A Hint of Summer

 It's not unheard of to have a snow storm in April around here.   It's not common, but it happens.   However this week the weather has been spectacular.  It's been a peek into summer, today especially.  Yesterday started off nicely, with sunshine and mild temperatures, but right about noon the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up.  It was still a cold breeze, which made the day feel cool.  Today though, the breeze is mild, and the sun is shining.  It's 24C out side which is summer weather.   This morning, I hung out the first laundry of the year.   I'll admit that I like hanging laundry outside.  It's one of those little chores which makes me feel very happy.

 

All those really early bulbs have suddenly bloomed.  The Scilla or Squill, whatever you call it, and the Glory of the Snow have started to bloom.   The mini daffodils have started to bloom and the full size ones should be starting to bloom in a day or two.   What is really amazing is the number of bees around these flowers.   So many of them and they are so busy, flitting around.  We get a lot of tiny bees, which are very good pollinators.   This spring though, in addition are a lot of these larger bees.   

 

I'm almost finished the rug!   I just have a couple more flowers to finish up and the binding.   I'm having a hard time finding yarn in the right colour to whip the edges with.   The blue background of the border is a teal based colour and was dyed with who knows what dyes, ages ago.  I picked it up at a guild silent auction.  It's a lovely dark, mottled blue, more cobalt than navy.   I was at a hook in with the guild, at the studio of a very talented hooker and totally forgot to ask her if she had a dye which would work.  I've dyed one skein of yarn, but it's not quite the right blue :(   The only thing I'm not 100% happy with are the mullions on the pink house.  I'm not sure I'm unhappy enough to change them though, and haven't thought about what colour I might change them out with, just in case I decided to pull them out and redo them. hmmm.....

I was at Westfield demonstrating Pysanky or Ukrainian Easter Eggs.   It was a fun time and while there

were a lot of visitors, there weren't so many it was crazy all the time.   The amazing thing was a friend from my childhood showed up and surprised me.  It totally made my day.  I don't have a photo of all the eggs I wrote because I gave a bunch away in the staff room.  I kept enough for a display I'll need them for in the future though, so I don't have to write more of them between now and then.   I forgot to take the wax off one of them, oops!

 

A Jumble of Things

 

I realized that the placement of the border flowers wasn't working with the size of the hoop I was using to hook with.   I kept having to adjust things to not crush the flower centres, which are large sequins.   I dragged out the PVC frame which hubby had made me, but I wasn't using because I need another couple of clamps to hold the rug secure for hooking it.   However, the border is narrow enough that it worked well when I tried it.   It saves the sequins from getting crushed, and holds it tight enough in the area I need for hooking.   

There is an issue though, that proves to stop my hooking completely.  I set up the frame, tighten the rug down the rug.  As soon as Phil notices, he watches until I reach for my hook and wool.  Then he flies up, and settles under the frame for a nap.  Silly kitty...

On the plus side, using this frame when there isn't a cat hiding under it has made the border hook quite quick.  The first 3 sides are almost complete, so Yay!

After a huge fiasco when I ordered my Pysanky dyes this year, I've finally been able to start writing the eggs.   I'd ordered the dyes at the beginning of February.  The store sent them, but neglected to send me the promised tracking number, so I didn't know they'd been sent, and apparently delivered.  However they weren't delivered to me, despite the shops insistence.   Finally they sent me the tracking number, which enabled me to use the post office's miserable virtual assistance, to find out that they had put the wrong address on it.  It was back to the store, where they said that they'd resend the packet, and then decided that they should charge me a second time.  I was nope, I'm not paying twice for one package because you made the mistake.   I had to dig up all the documentation for them, to see that I had indeed paid, and they were "oops, it slipped my mind".   Needless to say, as much as I've purchased from them before, I'll be searching out a new supplier and only using this store if I actually go to the city to shop in person.

The sap is running.    We have some buckets out but I think it's too early.  Hubby is happy with the timing though and since he does most of the boiling down, his opinion has a bit more weight than mine.    He took the buckets down yesterday afternoon because a big storm was blowing in, with snow, snow thunder and winds.

 The storm dumped almost 30 cm of snow on us: heavy, wet snow.  It took him all morning in a couple of shifts to clear the driveway and blow out paths to the bird feeder and barn. Today the skies were blue and the sun was shining.   It was hard to believe that they said we had blizzard conditions for hours last night.

What's up with this rug?

I belong to a rug hooking guild.  Next year is it's 50th anniversary, and the club is doing a huge show at the art gallery.    There are going to be 2 rooms, one for the history of rug hooking in our area and the other to showcase members rugs.  We have some spectacularly talented rug hookers.   I'm a rank beginner in comparison.  However, most of my rugs are my own design.  There's one in particular I've been asked to finish up as it's a bit of a different design.   I drew my own pattern and dyed much of the wool used for it, so it unique in a number of ways.   

Phil sleeping on the rug while I made tea

The border is fairly simple, just flowers with the dark blue background.  I wanted to use Shisha mirrors as the centre of the flowers, but the only ones I could find were going to have to be ordered, with a stupid long delivery time.  Instead I substituted these huge sequins.  The sequins worked, although steaming will likely be an issue, that the real mirrors wouldn't have.   Sewing them down didn't quite work.  Although they were secure, having only a single sewing hole, they kept flipping up when I was hooking.   I added a glue stick, but it wasn't secure enough to hold it while I was working on it.  In the end I had to use E6000 glue and let it dry overnight before using it. The glue works incredibly well.  It holds the sequins securely while I handle the rug.  

Unfortunately, the drying time is an issue. One thing about this rug is that the cats have taken a liking to it.   With all the wool blankets I leave all over for them to sleep on, it's curious to me as to why they've taken a liking to this particular rug. All that needs to be finished is the border.   I started on it and set it down to go make tea and came back to find Phil had settled on it.   He was probably awake but refused to open his eyes and move.  He'd settled in quite nicely.

Because of the way I'm working this, I'm only gluing on the sequins onto the side that I'm hooking.   During the drying time, Kevin has decided that this rug was a good place to nap.    He would move if I chase him off, but he was sleeping  nicely and the rug needed to dry until the morning  anyway, so I left him to his dreams.

It was fine for a few days, and at least I didn't see any kitties sleeping on it.  I got some hooking done.   Some will have to be redone because those flowers have been a learning experience.   This morning though, I went to set the rug up on the hooking frame and what did I find again? Yep, Kevin has decided that this is his rug.  I thought it was safe as I'd had it in an out of the way spot.  I hadn't bothered to roll it up properly because I've been working on it most evenings. I can't leave it in the frame or hoop because it could stretch the backing and leave marks.   I have learned that if I don't want cats sleeping on it, then I need to put it away properly.  couple of days, but then it was obvious that Kevin really likes this rug.   It's now rolled up and inaccessible to kitty naps.

New Hooked Rug

 

This is most of the yarn that I've spun for the guild group rug hooking project.  I'm not sure I have enough of some of the colours though as my rug will be 16 x 16 inches square.  If I had to spin it again, I'd spin slightly thinner yarns just to see if that added smoother edges and more definition to the shapes.

The first rug I hooked on my own, I used handspun yarn, but the shapes were quite simple and large.   This rug has somewhat more detail and definitely smaller shapes.   What I'm learning is that the definition in the shapes from fabric strips doesn't really happen with the thicker yarn at any rate.   The edges of the shapes are quite soft and fluid.

You can see here, the edges of the flowers are far softer and much less defined.   I tried using the same green for the leaves as I'd used for the stems.   It doesn't work for me, so I will need to spin something a little less varigated and probably a lighter and maybe brighter green for the leaves. 

Weaving and wool cutting

The pink tea towels are wet finished.   They washed up nicely, although there was a bit more shrinkage than I anticipated.   I don't imagine it was any different from other towels I've made, but just that I haven't woven tea towels in a long while so had forgotten.

