This week has had some interesting "Moments in Time." On Thursday I had two doctor's appointments. One at 10:30 am and the other at 1 pm. I was hardly thru with the first when it was time for the second. I have been poked, prodded, twisted, thumped, bent, twisted, said "ahaaaaa" many times plus every other thing that can be thought of to do to the human body. The concensus of opinion is that I need to have some tests!!! Geesh........

On Friday I taught my stitches workshop. It was a truly delightful day with five talented rug hookers all in good spirits. Brenda kept declaring that being here was so much more fun than working, Linda and Beth, amid much comment and laughter, kept vying to be "teachers pet" - no winner in this contest - since I love all of them. Mary was her usual quiet, sweet self, such a joy to be with. Judith worked hard on her piece in spite of twisting some of her fence. Since we were all having lunch together, we were aware that Judith is watching what she eats - no goodies - we were watching too!

Judith does eat CAKE!!!!!!!

Linda, Brenda and Judith hard at work.

Such concentration!

At the end of the day the table look like a trash heap!!!!! It was a fun time and everyone seemed to go home happy. I always learn so much from my students it is a pleasure to teach. I do think it is what keeps me going. I am already thinking of other projects we can tackle.

In the middle of the night (Saturday night or Sunday morning - depending on how you look at the clock) Eloise had to go out. When I opened the door it was raining like mad. I was reminded of Lucy Brown (Peanuts) who often commented that she thought the rain and snow came up out of the ground instead of down from the sky. It was raining horizontally! I was fascinated - I know Lucy Brown would have loved it!!!

I'm planning to go to the Cumberland Valley hookers in Chambersburg tomorrow. I have finished my parrot rug and have dyed the yarn and twill tape for the finishing - so will taking that with me to work on. This is the part of hooking that I least enjoy so it is best to do the finishing when you can be part of a group. It makes the job much more enjoyable.

And now my thought for the day:

You never find yourself until you face the truth.

Pearl Bailey

This has been a quiet week. I haven't traveled any place dor really done any exciting thing. It has been good to be home and spend lots of time with Eloise - just hanging out - giving belly rubs and generally taking of the house. I got reaquainted with my vacumn cleaner. It was about time - the dust bunny's were hopping!

I have been working on my parrot rug and am very pleased with the results. It finally told me that the outer border needed to pick up the blue of the parrots so I now have all of the color in place. I have about another days work to finish it - the hooking that is, not the binding and finishing.

Barb came today for her lesson and I sure was glad to see her. She is doing a very nice job on the scrolls and rose in the chair seat that we are working on. Today we started on the parrot tulip and I must say it was looking great when she left. It is a soft green, almost a celery color. All in all a very pastel piece that probably will have a dark background.

I have two new students coming tomorrow and I am looking forward to working with them. One has had more experience than the other but both are fairly new to rug making. I have heard from several of the girls that took my sculpting workshop and they are enthused about the sculpting and several will be coming to my stitches workshop next Friday.

Since not much has happened this week I thought I would show you a pictorial that I hooked in 2007. I have loaned my pattern books to the guild so am unable to look it up but I think it is a Wooley Fox pattern. It is called "dayflight."

This piece was such fun to hook. I especially had fun with the town below.

This closeup shows how I used a lot of scraps to do the trees and the church. I thought autumn showed up better than spring would so I could use more colorful scraps.

I thought you might like to see a closeup of the "girls" riding the horse. The polka dot dress is done with french knots and the wings of the horse are outlined in gold. Altogether a fun piece to hook.

In closing this blog - here is my thought of the day =

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

Katherine Mansfield

Happy hooking during this next week.

Today is what I call a soup and hot tea day. It is raining, it isn't raining. it's cold and it's not cold - Mother Nature simply can't make up her mind. Its a great day for sleeping! Also, a great day for pursuing all those hobbies you haven't had time for - what a wonderful day for hooking!

I have spent the morning gathering together the materials for my stitches class which I am teaching again on Friday the 27th. It has been very gratifying to me that so many people liked the results of my first stitches class. They loved the design that Pat did for me so that I could teach this. It was perfect to accomplish 6 or 7 different techniques that add so much to hooking without embellishing with non-wool materials.

I spent the rest of the morning working on my parrot piece. I have about half of the background done and I am pleased with the way it coming along.

My sculpting class on Saturday seemed to be a success. The ladies stayed until almost 5 when I had planned to quit about 3 - so they must have been enjoying themselves. Of course, I took a few pictures.

Here are Jill, Carol, and Patti hard at work. I am so proud of Carol. She is just finishing her very first piece of hooking and here she is taking a sculpting class. She did a great job and showed a lot of determination in getting it right. She is an assest to the hooking group.

Jill has her back to us but you can see the strawberry that she has already hooked. She couldn't get over how much you could cut and not have all of the hooking fall out! Judith is also working hard in this picture. I received an e-mail from her this morning telling me she had finished all of the strawberries and just had a leaf to do. She is so excited about the piece, she was anxious to go home and finish. The said that I had gotten her interested in hooking again. She also is a quilter and had put her hooking aside for some little time. It makes me feel good to get someone hooking again.

I had a very nice phone call from Pat yesterday afternoon. Thank you Pat for caring. You will never know how much that call meant to me. When one is alone to know that someone cares is a joy beyond belief. Thank you again.

I have just one more picture for this posting. As always, the supervisor was in attendance.

I hope everyone is having a great day and that you all are enjoying the fact that spring is nearly here. Here is my final thought for this posting:

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. Helen Keller

I spent Thursday morning in the doctors office getting my 3 monthly checkup. Some good news and some bad news. This visit made me know that I have to stop fooling around and get those little projects that just need an hour or two to finish - finished. So my plans for Sunday afternoon are to put the binding on "Apples for Lunch" and mount the sculptured rose that I just finished.

This morning (Friday the 13th) I spent at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts. This was a great experience. I met with Rebecca Lane, the museum director and Amy Hunt the program educator. The museum is sponsoring a hooked rug show and they had called me and asked for my imput. These ladies are so enthusiastic about this show and are looking forward to the outreach possibilites in the community. They liked the suggestions I had about showing newly created rugs along with the antique rugs and also the suggestion that some of the rugs be displayed in a manor that they could be carefully examined.

This was my first visit to the museum. I have really been missing a wonderful thing. This is a small but oh, so beautiful, place. A lovely china collection, some wonderful paintings, glass and a building to die for. What a wonderful place to display art. I hope that all of you rug makers out there will want to cooperate with these ladies and take part in what promises to be a wonderful program.

This is the entrance to the museum. It is easy to get to from Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

I find it hard to "post a blog" without putting in something about a rug so here is an update on my PA Parrot Rug.

As I was hooking I realized that I did not want anything to take away from the parrots. I wanted the flowers to be soft and not intrusive. I had to wait until the rug told me what it wanted in the flowers. Now that the center one is done and all of the borders ones are finished, I can finish the rug without another hitch in my getalong. I am going to dye the material for the outer background this afternoon,

Tomorrow I am teaching my sculpting workshop and I am looking forward to doing it. I always learn so much from my students that teaching is a real joy for me. Keep hooking and learning and don't forget about the rug show. Also I would encourage you to keep in mind the Washington County Ag Fair - so get those rugs ready.

Its a beautiful and small, small world. My daughter Joan and grandson Richard came over on Sunday. In a spontaneous move we started cleaning out the winter accumulation in the garage. A lot was accomplished and the trash man will be surprised! Still plenty more to do. After that chore was finished, we inspected the yard and the new garden that we put in last fall. Many little green things have stuck their heads up and my minature crocus's and snow drops are in bloom. These little beauties are very brave and sturdy as well as the first harbingers of spring.

These tiny yellow crocus's are truly beautiful!

My daughter Joan is a teddy bear maker. She had arranged an appointment with the manager of The Inn Boonsboro Gift Shop for Monday morning. She packed up 4 bears and several other fiber arts and together we headed to Boonsboro. I took two rugs as I was also interested in this gift shop. Her bears were a hit with the manager as well as my rugs. I thought you might like to see her bears. They are adorable, each has a name, and their facial expressions are all different.

These bears are all articulated and great fun to play with and to look at. So much for the beautiful world.

Now for the small world. On Saturday I attended the monthly meeting of the Hand and Heart ATHA guild meeting. I am ever amazed at the interest in rug hooking among the young women of this area. The are enthused and creative. We had 3 new attendees at this meeting. One of the gals was someone that I had worked with more than twenty years ago. Of course, we have both changed. When I knew her long ago she was in her twenties, and newly married. Now a matured lady with several children and into the hobbies of many housewives. We talked a bit and tried to catch up but it really was not the proper place to do so, so we are going to try to get together and hook and catch up.

The rug for this blog is a half round designed by Pearl McGown and hooked by me some time ago. It is "Strawberry Basket," - all wool cut by hand about a size 5 or 6 width. It was great fun to do. I hope you like it.

You can see this rug at The Inn Boonsboro Gift Shop.

In closing, I want to send my love and prayers to my friend Kathy. May all of your shingles in the future be upon you roof!!

This is a beautiful Thursday morning. I can't believe how nice it is out. After Monday's snow storm it seems that mother nature is giving us a bonus. The snow plow driver got my mail box for the third time. I went to the post office yesterday and discussed moving the box. The postmistress is a very cooperative person and we will move the box back about 8 inches further from the road and see if the snow plow can miss it in the future.

Yesterday was a day of errands - you know the kind of thing that has to be done, groceries, bank, post office and gas station. However, it was good to get out of the house.

I have been in the dye pots all week. Ann (of the Blue and Gray hookers) asked me to try and match some material she is hooking with. I lucked out and found a swatch in my stash of things that was very close and so I tweeked the formula a bit and was able to dye for her. I sent it off yesterday and hope she likes it and can use it in her rug.

My other dyeing project was to get enought material dyed for my upcoming sculpture class. I just have one more dye lot to do and them I'm all set on that project.


One of the greens looks very blue in the picture but it really is a lovely blue-green. One of the formula's that I love to make leaves with.
My other project this week was getting my parrot rug started. I really like the way it is turning out. I wanted a glamouress parrot and I think I have accomplished that. Pat Henger's design is very easy to work with. Her lines are precise and the piece is so well balanced that it is easy to color plan. Also, it was such a pleasure to get a piece that is stamped straight on the material. I am tired of commercial patterns that have to have all of the lines straightened before I can start hooking. Take a look and see if you like it.

I also took a couple of closeups that I hope you enjoy. I should have put them in a little bigger but perhaps you can see enough to get the idea of what I am doing.

The Hand and Heart chapter of ATHA meets this Saturday at the Boonsboro Library from 11 am till 2 pm. If you are free, come and join us for a good time of hooking and good fellowship. The library is a great place to hook, the room is spacious and well lit.

I'm sorry that I will be unable to get to the Blue and Gray on Monday due to a prior engagement. I shall miss all of you and hope you have a great day.

A neighbor sent me one of the loveliest stories of a childs faith. I have used the "punch" line of the story as my sub heading for this blog. I hope you will read it and believe it as I do. My friends are the most important things in my life - after family - of course.

Have a wonderful week of hooking - hope to see all of you soon.