Magazines

Magazines can be a great source of information for us in our rug hooking endeavors. They can provide patterns, dye recipes, techniques and and other important and helpful bits. Some can be found on the magazine racks at your local store. Some are available only by subscription. Here are three that are recommended:

Rug Hooking Magazine has been around the longest and is probably the most well known of them all.  They have articles about traditional and primitive hooking, and lots of nationally known rug hookers have written for them.

The Wool Street Journal is a relative newcomer to the arena and they cater exclusively to the primitive hooker. They do stories about rug hooking groups around the country, and inclulde lists of vendors where rug hooking supplies are available for purchase.

Create & Decorate almost always has a free rug hooking pattern in each issue, as well as punch needle designs that can be enlarged for hooking. They have patterns for other primitive crafts that are fun to make as well. 

If you've never tried these magazines before, pick up a copy (or send away for one) and give it a try - it might just contain the inspiration you need for your next project! You might even drop hints to your family about receiving a subscription for a birthday gift or some other occasion  - wouldn't that be great?

Free Patterns

It might be fun to hook up one of these free snowman patterns now that the weather has gotten colder and winter is on the way!

Here is one available from Blue Ribbon Rugs.

And another one from Badbirds.

Guild Meeting

We had our Guild Meeting on Saturday at the Pioneer Craft House in Salt Lake City. Londi gave us all a lot of food for thought with her hands-on color theory class - I think we all learned a lot about primary, secondary, and tertiary colors and how the color wheel works. Of course, this information is helpful for us when it comes to dyeing the wool we want for our hooked rugs, and how to choose colors that will be harmonious together. Here are some pictures of the process:

After the color class, we pulled out the supplies needed for making covered button bracelets using wool fabrics. The gals had a lot of fun with this project and the variety of colors and fabrics used made each person's version completely original. Very fun! It will be fun to see these being worn by their makers at future meetings.

Jan's buttons:

Miriam's buttons:

Pat's buttons:

Londi's Musings

(1)  Here's a link to Karen Kahle's Flickr account - it's fun to look at her many fiber art skills -- eye candy for any fiber artist!  Check out her crochet  edge  tutorial on this site!  The crochet edge is my favorite because it is so homey, vintage and soooo unusual - makes a rug stand out from the crowd!   She is one of the teachers the Guild is looking at possibly having for a seminar in 2012: 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/primitivespirit/

(2)  Some of my favorite Hook-In memories:  
       - Angela Anderson did a great demonstration of her dying techniques (KISS is her mantra!).  She has 5 small children and keeps 4 dye kettles going at the same time on her dye days...not a wasted minute!  Angela has a new dye book (and matching swatches), plus she also dyes the swatches for Nancy Raybould's wonderful dye book.  I'm a slow learner......so a light bulb finally went on when I saw how Angela has glued her dye swatches in the books, next to the recipe (I had 400 swatches in  big ziplock bags).  I was so inspired, I spent 3 days gluing all my swatches into their respective dye books!  Never want to see another glue stick - but hey,  it's so much easier to see what I have now!
     -  Martha Stewart move over!  You've got serious competition!  Marianne Michaels has hooked the most incredible ROOM SIZE rug!  It is not only the biggest hooked rug anyone had ever seen, it is also beautiful. What's even more incredible is she made this rug in only about 4 month!!  I know Martha only sleeps 4-5 hour a night...Marianne, you make Martha look like a slacker!  The rug took top honors at the hook-in.  I hope we'll have a picture of it on the blog in the near future, but you really had to be there to take in the magnitude of this rug.  Congratualtions Marianne!
   
     -  I loved chatting with kindred spirit - Tonia McKibben.  She and I share a love of antiques - especially antique childrens toys and furniture and New England antique furniture.  She is extemely knowledgeable about these subjects, and ran an antiques business prior to moving to Utah.  She brought the most wonderful antique childs bench (it has a matching chair at her home).  She restored this little bench and hooked a darling sailboat bench seat for it.  Everyone loved it.  I hope we'll have pictures of this on the blog in the future too.     
  