I just piled the towels up, without matching the outside colours.  Still, it's easy to see the difference that the weft colours made on the towels.   I wasn't fond of the changes that the darker green made on the colours.  My favourite was using the pale pink.  I ended up weaving the extra towel in the pale pink as well.  I think it kept with the intended colour scheme better.

The next set of towels is on the loom.  I tied on to the old warp.  Usually this is fairly quick and effortless to do.  However, I managed to find a sleying error and had to resley about 1/4 of the warp.  Luckily it was near the last stripe so it wasn't too fussy or overly time consuming.  When I was winding it on, I came to the end of the roll of cheap watercolour paper I'd been using as packing paper.  It worked really well for weaving, pattern making and anything else, except of course when I tried it for watercolours.   But there was something icky on the inside of the roll and I didn't want it touching the yarn, so I snipped it off.  All was good until I couldn't reach the end properly.  A few threads caught on the paper and yep, I snipped them off when I trimmed the last bit of the paper.  After doing a rough measuring, I simply knotted the cut ends together as it was right in the general area of the end of the second tea towel.  We'll see soon if I was correct.

Here you can see the end of the first towel, with the light grey warp of the first stripe and the start of the second towel with the medium blue of the third stripe.  It sure makes a huge difference!

This is a Fraser cutter, used for cutting wool strips for rug hooking.    I have been looking for one for a while so that I could stop cutting my strips by hand.  That is pretty tedious.   My first choice would have been a Bolivar or a Townsend, but neither was in the budget, so I had to wait.  Over the summer I found a Fraser, but it only had a # 4 wheel that worked.   The wheel number determines the width of the wool strip which is cut.   A #4 is 1/8 in. wide.   It makes for a lot of detail and is a little more difficult to work with than a #6 which is 3/16 in. wide or a #8 which is 1/4 in. wide.   My favourite so far is the #6, which seems to be the hardest cutter wheel to find second hand.  But our local Hooking guild had a silent auction and they put their spare cutter up with a 3, 4,5,6 cutter wheels included.   I bid and won this for about the same price as a single new cutter wheel would cost.   It works well and I had a lovely time playing with it to cut strips for the rug I'm working on.

The cutter came in this box, which is likely the original shipping box.   It was originally destined for a rug hooking class at a secondary school.  I looked up the stamps and they are from 1956.  The stamps were issued to honour the chemical industry and the pulp and paper industry.  I wonder if they'd do the same today.  

  I can't find the original price of the cutter from that year, but I know that a friend purchased one in the 70's for $66.   So these cutters hold and increase their value!  They cost about $600 and up new and still look almost exactly them same.  The cutter works beautifully regardless of it's age.    I'm really happy that I got this as it means I can get some work done on my rug. 

Rug Hooking

I've started hooking the tulip rug pattern.   I have some odds and ends of wool that I picked up, but not enough to really coordinate anything, so it's really going to be a bit of a hit and miss sort of pattern.   I thought I had plenty of green, but ran out much sooner than I expected.  I'm also not sure of what colours to use for the last 3 tulips, since I don't  have enough of any colour to complete a single flower, let alone 3 main colours and 3 contrasts for the lot of them. 


The running out of green problem I solved by taking a bunch of yellow bits and pieces and dumping some blue and yellow dye on them, using a mason jar technique.  Then, I did a second dye, where I dumped them all in a pot and married the colours - forcing the dye to bleed out, then hitting them with a bit shot of acid to force the now blended colours to take.  This gave me  slightly mottled and more similar shades of green.  Having distinct greens in lights, mediums and darks worked for shading the leaves, but the green that the yellow wool gave me was one I didn't particularly like and there was too much contrast with the yellows and the green.  This way, although I loose the shading, I gain in a green that I like, which has some texture but not too much.

 Not having access to a  wool strip cutter is getting a bit tiresome.   I'm cutting everything with a rotary cutter.  My strips are a bit larger than I'd like, but I can't get them much narrower.  Maybe lack of skill on my part, or my ancient cutter, which has a wobbly blade sometimes, and  tightening screw which is either too tight or gets too loose very quickly.  It's getting tiring cutting all those strips by hand.  I spent over 2 hours cutting and hooking today.   All I had to show for it, was a little pile of strips and all I had hooked was that little bit of black/blue background.  

