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.