(3)  Color lesson - November Guild Meeting:
      We will take the mystery out of the color wheel by painting one.  Everyone will mix paint colors and make a personal color wheel.
      We will mix all 12 colors of the color wheel and learn a VERY simple language of only SIX WORDS which will describe any color in the world. 
      We will also mix all the earth colors (aka tertiary colors) used for toners - (sometimes called Mother colors). 
       And finally, we'll take this "paint" knowledge and covert it to dye knowledge /Cushings dyes and where they fall on the color wheel.

Our first meeting

We are excited to announce our first meeting of the Utah Rug and Fiber Guild and everyone is invited!  We have a fun day planned--it will be Saturday, November 6, from 9 am until 1 pm.  Activities will be:

• Presentation of the free exclusive rug pattern for charter members of the Guild
• We will be making the adorable wool button bracelets from the Hook-In trunk show (materials are free to members!!)
• Color Class:  Basic Understanding of Color - How To Identify Colors, Mix Colors, and Use Color Wheel.  We will learn 6 words to describe any color in the world; learn how to mix any color (by actually mixing colors); and we'll paint our very own color wheel.  In addition, we'll learn how to place all Cushing colors onto the color wheel, and learn how to choose mother/toner colors.
• We will also give a sneak peek of the great things we have planned for our early spring retreat in 2011!

Cost for this meeting is FREE for guild members, and $10 if you just want to come and play.  There is still time to join as a charter member, you can join that day or subscribe here!

Important!  Please RSVP so we can be sure to have enough supplies (no need to reply if you can't make it, we'll miss you though!). We will be keeping you busy this time, so you won't need your hooking stuff.

Our Latest Hook-in!

The Fifth Utah Hook-in was a great success! We very much enjoyed the company, the vendors, the goodie bags, and the demos! And thank you so much to everyone who joined as charter members of the Utah Rug and Fiber Guild. If you still need to join, please click on the tab above.

One of our demos was by Janet, who showed us her fabulous handmade purses made from felted sweaters, and also examples of needle felting and wet felting. We learned so much--thank you, Janet!

Here are the links to the resources she mentioned:
http://resweater.blogspot.com/
http://ragingwool.blogspot.com/
http://blog.betzwhite.com/
http://shop.ebay.com/wind4934/m.html

Become a member of the Utah Rug & Fiber Guild

We are so excited to announce that our guild is open for memberships!  We have so many fun activities planned for our local Utah rug hookers, you really won't want to miss out.  We promise you will get your money's worth and much more.

As a Guild member, you will receive:

•  Quarterly newsletter with articles, dye recipes, classifieds, free patterns and more.  Also included will be the financial reports so you will know exactly what is being spent and for what.
• A free, exclusive pattern designed by Londi Rowley
• Access to all guild meetings and events.  We are planning 2 events (the annual hook-in and spring retreat) and 4 meetings per year.  Events will be discounted for guild members and meetings will be free, although occasionally there may be a small materials fee.
• Discounted guild rate and advance, priority registration for conferences featuring national teachers such as Karen Kahle and Anita White.
• Many opportunities to grow your rug hooking and fiber art education and skills!

To subscribe, click below.  The price is $25 per year (September through August) and will automatically renew annually.  You may cancel at any time.

Utah Hook-in

It is time to register for our 5th Utah Rug Hookers Hook-in!  We are so excited to hold our fifth hook-in, and you will especially not want to miss it this year.  We have some very special surprises planned!

The Hook-in will be held at the Rio Grande building in Salt Lake again this year, on Saturday, September 25.  Something a little different this year, we thought we would keep costs down for you so we are lowering the cost to $12.  With this decrease in the fee, we will not be hosting a lunch, so please plan to bring your own sack lunch.  Pot luck snacks are also welcome, but not required!  We will still have all the usual fun activities, giveaways, workshops, and rugs to see.

Please do not think you have to be an expert to come to our hook-in!  We welcome everyone no matter your level. In fact, our first year, we had one or two ladies attend who had never hooked before the hook-in and we helped them get started. 

You may register online by clicking the link below, please register by September 10th.  You may pay via credit card or mail a check.

http://www.tfaforms.com/172221

We hope to see the most participants attend than ever before!  See you there!

Angela, Londi, Lisa, Tonia and Gayle