Today I was a Hooker

Okay, don't be shocked.  Two posts in a week - unheard of from me.  But I'm so excited!  Today was a great day.  I finally made it to my long awaited rug hooking class with Kris Miller of Spruce Ridge Studios.  It was so much fun, but I have so much to learn!   And I have to send a huge thank you to Melody for telling me about Kris!

I was the newby in the class, or I should say the newest.  A couple of the other women were new, but had a couple of weeks on me.  One woman (and forgive me that I don't remember her name) just started, had designed her own rug and was almost finished with it.  I hope that she brings it next week so that I can show a picture of it!  It was so cool!!  I don't have a lot of pictures because I didn't want to run around startling people and being aggravating.  Next week, I'll take a few more.  Kris' wool collection is to die for!  And the finished rugs she had were seriously drool-worthy!!!

In this picture, Kris is demonstrating how to do different types of eyes.  In the background, you will see a face (actually a face of an angel on a rug that I just have to do - yep, already I have the fever - LOL).  Kris had such wonderfully different methods of doing eyes depending if it's an animal's eye, a person's, etc.

These are some of the different eyes that she demonstrated.

There was just so much to see and drool over - honestly.  By the time that I watched everything, looked through kits and admired everyone's work, and Kris taught me the ropes of beginning hooking, it was almost time to leave.  This is what I ended up getting accomplished:

Not a whole heck of a lot!  Just about nothing!  I do need to trim that one piece of wool sticking up! Kris suggested that I start with something small for my first time.  The larger pieces were pulling me like a magnet.   This is a pattern that Kris adapted from Lori Brecklin's (Notforgotten Farms) Folk Art and she has a number of Lori's patterns, so you know that there is going to be huge hole in my wallet now.  I just can't wait until next week!  Kris is such a great teacher and a really nice lady, that I know that this is going to be a great learning experience.   I know that Kris was right about starting small even though I wanted to start bigger.  With any luck, I'll have this finished by next week and can move on to bigger things!

And not to have anyone think that I've abandoned everything else, I have been quilting:

On Round Two of the Bullseye Quilt.  Each row of circles takes a little bit of time because you have to cut the back out of the circles as you layer them so you don't have this thick mess underneath, so that takes a little bit of time.  One more row of circles and then I'll be ready to slice and dice them into quarters.  That's the part that scares me!  These fabrics seem kind of wonky to me, but they're what came with the kit.  I'm sure that once I do the slicing and dicing, and piece them back together,  I'm going to be happy with it.  Especially once it's been quilted and thrown in the wash so that the edges of the circles fray.  I don't think this will be the last one of these that I make.  I have some great homespuns in the stash pile and I can see them being used for one of these quilts.  And I have been stitching too - but at this point, it's just a bunch of birds on the fabric.  I should have more soon!!!  Although tonight I just want to be a hooker!

Thanks to everyone who sent me such lovely compliments on my quilt and Mary Corey!  I appreciated all the great things that you had to say about them.

Hope that everyone has a great weekend!!

Learning My Alphabet and What's a Little Spilled Tea?

Happy Thursday everyone!!  It has just been one of the weeks.  Stitching, quilting, cleaning up spilled tea (ahem, Terri!).  This week has really run the gamet, but yet it's been pretty productive.


This week in the stitching arena, I've had a bit of startitis.  Ever have those times when you just don't know what to stitch, so you dig around and make a huge mess?  Well, that was my week.  After finishing the Yellow House Sampler, I couldn't decide if I should stitch on a WIP or go for something new.  Well, I opted for the something new.  For all the stash diving, I picked a couple, but definitely not the most exciting pieces.  A note here - I did pull out a WIP - AAWFAA and took it to Guild, but as luck would have it - or maybe it was a lucky thing - I pulled the wrong project bag and didn't have the right threads.  Probably a lucky thing when you read the story of the Sampler Guild a little further down. Anyway, this is what I did work on this week:

And this one:

Pretty boring!!!  I'm almost done with the top piece, so I'll just wait until I'm done with it before I reveal the whole picture.  But don't you think that if you had startitis, you'd pick up something a little more fun than alphabets?  My DH still wonders if I'm losing some memory faculty in my advancing years and need to refresh myself by stitching things with alphabets!!!  But these are fairly small pieces and will be a welcome relief from the BAPs I seem to always pick out!


Now, a little bit about spilled tea with an update on the life of The Yellow House Sampler.  

You can read all about it on Terri's blog, but there was a slight mishap with my poor sampler.  We had Show & Tell at Guild this weekend and I took my Yellow House Sampler to show.  Well, we are Sweet  Tea Lovin' Girls, and of course, those were up front and center on the table along with my dear, sweet sampler.  Well, I won't go into all the details, but poor Yellow House got a bath in iced tea!  And poor Terri just about had a heart attack (have you recovered yet Terri?)!  Me?  Well, I don't know if I was in shock, or what, but I just kind of sat there looking at it trying to figure out the ramifications of the sampler getting a tea bath.  But the reasonable side of my brain probably thought that everyone is trying out the tea dyeing thing, so what the heck!  Well, probably I was more in shock!   LOL  But no harm, no foul - everything is fine and it looks the same as it did before.  I think we did more damage interrupting the meeting (which makes me laugh every time I think about it) than was done to my sampler.  I think that poor Terri thought it was ruined, but you know, these samplers a lot of times look like they've been water damaged, stained, run over by cars, etc., with all the various shading of the fabrics, so if there was some tea stain, let's just go for it!  I'm still thanking my lucky stars though that I didn't use overdyed threads!!!   (Note to self: buy Terri a non-spill, insulated sippy cup for next meeting).


On the quilt front, I've made great progress on my quilt (about time, don't ya think?):

But it's not quite done yet.  There is a pieced border and I'm not sure that I like it with the border.  What do you think?

I don't know - I like the simplicity of just having the thin black edge, but yet at the same time....hmmm, I'm still not sure.  Oh, if you blow these up, please ignore all the threads.  I have this weird thing with loving to sit with the finished top and spend an evening clipping all the threads that I didn't clip because when I sew, I sew fast!!  And plus, I just love playing with the quilt top - touching it, spreading it over me while I work - I know, I'm weird!


Another sweet (no, not sweet tea) thing that happened in the past week was that dear Melody sent me a wonderful package in the mail in anticipation of my upcoming rug hooking class.  Wow, I just realized that I'm going to be hooker and a whore (scissors) - I know they're the same, but I can officially be called both.  Hmmmm, that doesn't sound too nice!  Anyway, Melody sent me the nicest package:

 

She was such a sweetheart and send me a small canvas and the wools to try my hand at hooking!  Isn't this the greatest?  She also send a maple hook in a French General drawstring pouch!!!  I am going to always remember her wonderful act of kindness every time I look at the rug and that FG bag (just love, love the FG things).  I have only played around with this for all of about two minutes (every time I settle my hiney in the chair to watch the video, I get booted off by the kids), but I'll definitely post more progress after this weekend!  Thank goodness for videos on YouTube because DD is sick today and I couldn't make my first hooking class (last week's class was cancelled due the snow we had up here - yeah, doesn't snow all winter and BAM, it does on the day of class)!  AUGHHHH!  But I will make up for it at the end.  I just can't wait to get started really learning about this craft!

That's just about all the excitement for me this week.  I think that's enough!  Thanks for all the wonderful comments you left on my last post and just a word of advice here - if you see Terri, guard your stitching!!!  If she wants tea, find a table in the corner for her!  LOL  Only kidding, Terri!!  Have a great weekend everyone!