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

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 

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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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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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

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

THREE LITTLE RUGS ~ ~ ~

Last evening, I met rug hooker friends, Pam, Sue and Charisse at The Happy Grape for a little fruit of the vine and conversation!! They brought their recent projects along for me to see! It's a Wendy Miller pattern and we spread them out so I could guess who hooked each rug ~ I was 1 for 3!!! They all hook in a similar style but Charisse is a little "brighter" as they all will acknowledge so I did get hers right! I hope you can double click the photo to see them closer ~ when I cropped it, it changed things a bit! Now, I've posted the original photo which shows the rugs more clearly!

We had good fun ~ and laughed a lot! And I got home in time to watch Dancing with the Stars!! It's a little draggy right now for me but there are some really good celebrity dancers that are going to make it a close competition in the end!

Off to dinner at the new Mexican Restaurant ~ talk to you soon!


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