CLASS ON HEARTS ~ ~ ~

One of my rug hooking friends wants to do a class on hearts in preparation for Valentines Day!!  So, on Monday, January 28, we're going to do this heart pillow with the proddy edge or a heart chairpad with hand-torn 1" strips!!!  Class will be from 10-4.  If you're interested, let me know soon so I can draw you a pattern and plan a little lunch!!!!  You can call me at 419-565-8821, email at gfraizer@neo.rr.com or respond here!!  Come join us ~ it'll be fun!!! 

PRODDY CLASS ~ ~ ~

 A good time was had by all!!  At least, that's what they conveyed to me at the time! MJ, who just flew in from wintering in Florida,  is looking over Dawn's shoulder and Pam ~ my wonderful lunch helper ~ is looking on!  They all worked on my Lexington Proddy Sheep pattern that is at the top left of the sidebar.

Linda, MJ, Pam and Jackie show off their progress at the end of the day!  We really had a lots of laughs ~ Linda was especially glad to get here after being lost on these twisty, turning country roads with no markings!  We were sure glad she found her way here! 

Lauren and Dawn thought they were so cute hiding behind their work ~ Deb was very proud to show her face!!  Lauren really got a lot of her proddy done ~ she picked  beautiful background and border wools.

Here's Lauren's face ~ she's taking a picture of me

taking a picture of her.  Deb is very serious about her work ~ she was doing a great job on her sheep and flag background.  Linda is also doing a flag background on hers ~ love that!

I wanted you to see a close up of Deb and Jackie's

sheep faces ~ they're doing them in Leicester sheep fleece that I had in my stash!  So cute ~ they're going to be very fuzzy faces ~ one with hooked ears and one with proddy ears!  Jackie and MJ really stepped out of the color box and chose purples and teals for their sheep ~ I hope they like them as well when they're done as they did that day!  Of course, you know I was crazy about the vibrant colors!

Jackie is modeling her Funky Flower purse that she made in our fall class ~ I was so glad she brought it along to show everybody!  She and Deb came from Pittsburgh bright and early that day and Dawn from Indiana ~ bless their hearts for travelling so far ~ Linda and Lauren travelled a distance, too ~ they want to plan a class for summer ~ I have to get my thinking cap on!! 

I do try to give the gals a great experience while they're here ~ they get a nice lunch ~ a house tour ~ great wool to work with ~ and I try to teach them something new so they leave here feeling their time was well spent!  Thanks to each one of you for a day of fun and sharing!

My next post will be about the International Quilt Festival that Heidi and I went to ~ what a great time that was!!  We're already planning on it for next year!! 

I'm getting ready for a show this Saturday at the fairgrounds in Mansfield ~ Gathered Treasures ~ a great primitive show ~ come see us!  The info and link to their website is on my sidebar!  Then on Sunday, we leave for the Woolley Fox for three days of my favorite pastime ~ hooking!!!  What a week I've got going!  Ta ta for now!
Alice

TODAY ~ ~ ~

We had a great proddy class in my studio!!! Five gals (two left before I remembered to get the camera out) who are all friends came to spend the day learning to proddy (some already knew how!)and laugh and eat and share their 'stories' (everybody has one, you know)!! Diana was a proddy machine ~ she got her entire sheep done and hooked his head and ears and a bit of background!!! Ann and RosaLee are showing off their progress too ~ Ann and I had some fun ~ are you still talking to me?? RosaLee is a long time hooker ~ I enjoy her outlook on life ~ someday, we're going to take a trip and let her be our tour guide!! Thanks girls for coming to spend the day ~ wish you could have seen Ruth's yellow sheep and Sharon (who is a traditional rug hooker) really stepped out of her comfort zone! When they're finished, I'll post pictures!

Since I knew some would be using fleece, I washed up a big pile the two days before!! If you've never washed a stinky sheep fleece, it's a treat!! My grandson, Luke, was over and thought it was pretty scary stuff!! There's a little bit of everything in the wool (this was sheared right from the sheep) and from all the lanolin, my hands are soft like a baby!!!

This is the nice clean fleece ~ Lincolnshire, I believe ~ when we went to a fiber show in the spring, Heidi and I split two different fleece ~ this is from the darker one. The other is silver grey and also very beautiful. I'm going to dye some of that ~ dyed curls make great little flowers or rainbows or accents in a proddied sheep!

Dirty fleece ~ that's what's in this bag!!!! Such an aroma ~ not something you run across every day!! My friend, Carol, who will be reading this, thinks we are very 'rural' and this will confirm it for her, for sure!!!!!!!!!!!! It takes a special kind of person to wallow around in this!! But the results are beautiful and these girls are really going to love the sheep they hook with their Lincolnshire fleece!!

