Folk ‘n’ Fiber Blog

Good Sunny Morning!

It’s warm, sunny and beautiful here on the North Coast today - Finally! Sure makes one feel so much better to see and feel the  sun. The colors are so much brighter and so is my disposition. I think I live in the wrong area of the country. Winters here drag on and rarely do we see the sun during those months. It has really affected my creativity this winter. But, now I can get out in the sun, tend the yard and gardens, and wait for the flowers to bloom. I planted crocuses scattered in my front lawn years ago, and yesterday they opened their pretty little purple, yellow and white heads as if to speak to me saying, “it’s here - Spring is really here!” I sure hope it stays here, but in northern Ohio, one never knows - I’ve seen errant snow as late as May here (shudder!)

I thought I’d share my hooked door crown with you. This is the one that is in the June issue of Create and Decorate, which is on newsstands this week. If you have a scubscription, you might already have your copy. I think I will offer this one as a kit, but also as a chair pad for folks who don’t like or want a door crown. Everyone has chairs, right? I think he’d make a grand chairpad design.

The majority of this background is a wonderful wool from Rebecca Erb. It’s a yellow-beige plaid with cream and dark grey running through it - makes a fabulous light background. I used a little of a more yellow shade in there as well, just to brighten it up a bit more. The photo is from the magazine and is the property of All American Crafts (c)2008. They do such a great job styling the photos of our projects.

Well, yard work is beckoning me, and you know what? It isn’t even going to feel like work! Until tomorrow when this old body tells me that I can’t work that long any more. Oh well, that’s what aspercreme is for, right? Until next time - enjoy the sun - I hope it’s shining in your neck of the woods.

Sally

Well for the past couple of weeks I have been diligently trying to rebuild my entire website, which is a huge undertaking! I desperately needed to clean up my code, which has gotten extremely bloated over the years. So each and every page is being fixed. I had a couple of mishaps and while publishing pages to the Internet to check the changes, caused my header to be the only thing that is displaying on those pages - not a good thing! So, I cannot publish the changes until the entire site is done. I am about 3/4 of the way there, but my largest pages with products are still waiting and really time consuming to re-create. So, that’s why you haven’t heard from me of late. I appreciate you still coming to check on me! Life sure can get in the way.

I haven’t done much hooking (or anything else for that matter) these last couple of weeks, and I am missing it sooo much. I have to get busy and get two design projects ready for Create and Decorate, so at least I have an excuse to hook something new! This is the project for the Holiday issue, so it won’t be easy to get myself in the mood to hook winter stuff just as the weather is finally warming up. Such is the way of the magazine world - always looking 6 months ahead! Just got the Spring issue and I am so happy with the way they displayed my Lepus Rabbit door crown. That was the one I told you I am keeping when it comes back to me. I can see it over my door already!

So, I am here trying hard to get my site ready for it’s big re-opening. It will look almost the same, but with new and better navigation, some new pages, pdf files you can download with information about how to do things, online e-newsletter, etc. Stay tuned and stay with me . . . thanks for the comments, girls. I apprecaite you visting here!

Sally

Spent my day catching up on things I’ve spent far too long putting off. I don’t know why I do that, I never used to. I guess I feel at my age that I’ve earned the right to pick and choose what I want to do, and I never want to do the things I don’t like to do (cook, clean, grocery shop, pay bills, you get the idea.) And no, I didn’t do any of those things today either. I did reorganize the way I send my e-newsletter and got my entire subscriber list into Outlook. Yes, that was a pain, but very necessary. Check - done. Then my all-in-one printer took a flying leap and I had to troubleshoot the problem and fix that - after re-installing all of that software and cleaning a bunch of ink out of the bottom of the printer (don’t ask!) and then off my hands, it seems to be working okay (fingers crossed.) Check - done.

Several very nice people ordered rug kits and punch needle patterns, as well as supplies, so I filled orders and got them ready to ship. That was pleasant - now I can pay my mortgage payment tomorrow, which is always a good thing. Check - done.

And smack in the middle of the day, I sat down and watched my Cleveland Indians win their home opener against the White Sox. Aside from Jim Thome, most of the Sox didn’t show up today. The Tribe was awesome, as usual — I just LOVE baseball!!

So now you know what I did all day. Tomorrow I will spend time with my youngest granddaughter, Carley, who is 4. Which is a good thing, because I am missing my youngest daughter, Maggie, who left to go back to Ohio U. yesterday. For years I wondered what I was thinking when I spaced my kids out so far - there are 13 years between my oldest daughter, Amy 32, and Maggie 18 (with my son, Seth 21, in between.) But now it all becomes clear - just when I miss Maggie the most (empty nest) I can bring the grand kids over to fill up the nest again. And the beautiful thing is, when I am tired or bored or they are bad, I just call Amy and say ‘come get these kids!’ Ha! So, I think I am pretty smart now. What? You want to see the kids? Well, I thought you’d never ask . . .

