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!! Fritz Mitnick emailed me that Patty Woehler is the hooker of Deanne Fitzpatrick's pattern. It is Patty and three good friends (Patty emailed and said there are FOUR good friends ~ guess Fritz nor I can count!) and Fritz says they each get to display it in their home for a while and then pass it on! What a great gift!

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