Gene Shepherd's Blog Hook-In

I'm having a lot of fun working on the December 2008 Rug Hooking Magazine free pattern with Gene Shepherd's Blog Hook-In ( http://www.geneshepherd.com ). The original pattern is a basket full of Christmas greens and a Noel ribbon, which is not really my kind of pattern, so I started out by following Gene's alternative tweaked pattern. I hooked a bluebird, and then thought that a basket of flowers, even with a bluebird was not really my kind of pattern, so I added a cat slinking in from the opposite side. The cat really didn't look like a cat, so I asked Vicki of fanXstitch if she would draw a sort of evil cat for me.

She drew a wonderful sly looking cat, but when I copied the drawing and translated it into hooking with size 8 strips, it didn't look evil and really didn't look much like a cat. Also, although it doesn't show much in the picture, the greenish/yellow tweed wool was definitely the wrong color. I shaped the cat face a little to give it some dimension and added some whiskers that were cut from a plastic bag I was saving for onion dyeing.

Then I added some flowers, doing sort of freestyle mini-prodding, mostly with size 8 strips, although I tore wider strips for the bigger yellow padulas.

I changed the cat to brown, kind of lost the face that I liked even though it was not sly, and kind of lost the whole point of having the cat. Today, I am either going to redraw the cat so he is facing in the opposite direction or eliminate him all together. I like the basket, the handle, and the flowers, but the bird seems pretty dull and kind of extraneous - and will be especially if I delete the cat. Plus, if I delete the cat, I'll have to hook in the left side of the basket and I really like it exactly like it is.

Well, I'll see. I think I have to go out to the barn and find some plain gray wool for the new cat. No more tweeds.

Mystery Solved!

The mystery of the black bag left at the antique shop is solved! It was indeed Linda Smiths, and, unhappily, she and her husband are victims of the Michigan disaster - her husband was layed off from three different jobs, all auto business related. They finally had to make the tough decision to leave their home. Her husband found a good job down south, Linda is going to have to give up her teaching job and her rural life style and move into an apartment.

UGH! I gave up teaching when I retired and I still miss it. I'm uncomfortable every September when school starts, like an old workhorse put out to pasture, and I often see or do things that I'd like to share with students. Maybe Linda is young enough she won't feel that way - she'll find some kind of teaching to do down there. But - giving up rural living?? Not me, not ever, No Way!

I grew up with neighbors right next door - so right next door that I could stay awake at night and hear them carrying on their lives, just like listening to a soap opera on the radio. Now, my nearest neighbors are not within shouting distance, and I like it that way. When I was driving the tractor on a hot summer day during haying season, I could whip off my T-shirt and only worry about being spotted by low-flying pilots. So, I doubt I could do what Linda is doing - moving far away, leaving her mother, sister, and son behind. I suppose it's a lot like what our ancestors did when they loaded up their wagons and looked for greener pastures.

Linda is going to leave her chickens behind. Two of them. A rooster and a hen, pets that she hatched from eggs ordered from Maine. Lucky for me, she's going to leave them with me. I'll try to take the best of care of them, in case she eventually becomes a rural person again.

Maybe I'll try to finish hooking her rooster mat so she can take it with her.

Good-bye Antique Shop

Well, the bad economy in Michigan is good luck for me. My neighbors at my store in the village of Hamburg have had an engineering/design business that was tied to the automotive companies. There just isn't enough business for them to survive, so Suzanne has decided she wants to open a shop - she used to have one quite a few years ago in the building that is now their home and his design business - so she wants to lease my building. I want to keep my studios upstairs (where on earth could I find a place to store twelve looms??) so she's going to lease the downstairs - which is still filled with my antique business. So she'll sell my antiques for me along with her hand-made items - and they'll clean-up and fix-up the building.

We walked through the building today and I realized there's still quite a bit of rug hooking inventory downstairs that I'll have to move upstairs, but only a few other things that I'd like to hang onto. What a huge relief! I have not liked leaving the building unprotected, and kids have broken in several times, but I just haven't allowed myself to worry about it. I had talked about selling the building, but this is no time to do that and I really didn't want to give it up, someday I won't be caring for my mother anymore and I'll want to have work to do - so, this way I can have my cake and eat it, too. I have a huge antique inventory, and I'll only get half of my list price for the items, but I wasn't even getting that half while everything was in there gathering dust - and this way, I won't have to pay for the utilities. This will be good for me and good for the whole village - and, anytime I can, I can reopen my rug hooking business.

