper frames are created equal but today's designs usually tilt and turn 360* which is what you want to look for.  The older style stationery frames were high in the back and slanted lower in the front with open areas on the sides and front to get at our work.  But if you wanted to hook in a circle you have to keep adjusting the backing or learn to manipulate your wrists.  Frames that turn 360* allow access to every part of your work with a quick spin. 

There are lap frames, sit on frames and floor frames.  You can decide what suits your hooking lifestyle and some of us have more than one frame to cover all our needs.  A smaller, sit on or lap frame for scooting about to hook with groups or at a friend's house and the floor frame at home for comfort in front of the TV. 

Poor granny had to strap down her pattern to a room sized dinosaur that didn't allow any moving of the backing without a great deal of time and effort.  The stationery frame did not allow movement so she ended up hooking in straight lines back and forth.  She would have loved the flexibility of a moving frame, would have thought thought she died and went to heaven!  Today we like portability, visiting friends with hooking in tow and we also like hooking in wavy lines, circles and diagonal lines.  Thanks goodness for evolution of the rug hooking species!

Cons
1. Deadly spikes that scratch our skin and tear our shirts.  Who hasn't bled on their project please stand!  No one? Didn't think so.  Putting the backing on and taking it off is where you are likely to be scratched but leaving it sit around with out a flannel cover, you can accidently brush up against it for a little abrasive contact. 
2. More cost although that isn't a deal buster if you want one. 
3. Gee, can't think of another negative thing to say!

Pros
1. You can leave your work in a gripper frame for as long as you like.  Seeing your project out and ready you are likely too hook more often. 
2. Easy to move your pattern around to get to all areas.
3. You can make or purchase a gripper frame cover to protect you while you work to stop or minimize injury.   
4. Solid hardwood framing means long life.
5. Grippers never wear out.
6. A lot of the gripper designs have a hand rest bar that stretches across beneath the backing.
7. Usually all gripper frames come apart for travel, will fit in a bag or a suitcase.  
8. Patterns with very little edging can still be put on a gripper frame and pulled tight to work. 
 

 
Well, I didn’t crawl into bed until 2.00 am this morning and here I sit practically brain dead.
The house reeks of tripe, for those of you who don’t know what tripe is I’ll try to explain.  Imagine the smell of cow manure mixed with sheep manure and then throw some horse poop on the pile and you pretty much get the drift… I buy tripe in frozen patties and the dogs love it like cats love catnip.  The smell drives them crazy and they become little ravenous pigs gobbling it up. Tripe is the contents of the cow’s stomach at slaughter and that might be disgusting for humans but it's the first thing a wild predator eats after the kill. Yum! 

I feed my dogs homemade diet.  Usually raw or semi cooked and bone.  The optimum diet for a dog is 30% organ meat, 60% muscle meat and 10% bone.  Dogs are carnivores and wheat is not conducive to their diets although the pet food manufactures seem to feel otherwise.  Wheat and byproducts are fillers that don’t serve your dog in any way, shape or form.  If you look inside a canine’s mouth you will see sharp teeth for tearing, ripping and crushing, taking down prey and stripping meat from bones.  I try to feed my dogs a diet that closely relates what they would eat in the wild.  Dogs are scavengers and will eat anything, including another animal’s dung, so although we think our dogs are above this sort of behavior, they’re really just an animal sharing our home. Of course I like to pretend my dogs are the exception to the rule, with above average intelligence and a semblance of culture; after all they dine off of Blue Willow China so elegantly.  But then horror of horrors, they go outside, roll in deer poop just to burst my bubble.   

