Hooking

Yesterday Adam gave me a photography lesson. There is so much to come to terms with — but I now feel a little more comfortable moving from the automatic setting. Here are my pics of the wedding rug, trying to capture the texture and colours.

The centre image is done and I’ve made some decisions about the border. I knew that I needed to move the red out , and one line did not seem to be enough, so I filled in a bit with a wavy line which seems to work. I’m also trying to figure out how to separate the ‘grass’ from the border and I think I’ve settled on a wavy yellow-green line. The wedding date will go in the bottom right corner and then Owen and Carissa will be subtly along the right hand edge. And I am contemplating stars in the sky…and of course a few hearts sprinkled around.

I really have had no more than I general idea of where this rug was going, but that seems to be the way I work best — intuitively, stumbling along, just playing with the colours and images I love.

I am taking a Travel Sketch Journal workshop all this week and I am having an amazing time. I have been sketching in my journal for a few years now — first fueled by Danny Gregory’s wonderful book. But this course  is giving me a chance to learn some of the basics like perspective and proportion–and how to say it all in a few strokes of the pen and paint brush. I will post more about it soon, and maybe, if I am brave, include a couple of my sketches. Let me just say that my best sketches are done in the five-minute stopwatch time at the end of the day. At that point, I am tired enough and rushed enough to finally quiet my left brain. Whew–I love it when that left brain finally stops chatting.

In the meantime, I had a chance to take some photos of the wedding rug today. The major characters have appeared on the roof. This was not really in my plan but I am very happy with them — so I am now thinking that the border of birds may become a border of hearts. I will hook some more on the background and see what feels right. 

Here is the latest version of the wedding rug. I have made some changes, most notably to the windows. The roof is done and I am happy with it–so far–and have a start on the ground and the sky. (BTW, the camera makes the colours brighter–the background is not this light or eye-popping.) Now, the next step, before I go too much farther,  is to draw in the border of the exuberant flying birds. I envision them weaving up and down around the rug.

When I finish this post I am going down to the dye pots. Right now all this wool is soaking.

I like the effects that you get when you spot dye over colour. Some of this will be for the grass and some for the sky. I will post when they are dyed so that you can see the results. Ok, dye pots calling.

I always find that the rug I am hooking has a mind of its own. Not long after I pull the first few loops, the rug starts telling me what to do, in fact bossing me around. Put that colour here, rip out that section there! So rug progress is a bit of a freighted phrase. The rhythm of rug growth is uneven and unsure for me. Right now I am thinking about the ground beneath the house and the sky. I want them to be wonky circles of colour–at the bottom green moving into blue–at the top mid-blue moving to dark–and then a border of a flock of flying birds. So that is where my mind is as I move around sections of colour. I can draw all the designs I like, it’s not until those strips are pulled through to hunker down beside each other that I know what is working and what isn’t. And sometimes, all seems fine until I put a new section in–and then the whole thing changes.

At any rate, here is where I am now.  One step forward and three back.

I’ve been talking about the wedding rug for ages. Well…I finally began it last week at rug school. Since I was away in Italy until a very few days before leaving for Vermont, I did not have much of a chance to think or preplan. The rug has been dancing in my head for ages, but elusively.  So I cut and serged a piece of linen 4.5′ x 2’5′, tucked a few pieces of wool in my bag and a couple of books for inspiration and we set off for the hills of Vermont.

I have been hoping to do a rug inspired by Ton Schulten for quite some time. His paintings are built of bright geometric shapes which I am drawn to. I have played with geometric shapes in the background of many of my rugs. This time I thought it would be fun to put the geometry in the foreground and the background. I also knew I wanted a border of flying birds–after all this rug is for two very exuberant Birds! I decided to do a geometric version of their house as the main motif, flanked by huge colourful flowers. As I have told you, my teacher was Jule-Marie Smith and you couldn’t have anyone better to inspire big colourful flowers. Here is one from one of her rugs: 

And here is some of the wool stacked on my hooking table and the start of the wedding rug.  

I am home after a week in the Green Mountains in Vermont–the most perfect week of weather we have ever had there. I hope this photo conveys the beauty of this lovely campus tucked inside the mountains, the shades of blue and green set off by the reds and whites of the historic buildings. We have been coming each June to this school for six years and what a great pleasure it is to reconnect with the same rug hooking friends, to sit on the porch with hooking and a glass of wine, to rise early for walk in the mist, and of course to see the wonderful pieces of hooking which each participant has completed over the winter AND the new ones just begun in class.

And there are other essentials too. The Dorr Mill store is just 1.5 hours away–and we make our annual trek there mid-week. Montpelier has the New England Culinary Institute (where we enjoyed a fabulous lunch on Sunday) and Bear Pond Books, one of my very favourite books stores–I always buy my book for the week there, from their table of staff picks. This year I bought The Tiger’s Wife — will write more of it later.

Here are a few of the rugs from the rug show:

Pat Levin’s church and Doris Manker’s street scene: 

Mary Lee O’Connor’s view from her cottage: 

You may have seen Mariah Krauss’ Aires Woman in Rug Hooking Magazine–but, even though I had seen its photo,  I was not prepared for its incendiary power. The woman standing next to me had tears in her eyes looking at it. Mariah is the daughter of Stephanie Krauss, the director of the rug school, and she clearly has inherited the family hooking passion and talent. She dyed 12 values to get the depth and detail and it is hooked in various widths, including a #3. 
Here is a closer view: