Monday, May 13, 2013

WESTERN RESERVE GUILD HOOK-IN ~ ~ ~


Last Saturday, we were vendors at the hook-in sponsored by the Western Reserve Rug Hooking Guild.  It took place at Lake Farm Park with 125 women registered and what a fun group they were!! As the room filled up, the sound of chatter and laughter increased as well ~ pretty funny when you're on the sidelines!! There were wonderful door prizes ~ 25 hooked round mats and probably that many lavender plants to be given randomly throughout the day!  The mats were hooked by various members ~ a very generous door prize donation!!  There was also a fundraising raffle of two hooked rugs and a huge hooked stocking!  I am a member of this guild but not a very active one and I just admire all the effort put into planning a wonderful, fun-filled day for rug hookers from several different states!!  Linda Gustafson was the chairman and she and her committee did a bang up job!!!!!!


This was my booth later in the day ~ things moved and shuffled and I love it, of course!! We sold wool, and patterns and frames and hooks and books ~ it was a great day!  They serve wonderful treats in the morning and a great lunch at noon and had a huge Chinese auction with around 60 prizes!  That's amazing!  My donation was one of my beach glass bracelets with a piece of watery hand-dyed wool to go with it!  Actually, the truck was packed Friday night when I remembered that I needed a donation!  If you follow this blog or know me, you know that's when I can really get into gear ~ with a deadline looming large in front of me!  So, about 10:30 Friday night, I got the bracelet blank, jewelry glue and my beach glass stash out and a bracelet was made!  Susanne Woodbury was the winner and she seemed pretty pleased!!  I'm working with Susanne to set up a finishing class for the guild in November so we already knew each other ~ nice for a friend to win!!

The creator of this wonderful felted rope yarn is Marianna Halassy and her table was next to mine ~ so we had an opportunity to get acquainted! She's a love Hungarian lady with the cutest accent ~ I liked her a lot! This is some of the most unusual fiber I've seen ~ felted hand-dyed roving made into a thick rope-like yarn ~ gorgeous!! She also had blue Leicester fleece and a lighter-weight yarn as well.  You can find Marianna at www.etsy.com/shop/Marianna98 ~ great stuff!!






Sue Clark, who is a gal I've seen a lot at hooking events, but only met last year, was working on this creative piece.  All kinds of different stitches along with hooking and she is hiding behind it!  I'd been looking at it all day ~ a really showy rug!!
 This rug was close to my booth and is just so eye-catching to me!  Lots of great detail and her hooking was superb!!  And I can't remember the artist's name ~ if anyone knows, tell me and I'll put it right here!!

These refreshing Cajun lemonade martinis were waiting for us at the end of our day, at my Great Niece Hilary's house on the other side of Cleveland!!  Woo Hoo!! She and her sister Amy, read on my blog that we would be in their area and quickly called and invited us to hang out with them and their husbands for the evening!  I was impressed on two levels ~ first, that they wanted to hang out with us and second ~ they actually read my blog!!!!!!!  Their mom is my niece, Cheri, and she drove up for the festivities ~ we went to two fun places and at 11 p.m. I had to cry uncle!!  We had been up since 5 a.m., driven almost two hours, set up and did the show, tear down the booth and then partied like rock stars all evening!!  This old girl was 'stick a fork in me ~ I'm done'!!!!!  We had the best time and Hilary treated us to a lovely homemade breakfast complete with mimosas and we were back home by noon on Sunday!!!  Whew!  Great fun!  Thanks, Hilary and Steve and Amy and Dan and Cheri!!

Today is office work and DWTS tonite!!  Sometime, I have to put the hooking room back together, too!  Hope you all had a great weekend and Mother's Day ~ DIL Cheryl, stopped by with chocolate covered strawberries and Ted and family brought a beautiful rose bush ~ this will be my first attempt at growing roses!!  There were phone calls and texts throughout the day!  Enjoy your week!!  It's cold here ~ 52 deg. right now!!! 