We have four babies….I mean dogs.  All poodles; three toys and one miniature.  Honey, Fiz, Henri and Jake.  The oldest is nine and the youngest just turned one.  The nine year old doesn’t have one bit of plaque on her teeth, not a hint of discolouration whatsoever and she has never been to the vet for a cleaning.  The secret?  Bones. Real bones, at least twice a week.  We are told not to feed our dogs bones but why?  Vets will say that your dog could choke or get a bone shard in their colon.  That would be sad but I am willing to take the chance to provide my dogs with an optimum diet.  Bone dissolves in the animals gut, like chocolate melts in our hands.  In goes bone and out comes a dry, powdery tube with very little smell.   One person said it best.  No coyote
ever died from eating a chicken, bones and all.  You see it is the cooked bones to avoid, they become brittle and are more apt to splinter but a raw bone is a tough customer.   My dogs will take a marrow bone and scrape the insides until the outside wall is wafer thin.  Bones rub against
their teeth and gums and remove tarter buildup while supplying the necessary nutrients to their diets.  My dogs are pros, can strip a bone of meat and sinew in minutes.   I like to think if they ever found themselves in the wild, you know, if I had a massive heart attack outdoors in the middle of the night during their before bed pee and they wonder off into the woods, they would be able to hunt and know what to do with their kill.  Morbid thoughts I know but it is something I think about being the daughter of a doomsayer, a worry wart who drummed in a potential death scenario for every moment of our childhood.  He could have been famous if Hallmark had a need for an "all the bad things that kill you"  section in their greeting card line.   So, at times when it’s cold and dark out there I worry about my guys and how they would survive.   Hopefully they would hang around and cuddle with me for warmth but maybe I’d be missing a nose when they find me.........

I am compiling thoughts as they come to me or as things pop up in the shop but if there is any topic anyone would like me to discuss please click on the comment box and send your request. 

What a crisp morning and I just noticed that today is exactly two months from Christmas!  Winter's on its way!

Designed for Ruth Anne Nicholson, thence the name, is as traditional as it gets.   Old world charm at its best.  Boosting Crewel/Jacobean style this looker will ad to any existing room or just go ahead and build a room around it! 

At Encompassing Designs we believe in supporting rug hooking autonomy.  If you are the type of personality that soars with eagles, we want to cultivate that confidence and allow you to fly, but if you are the type that feels more comfortable with a bit of guidance our door is always open.

Deep down we all basically know what we want, because we definitely know what we don’t like, and by the process of elimination we usually get to the place we want to be.   I try to dispel any notions that rug hooking is difficult, breaking down the different aspects so that it is less intimidating. The last thing anyone needs is a dependency on other people, preventing them from blazing ahead with their creative mind and materials. Beginning classes that take six months to a year, where you are not allowed to progress past the last lesson until the next appointment seems to be an elementary approach, stunting the student's productivity and the creative drive that attracted them to this art form in the first place. Grandma didn’t take classes, she probably mimicked her mother’s movements and then jumped in with both feet, designed her own patterns and dyed her wool without a full-time mentor, proof positive that it can be done.  Actually some of the most talented rug hookers I know have never taken a lesson beyond being shown how to pull up a loop.  There are those who discourage new rug hookers from pursuing instruction because of the influence it would have on the raw, natural talent they may have.  As humans we tend to conform easily, adapting to external forces and in the process we  can loose a part of ourselves in the process.   Teaching is a tricky deal, you don’t want to influence a student into being a carbon copy of you, a little mini me, pardon the pun.  Your only directive should be to nurture their talent, and promote autonomy so they can confidently make their own  choices. 

I see it all the time. Beginners in the middle of these lengthy courses come into the shop to buy patterns and wool to hook behind their teachers back because they love hooking and want to indulge their own creative ideas immediately. I guess I’ll be in trouble for saying this although I am not casting dispersions on anyone’s teaching style; I'm just passing along the observations and experiences that I have witnessed from twelve years in the business.  I've taken all the requests, complaints and questions of past customers and compiled it into a teaching outline so my
students benefit from the foibles and follies of all those who came before them.

A comment has reached me via the hooking grapevine that I am wrong, that it is impossible to teach rug hooking in a three hour course and of course I agree. What I am teaching is not the A-Z of this craft, no mentor or book can give you that.   Rug hooking, as in all things, is an ongoing education.  What I am promoting is how to properly use a hooking tool to achieve the optimum degree of skill when executing a loop. Just the way you hold your hook can greatly change the way your loops turn out. These details do not get enough attention. My classes are all about how to pull proper loops and minimize wrist strain.  It doesn’t matter what first project you are working on, what matters is that you learn the skill to hook in straight lines, wavy lines, circles and know how to give the proper definition to objects in the design. My goal is to show you the basics so when you attempt something a little more involved, say flower shading, you can concentrate on the position of the wool values to achieve realism, not have to worry about the quality of your loops.    