A Mystery

I stopped at my antique shop today. I was planning to serve onion soup for dinner and I wanted to get some soup bowls from the shop. I haven't been there for some time, usually now I only go if UPS has delivered a package there by mistake. I had the wrong key ring, so I didn't get the soup bowls, but I did find a big black plastic bag leaning against the front door. I glanced inside, saw that it was full of bags of wool, and put it in the car. I puzzled about the bag all the way home. I thought it had probably been left by a disenchanted or discouraged hooker, since bags of wool have appeared for those reasons in the past.

When I opened the bag at home, I found plastic bags full of wool, some cut, some not cut. There was a nice hoop, a pair of scissors, and a bag with a number of felted ball pin cushions.

There was no note, no explanation. There was an unfinished rooster rug, but that didn't offer any clues, other than it was hand-drawn and not a commercial pattern.

Then I found a real clue, that was even more confusing. If this bag belonged to Linda Smith, maybe it was just accidently left. Maybe it's a bag of ongoing projects, I can't imagine Linda Smith giving up hooking. It's not just a bag of leftover wool - there's some unused linen in the bag, too. It doesn't make any sense at all, I can't imagine Linda Smith giving up hooking - but it does make sense that this is her bag. The rooster would be one of hers, too - she gave me the chickens that started my revived interest in raising chickens. I think that was three or four years ago. I don't have her phone number and can't remember her husband's name, and Smith's are just too hard to find. I saw Linda last fall at the Webster Township Festival and haven't seen her since. I know where she lives, but don't know her teaching schedule this year - she teaches either morning or afternoon - I'll have to try and stop at her house sometime soon and find out what this bag means.

Making Antique Black

I drew a new pattern today - which I won't describe because I might use it for the Yahooker swap, instead of the one that required so many color adjustments. I needed antique black wool for the new pattern, but if I have any, it's out in the barn and I just didn't feel like walking out in the bitter cold to find it. I had some wool jackets and coats down in the basement, so I picked four of them, cut off a sleeve from each jack, and threw them into a dye pot. There was a dark green, a black and white herringbone, a brown and red tweed, and a black. The dyepot already had some leftover red dyewater and some dish soap in it. That one sleeve was probably black, but I'm working in such week light that I could be wrong, it could be navy blue. I was finally pretty sure it was black when the water in the dyepot started to change color.

I checked the color of the dye water by dipping a jar into the pot and holding it up to the light. After more than half an hour of simmering, the color was still very weak, so I figured I needed some more black, but I really didn't want to cut up any more of that black jacket. Then I remembered the sleeve linings - two of them were black and I had just thrown them away. I retrieved them from the waste basket and added them to the pot. About fifteen minutes later, I had a strong black in the dye water. I added a couple glugs of vinegar, and let the whole pot simmer for another half hour.

Patient dyers will remove a dyepot from the heat source and let it cool overnight - but not me. I singed my fingers by turning the faucet in the kitchen sink to as hot as I could get it, and then removing the wool from the pot to rinse it in the sink. The wool was really dyed black, only the two pieces of brown tweed showed any of the original color - at least while it was still very wet. I laughed to myself as I hung the pieces in the basement - I'll let them drip dry until morning, then I'll put them in the dryer. The laughing was because I was thinking about Gene Shepherd's blog and his beautiful yards and yards of wool hanging out to dry in his hot California sunshine - and here I was quite pleased with my colorless wool in a dark and creepy Michigan basement.
Sunday morning: Here is the finished antique black - the camera makes it look a lot lighter than it looks to my eye, maybe because it's sitting on a green jacket, but it isn't the dull sooty black that it looked like when it was wet. There is a nice variety of texture that I'm going to enjoy. Now I'm ready to strip it and start hooking!

I had the surprising good fortune to win two Ebay auctions for antique hooked rugs. The rugs aren't in perfect condition, but I like to look at the work of the old hookers - especially the hookers who made rugs intended to be used. The rug in the first three pictures is in good shape everywhere except down the center line. It doesn't show in the photo, but there are two rows right in the center where the burlap is worn out. The whipping was done with a very thin yarn, almost just a wool thread, and it completely covers the edge of the burlap - I'm only assuming the backing is burlap, I haven't really checked yet.


I took this photo to show the thin whipping thread, but now I'm intrigued with the way the black hooking made such a perfect corner. It almost looks like different people hooked different parts, since the pink is hooked so much tighter than the black, and then the gold looks like a different hooking style altogether.