Mister supervisor Phil also impeded my hooking time by deciding that he needed to check out the underside of my pvc frame. 

The end of May happenings

I finally got the go ahead to order some new rug hooking supplies.  I was out of linen backing.  I had some Monk's cloth, but it's a much finer weave.  Since I don't have access to a rug hooking cutter, I'm having to hand cut my wool strips.   They are thicker than the size that I want to use on the monk's cloth.  

I'm using a variety of sizes on the Tulip rug, mainly because I'm using a bunch of noodles (the name used for the cut wool strips) that I got at a guild sale at a winter meeting.  It's a bit of a hodge podge effect as there isn't enough of any colour to coordinate the whole rug.  However this was going to be my Westfield rug to work on over the summer.  Since we're still unable to gather together, and Westfield is closed, I'm doing in in the fashion I'd have hooked it over the summer, while in costume and demonstrating the technique.  Many antique rugs show that when you run out of one colour, you just pick up another colour and keep on going.  That is what I am doing.

The white lilacs are blooming.  This photo was taken a few days ago, when they were just starting to bloom.  We'd had some crazy warm days and the scent carried, perfuming the whole yard.  I'd bring my tea outside and enjoy them.

  Then the weather changed and got crazy cold.  I mean it was 29C with a humidex of 37C one day and then poof, it went down to 3C at night.  Luckily the beans had started germinating and they survived.  I forgot to move the cotton plants and the lemon tree under shelter, and they were fine.
Even the Dyer's Knotweed  seems to have muddled through the 2 cold days and colder nights. 

I found this Jack in the Pulpit growing in the area where hubby splits wood.   There it was bravely blooming amidst the unstacked wood, the wood chips, bits, and other pieces.   While I was photographing it, my sweetie was yelling at me to move and I'd look around and could see nothing dangerous.  No toppling towers of wood.  He wasn't tossing split pieces my direction - nothing.   He came over to point out I was precariously near an ants nest that he'd disturbed with his slicing and dicing of downed maple tree.  They didn't seem to bother with me and it was pretty neat seeing a wild flower like this.  

I whipped up some hamburger buns to eat with leftover burgers.  They were so much nicer than commercial buns.  The fact that they were super easy to make was nice too.  I did take the time to measure the dough into 8 equal weight pieces before I shaped them.   That was the only fussy bit.  It wasn't really necessary I guess, but each bun was a different size the first time I cut it into pieces, and I was a tad worried they'd all cook at different speeds.  Hindsight says that they were only a few grams difference in weights, so it would have been fine.  However, producing near perfect hamburg buns was also nice.

I've been weaving off the wool/cotton yardage.   The pictures are all the same - purple sunset fabric.   I'm on the home stretch now, with only 1-2 yards left to weave.   Because the yarn is variegated, I am winding each bobbin twice, so I can keep the colours in the same order as they are winding off the skeins.   It's been working well.  The yarn has certainly been strong enough, despite being singles, except in one place where it looks like a kitty got curious and I found some yards of  shredded yarn singles that were covered in cat spit.  At least I hope it was cat spit...

Woolly activities

I've finished the hooking part of the basket weave rug.   I'm quite happy with it so far.   I still need to steam it so it's flat.   Then I will baste a cord wrapped in the backing, around the edge of the rug.  The final steps are to whip stitch wool yarn around the edge to cover the cording and backing, to give a firm finish, which will frame the rug.  

I don't have the yarn yet, which will likely be black.   I was thinking about spinning it.  It won't take a lot, maybe about 150 yards.  But it will have to be dyed.  The fibre that I have which is suitable, is still raw fleece, so it will need to be washed.   By the time I've washed the fleece, let it dry, worked out the calculations to spin it to the necessary twist and grist, and then spin, ply and dye it, spending the $7.45 for the single skein of yarn that I'd need, seems to be an easier solution.  

I'm happy with the rug though.   Now to find a local dealer for Briggs and Little yarn, Regal weight.  

