CREATIVE BLOG CHALLENGE ~ ~ ~

 Okay, readers ~ here it is!!!!  Tuesday, I put the hook to the linen and three days later, it is finished! 

I started with some lines for center and a rough drawing of a heart and began with the sari ribbon.  I agree with Kris ~ I love hooking with sari ribbon and want to do more, for sure!  Ali gave us a really long length and I thought it would go further than it did ~ but I improvised and used this beautiful hand-dyed roving to fill in the middle! I like the idea of 'making do', like the old time ruggers did!

Next, I stitched on  the felted heart and hooked around it with the piece of dyed hosiery ~ not enough of that so I folded it in the middle and hooked both sides of the heart top till it ran out. After the rug was hooked, I snipped each loop of the hosiery to poof it up a little and  I used another roving yarn to fill in around the bottom but reverse hooked that along the way.  I drew some other hearts and gathered various dyed red wools and away I went! This project kind of designed itself ~ I had no idea that it would be this big ~ and didn't start out with the idea that it would be a pillow.  It's interesting what each of us sees when we open our package of goodies ~ and how we come upon our end result!

This is another shot with a white background ~ it shows a little better but not as dramatic ~ so I'll let you see both!  I hooked the cotton lace, again, measuring it from the middle and hooking to the ends and then filling in with red wool.  The word LOVE is so bold here that it even surprised me!  I used the hand-spun white yarn to help offset the white lace ~ then second-guessing myself, pulled it out and hooked the letters in red sparkly wool!  That didn't work so I pulled that out and used a nice purple (in my teaser photo, there was purple wool that I hooked in to set the letters until I decided what to do) but that didn't excite me, either.  My original thought seemed to be best, so I hooked that  white lumpy yarn back in ~ and I like it.  I wired the beads on ~ there were five, so I went with the number there were and added them randomly.  And the finished product is a 12" x 17"  pillow ~ with a proddy edge like Karen Kahle showed us at the Tipp City class.  The pillow is stuffed with wool snippets, lavender  and ~ wool lint!  After new wool is washed and dried, there is a multitude of colorful lint  and it makes wonderful stuffing ~ nothing going to waste!!

There you have it ~ challenge # two ~ can't wait to see what Maria created!  Check all  of our blogs to see what we came up with!  Kris Miller is the next material supplier ~ and I'll do the last one.  We're leaving for Florida in mid February, so I'll have to dive right into the next project as soon as my little package arrives!  I've hooked so fast and furiously on this, it tells me I could really finish my other rug in no time, if I would apply myself!  Anybody who knows me, knows that I love a deadline ~ that's what gets my blood flowing and maybe even stimulates my creative brain.  I also see that starting with a blank piece of foundation fabric might be a good thing for me to try again!  It's always good to learn something new about ourselves, isn' it?

Have a good day ~ we're getting a nice soft snow here, that's really piling up!  A good night for hooking!