If you draw an imaginary line between the rose buds, then find it's center and move about an inch to the right, you can see the strip where the hooking is gone and the burlap is worn out.

The pattern and the choice of colors looks like what I think of as a dimestore kit - I don't know why I call them that since I never saw a hooked rug kit in a dimestore, but that's where I think they would have been sold. I suppose I'm showing my age by even remembering dime stores.

The second rug is much larger than the first, it's as wide as the first one is long. It's also much more worn than the first one. It seems like a rug that was really cared about, it has already been mended in quite a few places. There is burlap added on the back and there are places where new hooking was added.

This is half of the rug, and it looks pretty good, although I suspect the burlap is having a hard time holding the weight of the rug when it isn't placed on the floor.

You can see the patches in this photo. The patches are all around the edges, although the outer edge hasn't shredded the way many old rugs have.

Here are the two spots that are in the worst condition. I suppose they could be mended the same way the other places have been repaired. I might someday do the repair, but if I do, I will probably put some muslin or canvas all over the back to try to support the weight of the rug.

I probably won't put the rugs on the floor - when I did put them down to look at them, I had to fight off two dogs who were determined to claim the rugs as their own. I'm sure the burlap on the largest one is not going to survive the pressure of dogs rolling, or even walking on it.

I really enjoy looking at these rugs and wondering who hooked them and where they were placed for so many years. There are no hints like worn pathways or protected areas on either rug to indicate that they were placed in or out of a traffic pattern. They both look like they have been walked on a lot, especially the large one. The large one seems to have been made with a variety of fabrics, the smaller one looks like all wool strips, although at first I thought some of the colors might have been hooked with yarn.

Color change

Well, I decided I just couldn't stand the motif color on my swap mat, so I changed it. Reverse hooked and rehooked with a darker color. Looked at that for a while, and decided I just couldn't stand it - so, reverse hooked it again. Then I chose the shade of the same color that I had wanted to use in the first place, and now I like my little mat for the first time. I think I won't use it for the swap, though. I still want to come up with another design.

I recently acquired a metal sculpture and I think I want to use a drawing of it for my next design. It would be similar to the present mat, same basic motif, just a very different approach. The new one would be based on a sculpture from East India and the old one was based on a native American Indian talisman. The same subject has been important in two such diverse cultures, and in mine, too!

Swap Hooking

I hooked on my swap trivet until late last night. I had to quit when my wrists wouldn't stop hurting, even when I soaked them in hot water. I'm working on finding the kind of movements that will let me hook for long spells of time without using my wrists - so far, no luck. I have learned that using a longer strip on the bottom helps, that is, my fingers work further away from the backing so I don't have to bend my wrist when I pinch the loop onto the hook. I've never heard any other hookers complain about their lower hand or wrist hurting, but I bet I'm not the only one. Although, I suppose there aren't too many hookers who've had their wrists smashed by horses. I guess there are consequences for all the foolish things done when we were young and foolish.

Anyway, I was working on my trivet for the Yahookers swap. I had to work in almost darkness because my mother went to bed and I hook in the room next door. No matter which lights I turn off, she complains about the lights. I even tried hooking with my headlamp on, but it scared my mother because there was light moving around - so, anyway, I hook with one little light on, and I hook as close to it as I can get - and that proved to be a big mistake with this trivet. I'm hooking with some wool that I dyed with some bled color - I thought the original wool was not the right color, so I bled some of the color out - then I put some off-white wool into the dyepot and got a nice mottled piece of the color. It was a little brighter than I had planned, but I expected my dull background color would absorb some of the brightness. I used that mottled piece for my main motif, liked it in the dark, and I was really surprised how much I didn't like it the next morning in the sunlight. Yuk. The dull background didn't absorb the brightness, it caused a color shift - the color moved over a notch on the color wheel and stayed just as bright, or actually a little brighter. I'm thinking about pulling it all out and rehooking the main motif with a different color, but, while I'm thinking about it, I'm working on designing another pattern. I think now I'm not as fond of the first pattern as I was.

A Great Hooking Afternoon

I'm sorry I haven't been very active on this blog, I've been spending my blogging time on the blog I set up when I acquired a great new farm dog - well, when I started the blog and got my new acquisition to the farm, I wasn't so sure he was a great dog. I thought writing about my experiences with him would help me make decisions about him. Come on over and see how I've been spending my time when you're through here, the dog blog is http://gibbydogblog.blogspot.com

Luckily, I had a little rug hooking afternoon today. My cousin came to visit for the afternoon. She has expressed interest in learning to hook several times, ever since I went with her sister-in-law to an Amy Oxford workshop in northern Michigan. She wants to set a time with her sister so they can both come to hook, but I decided to strike while the iron was hot even though she was here alone: I started by showing her some hooks, several different kinds, and some loops that were already pulled on a practice pattern. I wanted her to see the difference between traditional hooking and the punching from the Amy Oxford workshop. Then I pulled out a couple of books, one of them by Cynthia Norwood, and then on to the Youtube videos I discovered yesterday. I think my two favorites make a great combination, one by Deanne Fitzpatrick and the other by Gene Shepherd. I wanted Jane to know that decisions about how to hook would be up to her, after she learns the basics. Deanne hooks so amazingly fast that the backing threads sing and Gene hooks slowly, precisely, and very accurately. Deanne says it's okay to pull loops down a little when you pull on the next one, Gene says the opposite and shows how to avoid pulling down earlier loops.

I probably overwhelmed Jane with books - I pulled out Cynthia Norwood's book and the Leslie Linsley book, then one of Deanne's books, then a second one, and that led to talking about Deanne's background and her family from Newfoundland, and that, of course, led me to talking about the history of Newfoundland and Labrador and Dr. Grenfell - and I pulled out the Silk Stocking Mats book. Then I followed up with two books by Gene Shepherd and a couple chapters of Gene's proddy dvd.

I hope Jane still wants to hook! I had a wonderful time, and I didn't even pull a loop - I love hooking!

Fungus Dyeing

While looking for my lost dog yesterday, I spotted something white in the fencerow, so I stopped the car to investigate. I discovered two giant puffballs. Later, I was able to identify them as Calvatia gargantua.
I took the closest one home and took a photo of it with a coke can to show the size - it's larger than a soccer ball.
It may already be too late to use it for dyeing, there's a split in it that shows some yellowing of the inside. I was glad I kept it in a cardboard box because a lot of moisture was seeping out of it.
I sliced off a chunk of it and found that the inside was a light tan color. To eat it, it would have to be snow white, and I wouldn't be surprised if dyeing would have the same requirement - but I'm going to try it anyway.
I cut the slice into two inch squares and took the rest of the puffball outside. I put it in a woody area not too far from the house - maybe next year I won't have to be down at the farm to find puffballs.

I put the puffball pieces in a pot of water and turned on the stove. I let them simmer for about an hour.

The water had turned a nice brown color when I turned off the heat. I wanted the dyepot to cool before removing the puffball pieces, but it was already quite late and I fell asleep while the pot was cooling. This morning, the water color had cleared quite a bit, so I turned on the heat again and simmered the pot for another hour, then I removed the puffball and put a pre-mordanted piece of wet wool in the pot. (I took the puffball pieces outside and dumped them in another woody area where it would be nice to find giant puffballs next year.) The wool isn't dry yet, but it looked like it would be a warm and mottled yellow-brown. I was concerned about the color being fast, so I poured in a glug of vinegar, and the wool color changed right away. I'm not sure now that it's going to look any different from a dirty cleaning rag. It will, at least, be mottled.

Mushroom Dyeing

I haven't been hooking much lately, I'm getting ready for an exciting new dye project. I have been in love with mushrooms for forty years. I used to hike around in wild areas just to see them, and way back when, I could even identify dozens of kinds, at least by common names. I had two friends who were my former teachers and who were also excited about mushrooms and wild flowers. We used to go hiking with our Euell Gibbons Stalking the Wild Asparagus and other identification books and "stalk" for hours. We ate a lot of wild plants, which worked out okay because they were both gourmet cooks - I was just an eater. Unfortunately, they have both passed on, and I have been too busy for some years now to do much stalking.

This year, I decided I couldn't wait much longer to stalk some more, even if I just go on short little hunts. I started my hunting on the internet, ordered several mushroom identification books, but I'm finding that none compare to the one I used to use. I'm going to have to hunt through my books at the farm and see if I can't find that good old book. I also acquired a highly recommended book about dyeing with mushrooms - had it here for two weeks before I had enough time to open it. People seem to have stopped using common names for mushrooms, everything is listed under scientific names, which makes it much harder for me to re-learn what I used to know. I have gathered quite a few mushrooms anyway, figuring I'll identify them later.