So many people come into the shop with problems. Although they have taken classes they tell me their technique was not addressed so they fall short on neatness and proper loop formation. Without the right foundation, rug hooking can be frustrating and you might not be able to achieve the quality you wished to accomplish. Over the years I’ve heard many tales of woe and I’ve dispensed tips and helpful advice to literally thousands of customers who complain they could be much happier with their work. Luckily most of the concerns are just an easy fix and they look at me as if I’ve invented the wheel.  I'm no hero, I just like to do things properly and pass it on.  
 
Rug hooking, as in any craft, is meant to be fun so there should never be frustration, pain or blood.  Yes, I meant blood!  A woman took a class, loved it but had to give it up because she bled too much. I asked her to demonstrate how she hooked and discovered she was stabbing the hook tip into the end of a finger below every time it dipped down into the backing hole so the hand could position the wool. It wasn’t long before a bloody sore put an end to her hooking ambitions. A quick correction of her technique put her back in the game and I got a nice big hug!  Another common complaint is that the previous loop falls back down through the hole when the next loop is being pulled up, another simple fix. There should never be any struggle, discomfort or pain associated with rug hooking!  

Here's another common problem I would like to share.  A few years ago a client called and ordered enough hand-dyed yarn to hook a large floral design.  She was an experienced hooker with several decades under her belt. A Snowbird, she was heading to Florida and this was going to be her winter project. I don’t hook with yarn but I do know that one 4 oz skein of 2 ply wool will cover an area approximately one foot square in size. So I hit the dye pots and cooked up a beautiful palette. I was a bit concerned about the quantity of each colour, especially if she ran out and would want me to colour match a year down the road so I made certain she had more than enough to complete the project.

You can understand my surprise when six months later, the woman was back in Nova Scotia and I get a panicked call that she'd run out of the background colour. Oooppps!  She said she only had enough wool to cover half of the background. Double oooppps!  After the initial shock wore off disbelief kicked in.  Impossible!  How could she be out???  I questioned whether she was a high hooker or if she hooked every hole? No was the reply to both. That was all I had and because assessments are impossible over the phone I asked her to come in with the rug so I could figure out what happened.

The rug was fantastic.   The colours were so rich I swooned.  Her hooking was superb; her loops were perfectly uniform almost of machine quality. Everything looked in order... that is until I turned the rug over to view the back. Oh my! The mystery was solved. There was more wool below than was covering the top. When she pulled up each loop through the backing hole she didn’t pull it tight to the back of the rug just pulled enough to achieve the height needed on top. It was amazing she was able to hook with all those floppy, inch long loops hanging below.   Her rug would have been reversible if not for the fact that the hanging loops were way to long and shaggy in their appearance.    

I explained what was happening and showed her how to pull the yarn so it snugged up against the back of the rug.  She was a bit angry.   In all the classes she had attended, no one ever told her she was doing anything wrong.  She was annoyed about all the wool that was wasted over the years and the money that purchased it. She thanked me over and over, and went home to tear it all out and start over.

This was just one of many valuable lessons I've learned from my customers. Noting their struggles has taught me to spend extra care with my students so they fully understand the technique of rug hooking.  Often I have seasoned rug hookers join my class to fix problems that have frustrated them for years. No one leaves my class without the basics under their belt and I tell them, if you feel the need fto build a bit more confidence come back and sit in on a second class for free.  No one has ever taken me up on the offer.  I view that as a good sign.  Despite the objections of others, I feel my beginning class is the best three hour investment any rug hooker can make, and yes, I always check the underside of their projects before they leave. 