This is the end of the blanket project which is on the loom.  I wove this blanket it 2 halves.  Because I only have 4 shafts and my loom is only 36 in wide, I can't do a twill double weave project.   So if I want to do a twill blanket, I weave it in two long strips and stitch them together.    It's not really sewing it together, it's more like running an extra warp thread down the middle, picking up the little loops along the selvedge, where you reverse the weft.   It's easy and takes only a long thread of warp and a tapestry or darning needle.

Joining the two halves

The seam line from joining using this technique is almost invisible.

You just pick up one loop on the selvedge of one piece, and then the next one on the selvedge on the second piece.  The reason I like joining two woven pieces this way is because the seam is nearly invisible.

My finger is on the seam.  Despite the bit of extra bulk at the selvedges, it's still really hard to see.

I thought that I wove the blanket halves to 95in, knowing there would be a lot of shrinkage when it first came off the loom.  Obviously I wove the first half to only 92 inches because the second half it a few inches longer than the first.    It's an easy fix though.  I'm joining the two halves together first.  Then I will pull a weft thread where I want a cutting line to even up the two blanket pieces.   I'll then stitch along the blanket side of the little gap to secure the threads before cutting the extra off.  

I hem my blankets these days, rather than twisting fringes.   If I were to sell blankets, I'd likely twist the fringes as people seem to like the look.  However, I want my blankets functional and I find the twisted fringes get in the way.  They tickle chins and noses, get caught up in fingers, and other things and of course are the perfect cat toys.   Hems are far more utilitarian as far as I'm concerned and I'm willing to give up a pretty finish in order to not wake up with a fringe bit caught up where I don't want it.

Crazy small projects

 I used to make soap.  Lots of soap.  Mainly cold process, although I did try hot process once.  I didn't like the hot process as it just took too long, and I wasn't in a hurry to have soap ready.   I haven't made soap in ages though.   However, I found some melt and pour soap supplies on sale and thought I'd play around a bit.   The clear base didn't even look all that clear in the block, and it certainly didn't finish clear.   I'm not horribly impressed with my first efforts.     I have some shea butter base and another base which I'll try next.   If nothing else, I have lavender oil to add in them, and the bars of soap can be used in wool storage bins to help keep the moths at bay.

And yes, they do have little toys embedded in them.   The round one on the far right has a snail in in it, while the shark and whale ones were obviously too big for the moulds.  The turtle was just a tad too tall but the lobster and frog were perfectly sized.

I whipped up some placemats.  I used cotton warp and the weft was commercial yarns or home made t-shirt yarn from new t-shirts which were on sale for cheaper than the thrift store.  The solid coloured yarns was a new recycled t-shirt yarn which I tried out.   It's great fun to work with, fast to weave up, but turns out to be quite expensive if you wanted to do a large project with it.

I made a wool worm holder.  Wool worms are the strips of wool used in traditional rug hooking.  After cutting the wool into worms, I was stashing them in large zip-lock bag, depending on project.  That meant there were a bunch of colours in each bag.  As I was hooking away on the rug, I realized that I had no idea how many worms I had left.  So I made an organizer to help keep some semblance of order.   I quilted up a mat, adding snap tape to the inside.  Then I bound the whole thing in bias tape.   It works a treat.   For this particular project, I would need either a larger one or a second one though as it doesn't hold all the colours and textures that I need.   I've also been working on a smaller project, still working out of the bags since the worms are much thinner that these ones.    It looks like I'll need to make a couple more holders in the near future.  They take up less room than the plastic bags and make it easier to find the particular colours needed at any time.  Plus the worms just slide out of the holder with a little tug, which is so much easier than prying them out of a ball of thin strips of wool in the bag.

Currently the loom is empty.   I need to make a rug, as per a family member's request but I just finished a run of rugs, and am dithering over my next project.    The wheel has cotton on it, and I need to finish up some rug hooked ornaments.   Sometimes what I picture in my mind's eye, doesn't actually materialize when I work on it.  Thus my embellished with beads and embroidery, hooked ornaments don't actually match my expectations.  Now if they'd been felted, it would have been a different story.