The Grand kids

My Kids: Maggie 18, Seth 21, Amy 32

(don’t know why Seth likes that hat! I think it’s dumb . . . but what do I know?)

Well, I think I am ready for sleep. It’s been a good day.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve had time to sit down and write anything here. Between computer crashes and my son’s car accident, I have lost track of what I am doing, totally! So now that things have settled down a bit (she said with her fingers crossed), I can post more often.

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter - can we look forward to some warmer weather now, do you think? Here on the north coast of Ohio, we get rain, then snow, then thaw, then it starts all over again. It has been the snowiest March we’ve had in a long time, and I for one, am SICK of snow!! We had a snow of about 2 inches on Easter evening. Remember when you were a kid and you’d get a new spring outfit for Easter? Dress, gloves, little hat, and maybe a light-weight coat? My poor granddaughters were bundled up like snowmen for Easter! What happened to our weather? Oh, never mind, I know – global warming. We won’t go there . . . I’d rather talk about rug hooking.

I started a clamshell rug a couple of weeks ago, but I am only about half done. I usually finish a rug the same week I start it, but with all my distractions lately, I just have not spent the time on it. Plus, I did have to fit in two projects for Create and Decorate this month as well. Those got mailed off today, so I just might sit and hook this evening. I need it!!

My youngest daughter is home on spring break from Ohio U., but she is going back tomorrow (boo-hoo); so I will probably do laundry tonight - hooking works well on laundry night for me. About the time I need to take a break from hooking, I can go to the laundry room and flip a load into the dryer, start a new load in the washer, and go back to hooking again. Plus, that’s about the only time I get to watch any television. Speaking of which, I think I just missed my Cavs game - darn! Our Indians opening day is Monday, and for that I absolutely cannot wait! I am an Indians fanatic!!

Do you all have a favorite (or best) time to hook?

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Not a great week to be living in Ohio! We got slammed with a blizzard of snow over the weekend. It will take me all week just to dig my garage out so I can get my car out, after I shovel my loonngg driveway so I can back my car out after I dig it out - is there anyone living in the South who would like to adopt me until summer? LOL!

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A quiet weekend here at the Blog . . . so I figured since some have asked for help with rug hooking, I will just post a few bits of info on some of the basics. For you experienced rug hookers reading this, post a comment or question that would be of more interest and we can get some chatter going for you, too.

One common question from beginning rug hookers is about strip widths. Traditional rug hooking uses strips of wool, not pieces of yarn - that’s latch hooking (totally different technique and tools.) The strips of wool are pulled through the rug backing to form loops which create the design of the rug. Strips of wool can be cut very fine or very wide, or anywhere in between. When a strip cutter such as a Rigby, Fraser, or Townsend cutter is used to cut the strips, you select the cutter size to use. Cutters cut the strips in widths measured in 32nds of an inch. So if you are using a #8 cutter size, you will get strips cut into 8/32 of an inch (or reduce the fraction to 1/4 inch.) Read the rest of this entry »

I get more and more emails and calls from folks who have taken a workshop or class, and then when they get back home or some time has passed since they last hooked, they have forgotten some of the details of what they learned. So, I would be happy to help with that.

 If there is interest in mini-tutorials or just Q&A here at the Blog on rug hooking, questions or problems with details or techniques, just leave a comment and let’s see what we can do together! If enough of you have similar problems, I can write up a tutorial to post here, otherwise, perhaps we can just learn from one another’s FAQ and the suggested solutions. Ask away!

I cannot believe Feb is half gone. I guess as I get older (another birthday on Thursday), time really does go faster. Today, schools, banks and postal service, etc. are closed in celebration of past presidents. So Happy Presidents Day to all.

I have to get things together for a new rug hooking class that I will begin next month if all goes well. Read the rest of this entry »

I decided to take the time to join and build a shop on Etsy. What a wonderful group of artisans they have there. So that took me a while to get all the photos and stuff together, but I hope the added exposure will help promote my creations and my web site, too. I have tons of things here in the studio that are not shown on my site, or represented anywhere, really. So, why are they taking up so much studio space? I need to SELL them!!

I am hoping that Etsy will help with that . . . here are the items I have there to date — I will be offering my Create and Decorate project models there too, I think. I have a couple of them in there now.