Halloween is rapidly approaching.  Carved pumpkins with toothless smiles will invite children to knock on doors for candy treats.   In my time it was common for people to hand out homemade snacks like caramel popcorn, peanut  brittle and the most delicious candy apples with a hard red coating you could lick or bite to gain access  to the juicy apple underneath.  Dressed as creatures
of the night, ghostly figures made from old bed sheets or fairy princesses we were  rewarded with
brown sugar, chocolate or peanut butter fudge, maybe a rice crispy square, handfuls of candy kisses or an apple.  Those were definitely the good old days; a simpler era when mother’s had the time to prepare homemade goodies.   Of course no one will let their kiddies eat homemade Halloween snacks anymore, unless your phone number and name are written on the bag and then only after it's examined with a CSI scrutiny.  Apples are just chucked in the garbage to avoid a potential catastrophe, worried that pins and needles or a razor blade might be buried deep inside its flesh.  Sadly, we live in a different world now. To protect children, some areas have canceled Trick or Treating altogether.  How sad that future generations won’t get to experience All Hollows Eve’s Trick or Treat fun.   

One tradition hasn’t changed though; the desire to decorate our homes with fall colours and seasonal frills.  Throughout the year we sell a lot of autumn geared designs, with pumpkins
and harvest scenes, witches, skulls and haunted houses.  The most popular pattern is called Pumpkin Grinners, weird shaped cat heads sporting Cheshire smiles that crown long necks growing out of pumpkins.   I put the design on the rack with trepidation. Bordering on ugly, it seemed too far out there to sell as a pattern.  Well, I know nothing!  It has become, by
far, the most sought after Halloween design that we sell.  People adore the cats with their overzealous grins.   The finished rug, sold to the shop by rug hooker, Ann Durkee, remained on display for several years until a few weeks ago when someone saw it in our window display, fell in love and bought it on the spot.  Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder.   Now
I miss the darn thing. Those happy faces, curly eyelashes and colourful pumpkins with a rich mottled purple background grew on me and was a great source of fun comments and conversation for the shop.  
     

Pumpkin Grinners hooked by Ann Durkee. 

Saturday is my favorite day in the shop. I 'm there alone and the place feels all mine.  I have a place to work and I get to connect with the customers.  That may sound strange but when Bonnie
and Shane are there it feels less intimate for me as I have no space to work so I’m forced to be upstairs out of sight. Now don't get me wrong, I'm glad for the help...if I had to do the patterns and dye all that wool I'd have burned out long ago. But, on Saturday, there is nothing to separate me from the people coming through the door and the moments we'll share.

I find through the week I'm held prisoner by all the work that goes on behind the scenes. The paperwork, web maintenance, emails and all the boring necessities that hijack a huge chunk of your day leaving little time to hang around downstairs to chat. I miss that!   Of course I am always available for colour planning or advice but the daily grind has a way of abducting the day, leaving little time for the fun.  On Saturday it’s all about the fun.  I'm downstairs, front and center, and I love it!

The solution? I’m having a work station built in the downstairs area.  A place where I can design, work on custom orders that normally have to be done after hours because Bonnie needs the only workspace for pattern production.  This wonderful new desk/counter is coming at the end of the month…let’s call it “my precious”.  In the front will be a nook and stools for customers to sit and chat while I whip up a new design or cut a custom kit.   So the upside, you’ll be seeing a lot more of my mug downstairs in the shop.  Please drop in for a cup of java and a bit of social repartee anytime!  

Canvases are 6" square.  Scraps of Heart Red and Antique Gold for the pear and apple and Green Envy Herringbone for the leaves.

So, I’ve completed two of these little canvases, using the coloured burlap I’ll be selling.  
Coloured linen is also on its way.  Something new to play with and I'm sure both have bright  futures.  

There is something so delicious about not having to hook backgrounds.  I started with fruit designs, although I was asked at my hook-in, “What does fruit have to do with rug hooking?”  But
it’s the fact that the fruit are hooked that makes them relevant.  Anyway they were simple to draw and test the theory to see if the idea would fly, call them prototypes. I think they turned out rather cute, hooked up in less than an hour but I will admit I was less enamored with stretching the burlap around the frame and stapling it tight.  Finicky to make the edge folds look flat and neat.   A few little bulges here and there but impossible to eliminate entirely. I need to glue some craft paper on the backs and attach a hanging device to call them finished.  
 