We've been running both wood stoves with the unseasonably cold and snowy weather.   It seems between loading the stoves and keeping the humidifier running, that sometimes there is little time for anything else.  But we're warm and the humidifier runs in the corner with the instruments, so they are looked after.  The cats like to cuddle in the cooler weather, so there is that as well.   Phil has no issues in coming up to me and demanding that I sit on the couch so he can curl up on my legs.    I don't always give in to him, unless it's lunch time or I'm ready for a tea break.  He is a darned good snuggler though.

Back after Camera difficulties

I had horrible issues with my camera.   It would only take dark, under exposed photos.  It was horrid and it was frustrating because I can't afford a new camera and it's likely not worth repairing this one as it's pretty old.    I ignored it for a while.  Today, I took it out again, fussed with a few things, still no luck.  Then I tried it with the flash -  worked perfectly... without the flash, too dark.   It turned out, it was a stupid dial that I was moving by accident.    Sheesh... talk about operator error of the stupidist kind!   As okay for photos as my phone camera is, it's not really good enough for a lot of what I like or at least usually need to photograph.

This is the almost finished - it's now completely done - traditionally hooked rug that I made with my handspun, hand-dyed yarn.    I'm really happy with it.  I learned a lot, and for a learning project, I think it turned out quite nicely.   Some areas are over packed, and learning how narrow lines work was interesting.   I was going to put a border on it.  While I started it, I wasn't sure I had enough yarn in the colours I wanted, and since these colours were one offs, using up old dyes, I opted for the smaller rug, to be certain of having enough yarn.

Before we left on holidays, I started this shawl.  I knitted a few rows in the car and hotels each night on the way down.   I knitted some while we were in Nova Scotia and then on the way home, despite my issues with motion sickness, it was a godsend.   It started to rain the moment we hit the New Brunswick/Quebec border and was scary, torrential downpours until just outside of Montreal.   I got a lot of knitting done in those hours.   I wasn't driving ;)

It's a simple shawl- Danish/Icelandic style wrap shawl in garter stitch.   Perfect for keeping the hands busy without a lot of though.    I just finished it a couple of days ago.  The thing is huge.   It's warm and cuddly though. 

 I had some scraps of handwoven wool fabrics that I ran though the washer to full up.  They fulled up more quickly than I'd expected and more than I'd wanted.  I set them aside until a couple of days ago.   I dyed them up in yellows and oranges.  The greens were blue fabrics to start with.    I've started making some proddy hooked sunflowers.   I wish I'd dyed more yellow fabric though.   It makes for pretty flowers.   The centres should be larger, but I'm using scraps of linen hooking fabric up and they are only about 4 inches wide, so this is about it for flower size for these ones.

Here is a photo of a sunflower from my garden for comparison.

I've been working on a rug warp.   I dyed it to get the colour I wanted because I'd bought a whole whack of natural coloured 4/8 cotton a couple of years ago.   Now I need to wind 22 more threads of the white stripes, because I managed to miscount the first time.    It's an easy threading project though as it's only 27 inches wide and there are only 2 rugs to weave in this warp.

Adventures in Rug Hooking

 This is the new pattern I've drawn up for a hooked rug.   I saw pictures of several antique rugs using a similar basket weave design, though many of the rugs were quite large, mine is sized for a mat.    I had some bristol board marked with a grid, and just used a straight edge to draw out a pattern in a scale which looked suitable for the rug size.    I had linen rug hooking backing for this project. I didn't however, have any red dot or any other tracing type material for drawing the pattern on the linen.  I'd cut out both pattern pieces, and was going to trace them onto the backing.  It turns out, I didn't need it.  The backing is quite an even weave.  All I had to do was follow the lines of the fabric with my felt tipped marker, checking the sizes with my pattern pieces.   I spent way more time trying to figure out how to do this, than the actual time needed to draw out the pattern this way.   Once I realized that I didn't need a straight edge or pattern, it just seemed to happen in no time at all.