Ta ta
Alice

Friday, May 3, 2013

BERLIN HOOK-IN ~ ~ ~

These are some of my hooking friends ~ old and new!!  Well, they're not old ~ you know what I mean! Charisse in front, and Sue, Karen, Pam and me, and Carol in the back row!!  Charisse, Sue and Pam were nice enough to take me with them ~ they are three very close friends and I appreciate being included.
Karen and Carol are sisters and really nice gals, as well!  Karen's rug hooking guild is selling these playing cards for $10 and each one has a hooked rug picture ~ really well done!  Karen gifted each of us with a deck ~ hooray!  And I wanted to give you the information, if you would like to order a deck from her.  It is the Buffalo Trace Rug Hooking Guild in southern Indiana and you can email Karen at kjbuchheit@yahoo.com
and she will happily send them to you!  A great present for your friends and yourself!  Thank you, Karen, for thinking of me!  All of these gals met at another hooking event and planned to meet in Berlin!  WE meet wonderful people in the rug hooking world!





This is Sue's rug that she started in Betsy Reed's class the day before the hook-in.  Really cute rug and she got a lot done!!









Charisse hooked this horsey ~ and really got a lot of background done, too but that was after her photo shoot!!  She was our driver and did a great job!!







Pam is quite a nice hooker but she's a gad-about and I think this was what she hooked in two days!!  We love to tease her ~ she's a social butterfly and very sweet! 






This is the same horse as Charisse is doing ~  hard to tell isn't it?  I'm doing mine in 1" hand-torn strips!  You could call this a chunky little horse ~ very chunky!  I've got a lot of background done ~ not sure I'm crazy about my color planning ~ hit and miss with all my scrap wool and worms!  That part I like!  I'll show it to you next week!! Some  of the colors have already been replaced ~ I'm going to figure this out yet!

The hook-in was hosted by the Amish Country Wool Artisans and there are 8 ladies who put this all together!  They do a wonderful job ~ we had a beautiful big room and great food ~ lots of vendors and lots of rug hooking friends to visit!  It was a great two days in the middle of Amish country with kindred spirits!  What could be better?

There was a rug show, too ~ I'll post pictures of that next time!  Have a great weekend!  The weather is beautiful in Ohio right now ~ finally!  I know some of my blog friends are not having quite such good weather where they are!  Hang on ~ Spring is on it's way to you, too!

Alice

Thursday, April 25, 2013

A LOVELY LUNCH ~ ~ ~

 Yes ~ that's what we had yesterday at our friend, Lori Corelis' home!!!  She had three of us in for brunch ~ a yummy asparagus strata, scones, fresh fruit and a spring green salad!!!  A little mimosa started the day!!!   These great stitched pieces are projects from Workt by Hand, that she and her sister Lanna attended recently!  One is from last year, but the circles are this year's stitchery!  LOVE the colors!





Lori and her husband, have a great house with lots of collections!  This one is a gathering of  'peck peck birds'!  None of us had ever seen any and here is a whole flock of them!!  They wind up and peck and jump around ~ great little pieces made from mohair as I remember!! 













Sherry brought us all curly willow branches to share ~ I haven't seen those either!!  It's amazing what I don't know about!!  They looked great in this crock ~ we should have left them all ~ but we didn't!!











This is a little part of Lori's studio ~ she's a very well-known bear designer and creates wonderful things right here in this room, that is a work of art in itself!!

We had a great day and thank you, Lori, for letting me take a few pix to commemorate our get together!  Our other friend is Pat Knapp ~ she and her husband owned The Village Idiot Antique Shop for many years ~ always a delight to be with and a wealth of knowledge about primitives!!  

Okay ~ I'm off ~ there's just more fun to be had than I can handle!!  Ta ta for now friends!!

Alice 

Friday, April 19, 2013

FUN DAY ~ ~ ~




We're in Berlin, Ohio taking a class with Betsy Reed ~ a fun day that went sooo fast! This is my hand-torn horse done with 1" strips!