After the girls left and the kitchen was cleaned and the hooking room put back in order a little bit ~ I packed up some clothes and my son, Tad ~ and we headed for the lake! Sonny has a golf outing today and it's rainy (this is Friday but since I posted the pictures before I left home, it's dated yesterday) so I am going to get some quiet time in hooking and resting. And since none of our lake friends will be here this weekend, it will definitely be a quiet one! It's actually supposed to be in the 60's ~ yuk ~ I was going to get some sun ~ that means more hooking time!! That's a win-win situation, isn't it?

Have a good weekend wherever you are!
Alice

ANOTHER PRODDY SHEEP ~ ~ ~

As you can see, I like doing proddy ~ proddy sheep in particular! This is one that I did at Barb Carroll's in one of her mini's , a couple of years ago. It is her Flag Day Sheep pattern but when I decided to do the sheep in proddy, the design took on a life of it's own. Barb added the flag background and then I added the braided border and voila! ~ this is the end result! I really like this guy, too!

I tear my proddy strips 1" wide and then cut them 3-4" long on an angle, so that I get this really shaggy look. There are 4 or 5 different wool textures in the body of the sheep. For me, a spring-loaded prodder works best and it's all done from the front of the pattern, which I hold in my lap or maybe work off a table.

My braiding is pretty rustic ~ I tore strips maybe 2" wide, sewed the strips together by hand, and then folded the edges in and braided at the same time. This whole rug was done in 3 days, including the braiding ~ when I returned home, I attached the braiding to the rug (the tricky part was blending the ends of the strips into each other at the end) and then bound the rug with wool strips. I have to say, one more time, that I just love this rug ~ but I really love most every rug I've done. The rugs that are displayed around our house are rugs that I've done at class or camp ~ there are others that I do for shows and with that in mind, I don't have a hard time parting with them. I do give a class on proddy in my home studio and sell the spring-loader prodders ~ anyone interested can contact me at gfraizer@neo.rr.com!

Just a note ~ right after I started this post, my darling Mr. Kitty jumped on the surge protector and shut the electric off to the computer!! I have to call him 'darling' so I don't say the bad thing that was running through my brain!!!!

We had a quiet weekend at the lake. Went for dinner Friday night with friends, went to an Art in the Park Saturday morning, came home and watched TV and napped ~ the entire afternoon!!! And ate ham sandwiches for supper!! We were definitely a couple of slugs that day!! Sunday, we had friends from home, up for the afternoon and went out for a fish sandwich before they left! Evidently, we needed a rest!!! And I didn't work on binding Mr. Catfish!! But that got started this morning!! So back to the hooking room to work on that ~ have a good day and thanks for reading!!
Alice

Maiden Voyage ~ Day Two

And what a voyage ~ I typed an entire post ~ tried to add a picture ~ saved the post into a 'draft' and have spent the last hour trying to edit the draft and publish it!! I finally printed the draft so i could re-write it and deleted it altogether and am starting new!! I'm going to master this blog thing and not let it master me!! So here we go again ~ ~ ~ ~ By the way, this would be a typical DAY IN THE LIFE experience for me!! yikes!!

Thanks to all of you who have sent comments and helped make me feel comfortable about doing this blogging thing! Today started out like a 'typical' day for me ~ I went to the hair salon for my 9:30 a.m. Wednesday every-three-week appointment and the only girl working said "what are you doing here?" Um ~ I'm here to get my gray hairs colored and cut ~ Your girl is on vacation, she replied!!!! Hm ~ ~ ~ I actually kind of knew that she was going to Florida but as it related to my hair appointment, it didn't compute. And she never said that I needed to reschedule this week because she wouldn't be there. The girl who was there kindly offered to do my hair later in the day, if I didn't mind coming back and I took her up on the offer. I guess my point in relating this dumb story is that years ago I would have reacted differently and not be very happy about being forgotten ~ but I'm learning that my reaction to a situation is what controls my feeling about it and that accepting the situation as it was, and blessing the fact that the other girl would take care of it ~ made it not a big deal at all!! I'm hoping to figure this all out before I leave this planet and I'm also hoping I've got a good long time to work on it!!!

Last night, I only got about 40 minutes hooking time in on Mr. Catfish, so I really won't post that little bit of progress. But ~ I will show you a proddy sheep rug that my friend/customer did in a proddy class that I taught! She brought it over yesterday (which by now is really two days ago since it's nearly 1 in the morning) and she really did a great job on it! It's a pattern that I drew especially for proddy but it certainly could be a hooked sheep as well!

Hopefully, I can add the picture successfully this time and instead of hooking tonite, I think I'll give in and say nighty night!!

Alice