Sunday, June 19, 2022

THE WONDERS OF UGLY WOOL

Just before attending the first ever class with departed legend Barb Carroll I received a letter acknowledging the date of class and to bring only textured wool as she would not use flat wool even if it was mottled.  Prior to that I didn't have any experience using plaids, stripes, herringbone or checked wool.  Not sure if it was in that same personal handwritten note or another class, but also recall a note saying, 'bring your ugly wool'.  To me that was an invitation to all of her classes to find out how to work with some real uglies.

More than 2 decades ago a friend shared some wool with me that a friend of ours bought at a flea market.  A photo of it is below and thought it was the ugliest wool I'd ever seen...sorry Scotland.
Barb did use it in color planning of Lion and Trees.  If you can't see it immediately, some places it was used are first row of hooking under the lion, the ovals in a couple stylized trees and a questionable image to the far right bottom.  
Perhaps not a prominent usage of the ugly wool but at least Barb showed me ugly wool can be used.  Fast forward 20 years and I still have that wool, gee, wonder why 😁.

As I'm working on Cottage and Apple Tree I'm wondering how the heck I'm going to pull off a close resemblance to the tree on the left.  
You guessed it, the ugly wool...but used the Scottish Huntsman and a few recruit strips from the worm bag.  Wanted so much to get more of the tree hooked and background around it but, you know...life gets in the way.
While it may not be exact it is close enough for my liking and happy to use up some of that perfectly ugly wool.

Yesterday was delightful to work outside so trimmed a big flowering bush which took a few hours of my time.  Hope I didn't kill it but it had overgrown so badly it needed it.  Today was another marvelous day to work outside and did some heavy duty work around that tree stump to remove root systems of several clumps of thorny vines and a twisted up root of a holly tree.  Was this a perfect day or what???  Hope it was in your area.

Happy Hooking.

Saundra



6 comments:

  1. I'm impressed by the result of using your ugly wool for the tree. It's looking good.
    Here it's been raining since sSaturday evening and it's still raining. I did managed to pull hoops on my rug yesterday. It felt very relaxing even though I was just pulling grey hoops.

    Working outside is hard work. I know all about it but it's also enjoyable and satisfying.
    Enjoy the day.
    Hugs, Julia

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  2. Its true, I have used some of the ugliest wool that turned out to be so pretty when hooked. Its so nice to see how you use it in your work. Its lovely here too. I can't stand to be in the house when its beautiful outside like it was this weekend. I am so glad you got to work outside like that too. Have a lovely week.

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  3. I have so much ugly wool !!! Guess I should check it out ??? Friends have given me their Mother's old bags of wool & my Mother collected a lot of nice wools. They are all too bright , someday I need to try your recipe to make them drab ! ..
    The weather here has been just perfect to be outside all day long , I have never pulled so many weeds & transplanted so many plants before ! Just too nice to stay indoors ! I even spent one day hooking out on my deck all day , was heaven !!! Humidity will creeping back in though .

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  4. That is an ugly wool...lol! Thanks for sharing how it was used.
    Cathy Stephan is a great proponent of ugly wool, too ;-)

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  5. Yup, that be some kind of ugly wool...but it does work wonderfully in your tree. And, yes, at Lauren mentioned, Cathy has suggested some pretty ugly stuff at times for projects, I turn up my nose, and then she patiently digs through her hundreds of rugs to show me what it can look like. I guess we are the exception to the rule here weather wise. Mother Nature must have gone off her bipolar meds again. Yesterday I was in a hoodie and today we are already at 95º and we are supposedly at a "real feel" temp of 101º. That's a wee bit too warm even for this cold person. So, I am sitting inside with Snowdog...thinking about making something chocolate...but that means the oven....so maybe not. ~Robin~ (TheCrankyCrow)

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  6. Love the tree and the ugly wools,,,,,!!
    Love that mat ,too,,,,

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