Back to Hooking

Whew, thankfully Irene left me with minimal flooding, no house damage and minimal tree problems.  There was a lot of leaves, limbs and some sizable limbs to fall but it could have been much worse so consider myself lucky.  I started the clean-up yesterday and there is still more I plan to do today as soon as I update my blog.

I was without electricity for 22 hours which is not conducive to rug hooking and hooking by candle light didn't work very well for me. I even tried propping up two mirrors so the light would be magnified and that wasn't much help either.  So yesterday for about an hour between clean-up I finally pulled some loops on this NotForgottenFarm design which I think is adorable. 

I have received my copy of the book written by my friend Evelyn Lawrence and Kathy Wright and oh boy is it ever interesting.   A lot of work and research went into the compiling of information for the book.  It gives historical informormation about the life and times of Magdalena, beautiful colorful pictures of rugs hooked by Magdalena, some of which I have never seen before.  In addition to the pictures of the rugs there is detail information on each of her rugs regarding design, color size.  This is a fabulous must-have book about Magdalena Briner Eby, one of the most well known (in my estimation) textile artists of American Folk Art.

And, some great news for any of you who were not able to attend Sauder (like me), and you would like to own one of your own, here is a link you can access to order: www.rughookingtraditions.com .  You can also see the dates for next year's  Sauder. 

Well, guess I better get outside and do some more post-Irene clean-up done.

Irene getting closer

I've purchased extra batteries for the flash lights, batteries for my portable radio so I can stay apprised of hurricane developments if (ha!!, when) power goes out.  Unfortunately the hurricane is still on track and headed this way as a category 3 hurricane with winds (as of this moment) 110 miles per hour.  All of the beaches (Rehoboth, Bethany, Lewes, in DE and Ocean City, MD have a mandatory evacuation for visitors and residents are recommended to leave.  While I live inland, I do live on a low lying track of land with streams circling the development, which flooded about 5 years ago during a nor easter.

In my previous post I showed you before pictures of the left and right side of the back yard and here are current pictures of the front yard.  Right now there are no trees down but I am quite certain that the dying trees will fall and there will a mighty mess to clean up after Irene has left.

This is the left side and to my back left is where the garage is and the driveway leading to the road around the meadow which would be my exit route from the house. 

Straight ahead is the center front of the property which will have lots of debris in it after the storm runs it course with lots of limbs, leaves and probably tree trunks.

And to the right front yard....., yup, that is a very tall oak tree real close to the house and am praying that it will not topple over onto the house during this storm and twisting winds. 

We are to again to have a thunderstorm and rain before the hurricane gets here Saturday afternoon into Sunday so the saturated ground will make the possibility of falling trees even more probably and would come up with the whole root system.  That is what I'm afraid of with this tree.

Calm Before the Storm

Two days ago we had a rare east coast earthquake which measured 5.8 on the Richter scale and while the epicenter was in Mineral, VA it was felt here in Seaford, DE and even in Canada.  And now we are battening down the hatches in preparation for Irene which is a tropical storm headed directly toward us.

I can remember having a hurricane and my mother's house had waist high water inside her home.  Of course she lives across the street from the Indian River and with the tides, the wind and rain, it was a terrible mess to clean up with mud coating everything in the house, ruined all electrical items and furniture.  While no one is living in the house at the moment, my brother and I still own the house so it will not be a pretty picture after the storm hits.

At my house I've pretty much cleared all the deck furniture off and put it inside the porch, and here is a picture of the left side which, after or during the hurricane will be flooded I'm sure; but this is a picture before.

And to the right of the deck will have standing water as well, if we get as much wind and rain as anticipated. And, as luck would have it, we will be getting rain today and tomorrow even before Irene hits us so flooding is expected.

Yesterday I went out and purchased jugs of water and today will fill up my two tubs and buckets with water so that if I lose power I can at least flush the toilets, take a bath, brush my teeth and drink water.  I have candles but need to go out and buy some extra batteries 'just in case' and will buy more fresh fruit because I can live on fruits and vegetables if I'm unable to cook.

