SPRING RITUAL FOR AN OLD GARDNER & RUG HOOKING

Every year for as long as I can remember, I bought seeds and started to plant them to get an early start on those that needed a longer season to grow. We have a large plant nursery only a few minutes from where I live but being on a tight budget when I first started gardening made me conscious of spending my money wisely. I must confess that I enjoyed seeing the seeds sprouting and seeing the miracle of growing plants blooming with a little care.

I get more satisfaction from doing it myself and I can read about how every variety behaves and I make my choice accordingly. Seeds used to be very cheap but not anymore.

There is over $133. worth of seeds on the table. Hard to believe how expensive seeds are but if I was to buy the plants, it would be so much more.

In January, I look through the seed catalogs and I make my selection then in March I take my selection to our local Feed and Need store and gave them my order and in a few days, I got my seed order shipped from Vesey's Seeds for free. I got a call that my order is ready and I just went to pick them up at Feed and Needs and paid for them. I love this arrangement. My favorite seed catalog is Vesey's Seeds from PEI.

Many years ago, my husband George made me a grow light stand. I have it in my basement and I also have a grow mat that I use to keep some seedlings that need heat to sprout. I have to turn my lights on in the morning before I go to the barn and I turn them off at night before going to bed. I can put a timer on but I like to go check up on how they are doing.

So far I only have Geraniums growing but I planted my begonia seeds yesterday... My geranium are getting their second sets of leaves but I didn't take photos, but I have 11 seedlings growing.

My new scrappy rug using leftover small pieces of wool from other projects.

I've been hooking a chairpad as a challenge from our hooking group on Rug Hooking Daily, an online forum for fibre artists and I'm using little pieces of leftover wool from other hooking projects. Our group is called GREAT STASH DEWORMING MARATHON and we're always having so much fun. The worms I refer to are thin strips of wool that we use to hook with as seen on my new worm holder. 

As you can see I took out several rows of hoops to make his neck slimmer.  This is George the Rooster, by the way...  I'm debating on changing some too bright colors or over dying them. I'm just having fun with this. I can do that later if I decide to do it. As you can tell, not too much effort and thoughts went into designing the feathers.

The turquoise color you see on the breast feathers come from a piece of wool I marbelized not long ago. You can see it drying on the left. It's always fun to find a use for a strange piece of marbelized wool. I had no idea what I would use it for as I was experimenting  marbelizing for the first time

Thanks for visiting and leaving a comment. Have a great weekend and stay safe.
Julia

IS BIGGER ALWAYS BETTER?

In  April 2011 I attended an Annual Fibre Art Festival in Mahone Bay Nova Scotia with Jackie my daughter and her friend Sarah.  It's hard to believe it's been that long ago... I really enjoyed myself and met a lot of nice fiber artists.

One thing that got my attention was a  tabletop size wooden rack to hold wool worms for rug hooking that a fiber artist was using and it was totally covered with wool worm. I've been wanting one ever since and I looked everywhere online but couldn't find one, so the other day I decided to try to make one myself. I purchased 3 oak lats at Home Depot and I already had a package of small dowels from the Dollar Store. I wasn't sure how to start but I did some measuring and marked the lats using a soft pencil and dressmaker ruler, I marked precisely where to drill holes for the small pegs and I also marked where to cut lats and the small pegs. It took me quite a while to do this and I showed it to my husband and he said, "Oh I'll take that to Lorenzo and he can cut that for you. He also took a thick piece of pine board for the base.

I had shown how tall the worm holder was approximate, using my hands. Later on that day, George arrived home with a floor model of the wool worm holder. It was beautiful but it was so wide that I had difficulty getting it through the door in my hooking room. Do men think that bigger is better?lol...

This evening, George said I'm sure we can make a table size one.  I think that would be nice. So maybe bigger is OK but smaller is more practical for me.

So here is a photo of the floor model. The top can turn so I don't have to reach to the other side.

Even though I wanted a table size model, this one will work just fine for home but if ever I retire and want to go to hook-ins, I may want a table size model. Now I got to transfer my next challenge chairpad rug design to the backing and start hooking. It will be nice having my wool worms handy. 

