I finished The Ladies, and other project updates

Last week I finally finished "The Ladies". I designed this little mat using Deanne Fitzpatrick's Big Boned Girls templates and learned the techniques to hook it in Deanne's "how to hook people" online course.

While I was at rug camp Brigitta Phy helped me choose the wool for the border, we chose a dark navy blue. I think it makes everything pop.

This is also the first rug I whipped the edges. I used the fold forward method Brigitta taught at camp. I need more practice but am pleased at the end result.

I learned a lot while hooking The Ladies, I'm sure it will be my favorite for a long time to come.

I chose to hook one of Brigitta's purse pattern as my project for camp. (pattern can be found at greenvalleyrughooking.com) I finished hooking it on Sunday and am waiting to get the yarn to whip the edges.

I call it my sampler purse because Brigitta taught me all types of techniques.

Here it is before it is folded:

Here is the front, the sampler part:

I've also been working on the fall leaf chair pad I started in Laura Pierces mini class. I'm almost done with the last leaf. Laura showed me how to work with 8 cut, as well as electric skillet dying and shading.

No wonder I was so tired after rug camp, my poor brain was worn out trying to remember everything I learned.

Til next time, Ronda





Rug Camp wrap up.

How about a rug show to wrap up my Hooker Hill posts? Here we go:

I've already showed you some of Brigitta's rugs so I'll show you some from the other teachers.

These are Susan Feller's:

The basket in this one is braided. She showed her students this braiding techniques in her class.

Here are a few that Laura Pierce shared with us:



The two pictures below are of the front and back of a clutch Laura made. She uses it to carry her supplies. 



In addition to working on my new projects I found wool for the border of my pomegranate rug and with Brigitta's help decided to put two rows of hooking around "The Ladies" to finish it.

I hope I can remember most of what I learned this week. I loved being able to relax and enjoy quality time rug hooking with my friends.

I have lots of projects to finish, can't wait to get started.

Til next time, Ronda

Rug Camp part two

Hooker Hill continued

Wool Poppies President Katie was in my (Brigitta's) class. She is working on a Karla Girard design. Top picture taken early in the week, bottom was taken on Wednesday. Katie didn't get to work on her rug as much as the rest of us do to her hosting duties.

Katie shared the rug below during our classes show and tell. The rug won first prize in our local fair.

My tablemate and Wool Poppy, Barbara is working on a rug to go in her cabin. This squirrel is so cute. She was still trimming his tail when this was taken.

Another classmate is working on a pattern called "Sleigh Ride" designed by Wool Poppy, Carla Jensen. This will be a night scene. I learned a lot watching the color selection for this rug.

I took a 2 evening mini class from Laura Pierce. On the first night I learned how to dip dye wool for fall leaves. On the second night I learned how to use the wool to hook the leaves. In future posts I will show this project as I work on it. I'll also post pictures of the pieces of wool I'm working with.

I'll wrap up my rug camp post in my next post.

Til next time Ronda

Home from my first rug camp

The past few days I've been attending "Hooker Hill" the Wool Poppies annual rug camp held in mid July at the ECCO retreat center just north of Oakhurst CA.

This years teachers were (from left to right) Susan Feller, Brigitta Phy and Laura Pierce.

 

I was lucky enough to take Brigitta's class and Laura's mini class. Wish I could have taken Susan's too.

 

I took a lot of pictures and should have taken even more, but I was busy working on my project. I'm going to take the next few posts to share pictures so I won't send you into rug overload.

 

Today I'll start with Brigitta. Rug hookers may know that Brigitta is Jane Olsens Granddaughter and shared many "Jane" stories with us. Brigitta's sister Martha joined us as well. Martha was working on one of Jane's rug patterns but did I get a picture or the name of the rug, no, sorry.

 

The rug that Brigitta is holding in the picture and shown below will be in Celebrations that comes out soon.

 

 

I also love this Monet that Brigitta hooked:

 





Those two rugs prove the point that rug hooking is "painting with wool".

Here is my class in action:

 

Trudy and Debbie hard at work.

 

Debbie is working on her airplane rug which I have shown several times on my blog---an excuse because I didn't get an updated picture.

 

Trudy is working on a spring themed rug pictured below. Who knew berries had so many purples in them?

 



 

My project is a small purse. I included as many techniques as I could, so this is my technique sampler purse. 

 

 

Here it is at the end of camp. I think I'm going to change the inner petals of the flower to shades of pink to help lighten it up a bit. 

 

 

 

There were two other beginners in class. Barbara is working on one of Brigitta's patterns and is learning how to do fine shading.

 

Tess is working on a pattern she drew and is also learning fine shading:

 

From all the moaning I heard from them I think I'll wait a while to learn fine shading.

 

 

To be continued......

 

Missing rug picture and weekend recap

Finally found time to fire up my laptop so I can post the missing rug picture from my last post:

Until I saw this picture I thought I had more done, oh well I'm enjoying the process.

On Saturday we went thrift store shopping. I found several wool skirts and because everything in the store was half off, each of them were only $2.00. I was a happy shopper. Not sure I'll get MM to go with me again but that's okay.

On Sunday we went to our first Logger Jamboree. It's held every year in North Fork, CA. We got lost following my phones GPS. I should have let MM go his way we would have arrived much sooner. He was a good sport and didn't say "I told you so".

 It was hot so we only stayed for a few events. Here are a few pictures:

There was a good size crowd, this picture only shows one side of the area.

 

 



 

 

 

In case you can't tell it was hard to get good pictures. The targets in the bottom picture are for the Ax throw, it was my favorite event of the day, especially when the women competed.

For those of you who watch Duck Dynasty you'll appreciate MM's addition to his shed:

 

It was too hot to weld so he came up with the sign instead. I love it.

 

Hope your week is going well. Ronda

 

Rug update

Going to try and post this from my IPad as I'm too lazy to fire up the laptop.

I've been working on my Pom rug almost daily. I had to take yesterday off because my hand and fingers were aching.

Here it is, I hope.

Hope you're enjoying your weekend.

Ronda

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th everyone.

 

We were up early to participate in our communities festivities. Good thing they started early cause today's going to be another scorcher.

 

As proper the festivities started off with some of our Veterans raising the Flag.

 

 

 

We had a Princess:

 

 

And some patriotic dogs:

 

 

This is Roxy's friend Bodie in his cart:

 

 

One of my favorite entries:

 

 

 

Powered by fireworks?

 

 

It's hard to see but Doug decorated our fence with flags and twirly-ma-gigs (I don't know what they're called). In person it looks very festive.

 

 

Stay safe and enjoy the holiday, Ronda