So keep your fingers cross for me and I'll be saying a few prayers myself.   

Magdalena Briner

I became enamoured with Magdalena Briner rugs since my friend Evelyn Lawrence first introduced me to her designs.  Evelyn launched her book on the subject at Sauder Village this past week and I only wish I could have been there to see them up close and personal myself and to congratulate Evelyn for her accomplishments.

So far I have hooked 3 of her designs:  Domestic Zoo (the long runner), Dog with Crows and the Eagle.  It would be very difficult to pick out my favorite of those but guess my favorite would be the one I was hooking at the time.  I'm going to do an experiment and post a picture of the original  Magdalena Eagle rug which was on display at Sauder and the post a picture of the one I hooked to see how far off I was in trying to capture the original look.

Here is Magdalena's original:

And now the one I hooked, which was the third and last rug of Magdalena's I hooked:

Here is the Domestic Zoo rug I hooked, which was the first Magdalena rug I hooked (pattern can be purchased from my web site, www.woodlandjunctionprimitives.com ). 

And the Dog and Crows rug was the second one I did:

              
I do have plans to hook the dog next ~ well I say next but it will be after I return home from Cape May rug camp where I'll be hooking something else entirely.  Since when hooking the Magdalena rugs it requires bits and pieces of wool it is best to hook that at home so I can dig into my worm bag for oddball pieces.  After all, Magdalena used what she had and while hooking the others would often say out loud, "Magdalena, guess that is all you had at the time so you hooked that color right there".

Here are two more original Magdalena rugs which were on display at Sauder.  I sure do want to hook this dog soon.

And then Magdalena's red horse original:

To all of you who were there to see the rug show and the wonderful rugs of Patty Yoder and Magdalena Briner, it must have been a goose bump day seeing these magnificent works of art history.

Sauder Village

Unfortunately I was not in attendance at Sauder Village even tho I was given advance information that there would be some original Magdalena Briner rugs as well as some of Patty Yoder.  So I begged and pleaded with anyone who attended to please take pictures so that I might enjoy them from afar.  Thanks to Phyllis (who is the host of RughookersYahoo) she posted this picture trail so that those of us who were unable to go could enjoy the show as well.  Here is Phyllis' blog:  http://rughooker.blogspot.com/ so that you my enjoy it as well.

Must say that even tho some of the pictures were fuzzy I still got goosebumps when Magdalena's rugs and Patty's rug appeared on the screen.  While my personal collection of rugs lends itself to wide cut primitive style, I did see some rugs which were excellent and as a hooker who has also done fine cut can appreciate the work involved.  And as a rug hooking teacher I had (Bev Conway) said more than once...."Color gets all the credit but it is value which does all the work".

Enjoy the picturetrail everyone.

My new small project

In between assembling purses for people, working sporadically on things for my October show, wanting to get ready for my Cape May rug camp, and trying to have some semblance of order here with my newly adopted pup (wish I could establish a routine with her), I find myself needing something new to hook.  WHEW!  That was a loooong run on sentence.

I love Not Forgotten Farm designs and have numerous patterns of hers.  I've always been enamoured with the Cat in the Shoe design, so that is what I'm working on right now.  As I'm looking at it the ears seem a little under hooked.  When I hooked them I remembered my teachers saying to "Stay within the lines to keep small things small".  Since I didn't want my cat ears to grow to huge proportion thought I'd better stay within the lines.  However, I just might re hook them a smidgen larger.

While I think of the pattern as Halloween am thinking that I'll  hook it so that if someone wants to buy it who loves their cats, it can be used all year.  It can just be a kitty kat who jumps in a shoe for play. 

The background that is hooked in right now is a blue and grey plaid with a tan line and off white.  Thought it might look like sky and be a light contrast to the cat.  Am thinking of a red and orange texture for the triangles and a darker one row border but not as dark as the shoe (Jinx) which is also a great texture from Heavens to Betsy.