I'm trying to figure out how to dry the mushrooms before they turn all gooey. I put them in a covered dyepot with some newspaper, then put the pot in the sunshine. I thought the heat would dry them pretty quick, but not so. Three days, so far, and they haven't changed a bit, other than making a good spore print.

While the ones I have collected are drying, I'll have to figure out how many I need to dye. I believe the dye process is basically the same as other natural dyeing, various mordants making different colors, etc. - but I have a lot to learn.

Natural Dyes

I started dyeing this week with some pine cones, gathered from the little pine woods that belongs to my mother. I gathered some brown ones and some green ones, simmered them up for half a day, let the pot cool, removed the pine cones, and put pre-mordanted wool in the pot.
The mordant was alum, but I seem to have lost my cream of tartar, so I left it out. The wool became stiff enough to teach me that cream of tartar is a good thing. The color is a warm brown, however, I should have strained the dye through some muslin because there is some pitch from the pine cones that adheared to the wool (you can see the darker brown spots on the wool).
On the way to the pine woods, I walked beneath a hickory tree that had already dropped a lot of nuts, so I gathered a bagful. I followed the same procedure as with the pine cones, only the dye was hardly present after one day, so I let the nuts, in their green husks, soak for three days. I might have had quicker results if I had chopped up the hulls, but I didn't want to make that much mess.
To make clean-up easier, I used an old enamel spaghetti cooker. It consists of two parts, the inner part is a strainer, so I could just lift it out of the pot and leave the dye bath in the pot.
This hickory dye was not as rich in color as I've had before. The picture shows it a little grayer than the actual color, perhaps because I took the photo when the wool was still wet. The picture shows hickory nuts in the hull and out of the hull on the dyed wool. (addition September15 - I put the wool back in the dye pot and let it sit for a couple days. It turned a much darker soft brown.)

My next project is walnut dyeing. I have an ice chest full of bottled walnut dye that I made last year. I've gathered some fresh walnuts so I can compare year-old walnut dye with fresh dye. If it continues to rain as it has all day today, I should get that project going tomorrow. I'm going to use the walnut dye as an overdye for some textured wools and maybe some plaids.

Sauder Village Rug Show

I've just started posting some photos of the Sauder Village rug show. There were 500 rugs on display and I wasn't able to take photos of all of them, but I do have a lot more photos to post.

I'm Hooking Again

With all that's been going on here; big dog George sick, losing Rusty dog, acquiring new dog Gibby, niece and family visiting from Guatamala, and getting extensive dental work done (three hours at a time in the dental chair, moooooaaaaaannnn), I haven't had time for hooking. Also, all of my hooking supplies have moved out to the new studio, but it's been waaay too hot to sit out there and I didn't want to carry it all back into the air-conditioned house - sooo... I turned to eBay.

I have enjoyed looking at the little kits made by Sharon Perry and auctioned on eBay for quite a while. She is Deanne Fitzpatrick's sister and often I see a bit of Deanne's flavor in Sharon's little rugs. Her kits are usually pretty basic and I decided that's what I need - something already planned, with the wool already cut - something I can hook without thinking. So, I bought one of Sharon's kits - a penny rug pattern that came in the mail yesterday. I started hooking it last night - I did have to go out to the studio to get my hook bag and one of my frames, but all of the wool is already cut and fits in a gallon size plastic bag - much easier than having to choose wool from my stash and much cleaner than having to cut strips and have wool dust all over. So, I am doing a lazy project - I have to think a little more than planned, since I have to decide what colors to put together in the pennies, but at least it's all sitting there right in front of me. Nice to be hooking again.

Found Rug

I stopped for a quick check of the local consignment shop and couldn't believe my luck - I found the rug in the photo. It's mounted on a piece of plywood. The burlap edges that are usually folded and whipped are just folded over the edges of the plywood. The burlap still has the pattern label showing that it's called Stained Glass Bench 13 x 26 by Jane McGown Flynn. On the back, on the wood, is the inscription, "Love and Blessings Barbara Branch 6/86". Barbara Branch and I used to belong to the ATHA chapter, Heirloom Hookers, in Northville, MI. I think she may now belong to the McGown guild in Dearborn, MI, but I haven't seen her for a few years. I couldn't leave it in a shop where someone who never heard of hooking might buy it, or, worse yet, might not buy it and it might just stay there.