Next I plan to do some black and white sheep on a red burlap background with all kinds of mystery fibers and whatever comes to mind. I think it would be better to use than Verel for projects where you don't want to hook a background.  I find Verel, or divider cloth, too small holed and polyester turns me off.   I also find it tough to touch as it reacts like pantyhose with rough hands and besides I personally like all things natural .  You can sew up pillows just as nicely with burlap or linen for a unique designer look.  I’ll publish the coloured backings on my site as soon as they arrive with some more creative ideas!
 

Do you ever have a light bulb moment when you come up with a clever idea, get excited like a teenage girl over David Cassidy (showing my age), go to bed and find that sleep is nowhere to be
found?  Your brain is traveling at light speed and the heart is racing from an endorphin high, every fiber of your being is jazzed. That happened to me again last night.  Sleepless nights are no stranger to me; I do most of my creative stuff after midnight, usually in bed.  Hey, no naughty thoughts!  And I don’t need to be inspired to miss sleep, I don’t know if it’s my age, but sometimes sleep is a skittish stranger, the more I chase it the faster it runs from me.  

So last night was no different.  I kept thinking about all the ways this new idea could work, my mind firing like a pistol.  There was no one to throw the idea up against except my four poodles
(Hubby is away working) and it was too late to phone a friend.  As the hours ticked by and the frustration began to click in, I finally gave up, turned on the light and read for a bit. Nothing like a juicy slasher novel to relax my blazing mind.  Finally at 4:00 am my eyelids began to droop so I turned off the light.  I guess there will be plenty of time to rest when I’m dead; in the
meantime I have another fabulous idea.  I’ll make it up and share the finished product in the next few days. Have to make a run to Michael’s for a canvas form, some spray paint and a staple gun at Home Depot.  
   

I have a funny story associated with the “Queen of The Sea” pattern.

Anyway, I’m in my studio and I’ve just finished the design when a middle aged man comes in to browse the shop.   He saunters over to my workspace and looks down at the drawing.  I kid you not…his forehead broke out in tiny dots of perspiration.    He kept staring at the mermaid’s over-endowed chest for an uncomfortable amount of time, mouth agape.  The appeal was lost on me, first of all it was a drawing of black lines on white paper and the breasts were very discreetly covered with starfish.   

So I did the only thing I could do and asked him “Do you think they’re big enough?” 

I tell no lie…he replied with labored breath, “Ohhhhh yes”.  It came out soft and slow, almost a whisper. 

And then I just couldn’t resist and asked, “What do you think of the octopus?”   Referring to the big, two foot long octopus directly below the mermaid.  His reply?  “What octopus?”

I'm not that computer savy, spend little time searching the web, have a website and email (a business  necessity), so I'm not so computer literate that I am comfortable with all the new techy stuff.  But after only two days of going live with my new website and Facebook, I've already met several very interesting people and have already found two of my designs hooked on people's walls that I would never have seen otherwise.  As a designer, the most exciting part of the process is seeing the finished piece, how the patterns are interpreted by each artist.  My designs are like my children...how I love to see them grow up and become beautiful adults! 

This rug, Queen of the Sea was the second mermaid piece I had ever designed.   How wonderful it was to see it hooked on Debbie Kelley's Facebook page.  I heard myself saying WOW before I realized I said the word.    The rug was plied with ribbons, how great is that?  I don't know who's more proud, Debbie or me?  
 