Strips of wool for hooking however, are taking forever!   First I had to hunt down fabrics.   There was no suitable wool available in local shops.   I had some in my stash, which I raided.  I had lengths for tunics but not enough for 1860 skirts, so not needing a new wool tunic, I took a half yard from each length.   I had some scraps too.  I also found a couple of short wool skirts and 2 wool mens jackets in the thrift stores.   Men's jackets are a bit expensive and have a lot of waste, as only the sleeves and parts of the front are useful, but they have a good range of patterns and fabric weight compared to the skirts.   I wasn't able to find any old, old skirts, which would have been longer and slightly heavier.  But since everything needs to be felted up anyway, even the lighter weight skirts were usable.  

I wanted to use a #6 cut, but that is 3/32 in.   I don't have a cutter and the rug hooking guild doesn't meet in the summer, so I've resorted to using a rotary cutter.   I tried measuring it out, ended up with 1/4 inch, which is about an 8 cut, but most of it is slightly wider because the wool seemed to spread under the ruler.  In the end, I am just eyeballing it and my cuts are closer to the size I want.

It takes approximately  4 times the amount of yardage as the area of the space you need to fill.   It feels like I've been cutting wool strips for days, but I think I have days more cutting to do.  I figure that right now I've only got enough strips to fill about 1/4 of the rug.    I can see why people hook with yarn rather than wool strips.    One snip on a skein and you've tons of yardage cut.

I'm using this rug as a demo project for when I'm at Westfield.  I think it will be an easy project to pick up and put down without worrying about mistakes.  There isn't any shading, difficult bits to hook so showing people how it's done, will be easy.  The plus is that when it's hooked, every rug I've seen was pretty impressive looking.

Just a warning, I found some fabrics in the wool department at a local store, but they don't full up or felt and I'm pretty sure they are not natural, or at least a crazy blend.   I also found out that manufactures can label their wool as 100%, but it can have 10% of other fibres in it.   This really affects the way it felts up or doesn't felt  when you wash it.

Busy work for those long dark days of winter

Much spinning has been happening.   The white is some regular BFL.   I've now got a bit under 500g spun in a similar weight.   The pink is one of my fall dyeing experiments which is mainly pink and purple, with some decent bits of blues and mauves.   It's a superwash BFL.   Both spun up nicely and when I sit down to it, quite quickly.    The white is about worsted weight while the pink is really fine and should be somewhere in a light sock weight/lace weight.

I've gone on a bit of a wool washing binge.   I don't really like to wash fleece in the winter but this is a medium grade fleece of unknown origin and I have need of something less fine that all my pre-processed fibres.  It's really too coarse for wearing close to the skin.   I'm going to spin it up for rugs, so it's perfect for that.

This is the first wash water - ugh, it's really, really dirty.   It's only taken 2 washes though to get the fibre clean.  The first batch only took 2 rinses as well.  It's fairly low lanolin, which really helps.  The second batch though, I used too much soap, so it's going to need a couple of extra rinses.  It doesn't take that much extra actual physical time, but does take up a lot of waiting time.

 There is lots of VM in it so I'm thinking this will be run through combs for processing.    

Kevin has been inappropriately interested in my large trash bag of fibre and it's been a chore to keep him out of it.   

I took a rug hooking class the other day.   I finished the actual project, except for rolling the edges.   It was a lot of fun.  The black wool strips were cut a little bit on the bias, so they were very shreddy.  It made them fluff up a bit and combined with my lack of experience, made my sheep's ears disappear.  Still, I'm happy with how much fun it was and how quickly the learning curve was.  The class was pretty good and covered lots of information.  I think the only things missed were different ways to hold the hook, in which it was mentioned but never demonstrated, and how to actually tension the fabric in the hoop, which may or may not be an issue if you get it tight enough to start with.

  I'm going to spin up some yarn to use for rug hooking, as it seems like a good way to use up bits of yarn and fleeces which may have no other use.   But if you have scraps of real wool fabrics, I'd love to have them.  They don't have to be awfully large as there is lots of shading and dyeing of mixed lots to make up the unique colours.