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.