Mary Schlech show and tell.....

A treat by Guest Blogger Mary Schlech

Mary said it was fun raiding my shop of wool during our special on plaids! 
I think the smile says it all! 

Remember this?  You helped me try and figure out how to make the feet look dusty.  This was from a photo taken in Uganda and I gave it to a friend who had joined with us to reach out to people in this tiny rural community. Webale nnyo nnyo means thank you very much in Lungandan.  The website for what we are doing there is www.ugandaventure.com

Hi Christine, I promised you pictures, sorry it’s taken me so long! This was the first one I did for our cottage. I wanted to do some of the birds we see regularly pass by. I liked the image of flying Canada geese and thought a square geometric background would be a nice contrast and fun to hook, using up extra blue wool. I find by Googling my subject and then checking out the images I find plenty of subjects to choose and draw.

Next I drew a blue heron. I wanted the background to be colourful because the heron is such a tall goofy grey bird! I added the frame with the fish to draw the colours out and maybe because I was feeling silly.
The cormorant was another goofy black bird that needed some back up! I ran out of the background wool so decided to add colourful balloons. This is my favourite rug of all. I feel like it says “welcome to the party!”.

Thanks for all the help and advice you’ve given me over the years. Your store is always a treat to visit… so many beautiful rugs and supplies. Hope to see you soon, Mary

Here is my first original design.  You helped me with the colours showing me how to get the stained glass effect with light to dark dyed wool and told me to make it big enough to have plenty of colour between black outlines . It was so much fun I gave it to a dear friend. 

This is the first piece I've hung on a wall. I wanted to represent the sound of a loon at night, haunting and beautiful. I used, along with wool, sari silk, yarn, and even a silver sweatshirt string discarded as being tacky by my son. I bound the edges with a strip of sari material. It was fun to hook.

My son married a beautiful girl form Dublin.   When we went to the wedding we visited Trinity College where the Book of Kells was on display, the ancient biblical manuscript with fantastic, colourful images drawn and painted around the year 800.  So for Christmas I made this rug, using some of the images from the book.  It was challenging! Celtic designs are crazy!  I had to colour the design at first to make sense of it.  Again thanks so much for your help with colour choices and design thoughts.  I Think the newly weds liked their rug.