MY ENCOUNTER WITH A UFO...

For those  of you who are skeptic, not to worry, I haven't gone totally  wacky yet... We call unfinished objects UFO. As most rug hookers knows, a lot of us like to hook but finishing the edges is not as exciting so we often finish hooking a rug and roll it up and put it away. Out of sight, out of mind until we find it again just to gingerly put it back in it's hiding place because we want to start a new rug...

This is exactly what happened to me this week when I was looking for a piece of wool. I found my little prim kitty rug that I had won as a give away from Lauren of Rugs and Pugs blog.

Here is the cute prim kitten  rug kit I received  on March 24, 2011. It was hooked up and  I had several ideas but couldn't decide what I wanted to do with it so it was rolled up and put away with the other UFOs.

This week, I was hooking and needed a place to rest my sharp snipper scissors  without scratching my table and then a light bulb went on... I'll use my kitten rug as a protective mat for my table.  I love to look at it because it reminds me of Lauren, a special generous blogger friend.

I cut a piece of charcoal wool about half an inch wider than the rug and sewed it on the back.
It's purrfect to protect my table from scratches and all my tools are where I can find them. Thanks again Lauren. I love it even more now that I have a good use for it.

To show you how I did it. I basted the zigzag edge of the backing  about half of an inch with white thread so I could pull it out easily after I was done.
Then I basted the back to hold it together and carefully sewed small stitches around close to the loops to hide all the white. The color came out blue but it is actually charcoal.  Since it was a small project, it was rather fun. I don't know why I didn't think of a use for it until now. It was meant to be...

Here is the back finished.

An update on my grandfather rug. I think I'll have to dye some more wool as I find the dark outline too dark. I had dyed some dark grey wool but apparently it was too dark to begin with.  I'll leave it for now until finished.

 The maple leaves on the collar were too bright so I married some wool to tone the color down and I used it on the buttons.  It's more of a burnished gold. Now I want to pull the maple leaves and re-hook them.  It won't take long to do that but I hate to rip...

I still haven't fixed that right eye in the inner corner. I need to bring the corner down a notch. Easier said than done and that's why it's still there. I need to be in the right mood to re-hook that...

My sign of Spring. Daffodils growing next to about three feet of snow on the South side on the lower cement deck in the back of the yard. It was too cold to get in the snow in my slippers so I took the shot at a distance.  The photo is too dark but you can see the shoot coming out.

The snow has gone down a lot when we had a few warm days but it's been cold again but sunny.
Thanks for your visit. I never take you for granted. I always appreciate your comments. They make me feel like you stopped to say Hi.

Only 6 days and 23 hours and some minutes to SPRING. Yeah.....

JB