Thanks for visiting and leaving a comment. Julia

A PORTFOLIO OF MY HOOKED RUGS AS PROMISED

It's looking more like spring although we are bracing for another snow storm tonight. As I was driving to town today, I noticed the river was open for a good stretch although it's still frozen in front of our house, but it won't be long before we see open water here too. I'm still on the lookout for my first Robin but I imagine it will be a while yet.

Today I scrubbed 4 calf gates, a chore which I don't enjoy but it must be done. I still have some time before returning to the farm to feed the calves so I thought that I should do a post about the rugs I designed and hooked. Some need binding and they all need labels. I haven't tried making my own labels yet.

My very first rug, Cow in the grass,  all done with recycled wool. I dyed a white and black plaid wool skirt and it turned out perfect for grass.  My daughter Jackie gave me some yellow and green dye powder she used where she teaches weaving.

This rooster was to remember the kindness of my many friends who supported me during my fight with breast cancer. Anne bought me a big crowing rooster and together with my woman church group they made me a huge basket of sunshine. It was filled with small gifts that I had to open one every day, for a whole month. I called it Sometimes you have to make your own sunshine.

I used all recycled wool and unknown fiber for the tail feathers.

This was a challenge from Sunnie Andresson Rug Hooking Daily. We had to use a ring, a rock, a forest and the color purple.  My first thought was to hook a king sitting on a rock with a golden ring on his finger but it didn't appeal to me so I went back in my childhood as I love the forest behind our house and I was a bit of a tom-boy, hanging upside down from trees.  The ring was an old tire swing, the rock is beside the tree and some little violets for the color purple. Everybody's rug was so different from each other and it was a most enjoyable exercise to get us out of our comfort zone.

My Childhood Memories rug was something I wanted to do ever since I took my basic rug hooking lesson as I saw one our teacher did but hers was totally different.  My first idea was to make a twisted ribbon border. It started out nicely but the ribbon got a bit wonky as I went along and I left it like that to show that the journey isn't always smooth.

This was another challenge from Sunnie Andress on Rug Hooking Daily. It was called My Grandmother's trunk. It was to depict what our grandmother left us.  I didn't inherit anything from my grandmother but her love of flowers.  The grey background was dyed grey to mimic the shingles on her house. It was done using a photo of my grandmother.

Sunnie Andress and I  became good friends on Rug Hooking Daily and together we started the group called Great Stash Deworming Marathon and it's still going on today. I made a hit and miss rug and this one went incredibly fast .

Still deworming my stash of extra wool worms I made this chair pad for my hooking room. Using only precut wool worms in my stash.  I even married a bunch of worms to get this green border.  Marring wool is to simmer wool of different colors or tone together so they all blend together.

I called this one, Ode to Joy because of the happy colors.
Still, on the same challenge of deworming the stash, I did this one using kitten's paws pattern and joined them with stems and leaves for my other chair.

I was inspired by a rug I saw in Rug Hooking Magazine and called this one, Geology.

My grandfather was done using a very overexposed black and white photo and I struggled with shading the face features.

Another challenge rug using only leftover worms from our stash. It was called All Around the town or something like that. I would have to go back and check the name of the challenge. All these challenges were subject to our own interpretation which makes these challenges so enjoyable.

Another challenge rug using a song theme. I'm dragging my feet on this one but I have some small pieces of wool to marbelize for the bottom, just not enough spare time to hook.

This was my very first primitive rug and it was a blogging giveaway from Lauren of Hugs and Pugs. She had included everything I needed to hook this cute kitty rug, including a primitive size hook.  Lauren is such a great blogging friend. This project went astoundingly fast as compared to my regular  # 5 or 6 cuts and I really enjoyed this little project. It is always beside my hooking frame to place my scissors, hook, and tweezer on to protect my table top.  Thanks, Lauren. It's a gift I really cherish every time I hook.

Thanks for stopping by and for leaving a comment. Your comments are very precious to me.
Julia