Rugs by the Sea

Just one month away from rug camp in historic Cape May, NJ and I've finally decided what I'm going to hook in class.  Am going with my initial idea of the log cabin and sheep, however I have changed it up a bit some from the original July Cabin pattern in Barb Carroll's book. I thought I'd like to hook the leaves of those trees similar to what I did in the Woodland Deer rug (below) with different colors to give it pizazz.

So here is what I've drawn on linen, again with changes from the original design provided in her book.  As I'm looking at this photo now, I think I like the fuller tree to the right, might even make the leaves a tad bigger, don't know yet.

But below is a picture of it hooked by someone (forget who now) and is posted in the Carol Andress folder on Woolley Fox web site.  

Some other changes I did was change the direction of the smoke, instead of upwards I moved it more to the side because I wanted a smaller rug.  Also didn't want my trees in pots nor did I want flags on the trees.

Sincerely Jane Challenge piece

Obviously I have a flat learning curve because this is the 4th time I've typed and saved a message and didn't click PUBLISH.  So obviously this is going to be shorter and just cut to the chase.

Here is my Sincerely Jane challenge rug and am in a quandary as to what to do with the border so have put up a poll and would really love your feed back.

Here are some of my thoughts, which also appear on the poll.

~ pull out all the triangles and do a hit and miss border for 3-5 rows.
~ pull out the light triangles and hook only lines randomly
~ pull out the light triangles and hook only star and diamond shapes
~ pull out all the light triangles totally and hook those in dark & medium value too
~ keep going as started.

Or, if you have other suggestions would love your feedback.  If there is not a suitable answer for you on the poll, feel free to write me your thoughts at saundra125@comcast.net.

Little Bella's Update

Bella has been here 9 days now.  I wanted to give you an update 4 days ago on Monday but have had to jump a lot of hurdles since then, including finally shipping one of the two Edward Tulane rabbits I had orders for (again).  So have been to the shippers and one is on its way to Illinois.

Oh but it has been a challenge this week with a new pup and the A/C going off during a weekend and I refused to pay the exorbitant cost for an emergency call.  So I turned on all the ceiling fans in the house and brought the oscillating fan down from the attic.  But night time sleeping was a little uncomfortable but thank gawd this past weekend temps weren't the ones in the 3 digits as we'd experienced the week prior.

Since Bella was new and wanting to crate train her she had been sleeping in the crate all night until Sunday night.  Since it was to be really really warm in the room I turned on the ceiling fan, and had the oscillating fan mostly directed in the direction of her crate and two (yes, 2) beds outside the crate.  Hey, my girl must have her choice of memory foam or fluff.  And decided to let her sleep outside the crate so she could go in if she wanted (door remained open) and at least she would have access to water in case she wanted to hydrate herself.

Well she was a perfect roommate, no accidents or other incidents and she has been sleeping outside the crate since.  I'm happy she is getting more freedom.  Of course I don't totally trust her for 1-2 hours alone while I run errands yet for fear of the separation anxiety.

So we did get the A/C back in operation on Monday afternoon and it was like heaven in the house later. 

When Terry of Majesty Rottweiler Rescue was here she suggested I elevate the bowls to ensure her stomach didn't flip by too much water, too much food, too much play, which I guess with any combination of the 3 could or has caused the problem.  I've never had a dog with that situation but didn't want to start now either.  So I went out and found something suitable to elevate her bowls.

You can see that my little girl still needs to put on weight and you can readily see the eye which had the entropian surgery as she is sleeping by my side in the computer room.  I'm hoping that with time the hair will grow back and eye will take shape again.  Naturally I will love her even if it doesn't, but you know how we girls are sensitive about our appearance.

Lovin' my little girl and think she and I will embark on the trek to the mail box to retrieve mail since it is relatively  mild outside albeit somewhat humid.  I'll carry some water with me in case she gets panting.

Oh, in the picture above to the left is a stool with a hooked top which I purchased from Mad Hen (Tonya Robey) and the stool to the right is an antique one but the hooked design was the design which came with the dye recipe box and samples.  I figured that since I keep my dyes out of sight I may as well enjoy the design where I can see it every day.