Friend Sue hooked this sweet primitive cat. I came with the three musketeers ~ Sue , Pam & Charisse ~ great close friends that let me tag along!!


Here's Miss Betsy doing a demo on a patched pillow back. She's full of great ideas to make a project even more primitive!!

Tomorrow is a hook-in so I'll post more then!!

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Friday, April 12, 2013

MORE LOCAL COLOR ~ ~ ~






Yesterday's dyeing ~ antiquey colors ~ maybe I wasn't feeling so 'bright' yesterday!!!













This is the little dish granddaughter, Jordyn, made in her pottery class for me! I love it!




Last night, son Ted J(on the far right) was in "ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A FOURTH GRADER", put on by our local Bicentennial committee. It was a fun, free event putting local 'celebrities' (Ted is head of the local Little League Association and a coach) against a bevy of fourth graders! It was great fun and Teddy even sang a bit of The Candy Man from Willy Wonka ~ that was entertaining! By the way ~ the fourth graders won!!!





Packing for tomorrow's show so I better keep moving! Hope to see many of you hooker girls there!!





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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

LOCAL COLOR ~ ~ ~


These beautiful colors are fresh out of the dye pots! I love the dusky, antique look of some and the vibrancy of the others ~ something for everybody! Saturday, we will be at the Gathered Treasures show at the Fairgrounds ~ come see us!








These colors come from our lake haven ~ we were there this past weekend and immediately headed out to gather beach glass! The brilliant colors on the left are like jewels to me! 









This was our bounty from Saturday ~ mostly, nice soft whites and aquas with a few pieces of color thrown into the mix!











Even though this is sand ~ look at the variety of color and texture here! It looks like the side of a mountain cliff but it's really about a foot tall where the waves have washed it away.  It's really a work of art, all on it's own.

I've been washing wool and dyeing wool and all sorts of things this week.  I even planted a bag of daffodil bulbs that didn't get in the ground last fall. They hibernated in the garage all winter and were starting to sprout so into the ground they went ~ it was 77 deg. here yesterday ~ a perfect day for planting!! 

The weather reports from the mid-west are horrid ~ I know that some of my blog friends were having huge storms and losing tree limbs in the middle of hail storms!  I hope you are all okay!  Talk to you soon ~ back to work for me!!

Alice



Thursday, April 4, 2013

MAGDALENA ROOSTER PAIR ~ ~ ~

 This rug was started over a year ago at one of our Woolley Fox trips.  It's Barb's pattern called Rooster Pair ~ I love it!! I used all kinds of leftover worms in the background for the color and the neutrals are several different wools all mushed together in what I call The Karen Kahle style ~ I learned that from Karen in classes I've taken.


The rug resides in the entry to the dining/living room of our house ~ it fit perfect in the doorway!  We walk on it everyday and it seems no worse for the wear. It has lots of sparkly wool in it ~ in fact, the rooster bodies are all glittery wool ~ not primitive but it works for me!!  I finished it this fall right before our photo shoot.  I haven't heard yet when the magazine will use our house but you guys will be the first to know!!




This is granddaughter, Jordyn showing off her hand-built pottery vase that she made at our local art center.  She took classes this winter and did some great pieces!!  She really has an artistic nature ~ we hope she continues!! She let me choose a piece and I picked a small dish that we keep on the counter so I can look at it every day!! 











The same evening, we had birthday cake with Logan, who is a big nine years old now!!  He's the youngest of our 10 grands ~ they're growing up fast!  He's the only grandson playing Little League this summer ~ so we'll be seeing lots of him and Jordyn and Luci will be on the same team ~ we're very happy about that! 

I've been in the dye pots this week ~ next Saturday is the Gathered Treasures show here in Mansfield ~ lots of primitives for the home and garden ~ and me!!  I've gotten some pretty colors ~ it's always a surprise how they turn out!

Hope you had a good week ~ it's beginning to warm up ~ Spring is in the air!! 

Alice