In Debbie Kelley's words. 
I won a blue ribbon and purple 'best hooked rug' at the Deerfield Fair which is a
large agricultural family fair held here in my town, Deerfield, NH. This is only
my second rug and she took me forever to hook ( I am the slowest hooker in the
world) so I was mighty excited, extremely proud and wicked happy ! Yes, of course, you can
post the rug on your site. I tagged you in a couple of my photos so they should
already be showing up on your page. Thanks for making my day ! :) 

Welcome all to my blog!  This is a new concept for me but it's proof positive you can teach old dogs new tricks!   Those of you who know me already, know I love to talk and I think I have a lot to say after twelve years in business, thirteen years a hooker. I can't wait to share tips and funny antidotes that have happened along this magical journey since opening my shop door. Call it a passion or an obsession, we all know what I mean.  

So many things have happened, so many changes and all for the good.  We have a lovely new studio as of 2007 when my husband and I renovated the building we are in now.  The first floor, retail area, is 1000 sq. ft. crammed full of hooking treasures, stocked with top quality rug hooking merchandise from floor to ceiling.  Upstairs I teach and host workshops and our group, The Main Street Hookers, meet for fellowship and inspiration every 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month.  

So lets get started on the blogging.......  I would like to share a story prompted by a recent email from a customer who sent us a picture of a hooked stool top.  Lunenburg Tea Cosy is one of our designs which a customer adapted into a stool cover by squaring off the top of the pattern.  Instead of the traditional red buildings of Lunenburg she vamped the design by selecting various colours, bringing a whole new feel to the pattern.  Suddenly it represented any fishing village along the eastern seaboard, a quaint harbour in Newfoundland, a small inlet of Nova Scotia, a coastal scene from Maine.   

Hooking is like baking, give the same recipe to 10 people and every dish will have a different flavour. Thank goodness as this makes us all unique! The same is true with rug hooking.  The same pattern given to 10 hookers will tell a different story.  Over the years, I have noticed that some people find it difficult to recognize an unhooked pattern on the rack from the finished rug on the wall.  Colour is a huge influence, pulling from our memory banks past experiences.  We react  the same way to visual stimuli as we would respond to a pleasant scent through smell.  Red may represent the dress that a favorite aunt used to wear, yellow can be the blond girl that stared back at you in the mirror.  Rose, the dominant colour of the floral wallpaper at grandma's house.  Green, a blanket you suckled as a small child.  Memory and past experiences influence all aspects of our lives. 

Colour is so personal.  We wear it ever day.  We choose our clothes, gravitating toward  certain colours time and time again.  Through experience, I believe that people buy rugs because of the colour first and the composition second.  Probably the same is true for paintings.  I ask rug purchasers what attracted them to the piece and "the colours" is the usual answer.  We anal types like our art to fit our homes, not clash and stand like a sore thumb.  We paint our walls and decorate our interiors first and then everything else skips down the same path.  

An interesting observation I'd like to share. When customers come in the shop for colour planning a new project, they may not be sure where to begin, so we work together until we whittle it down to what pleases their eye.  Time and time again I have to laugh, and let them know that they have chosen the same colours that  they are wearing that day.  They look down at their clothing and smile as the realization hits them. I boost customer confidence by telling them they colour plan every day.  They dress themselves in coordinating outfits.  Look at your rug as if you are dressing your body, it may help remove the apprehension out of the task.  

I am told by a lot of rug hookers that colour planning is daunting.  But remember, your aren't out on a limb....believe it or not your palette is partially chosen for you.  Most of the rugs we hook are for our homes so if this next project is slated for the living room, draw on the colours in the curtains, the sofa, the throw cushions and carpet.  There is no need to stress, your colour palette is being handed to you on a silver platter, reach out and grab it! Look at your surroundings and invite those colours in.  Your home, the proverbial nest, is a representation of your favorite colours so run with it.  

Tip: If you need help to dye the wool, gather paint chips and samples of your upholstery to take to your closest rug studio and use them as a guideline to plan your next heirloom, or dive into the dye pot and create those colours yourself.   Don't try to be too matchy matchy, colours blend beautifully if tonally close. 

There, I've lost my blog virginity, and I would like to say that it was very pleasurable!   Hopefully you haven't fallen asleep, I'll try to keep the words to a minimum in future...this being my first time I got carried away!

Lunenburg Cosy squared off and hooked with lively colours. 
Great job Dody Conner!