Wooly yellow

Yesterday was a wool day. I had been waiting for some sunshine so I could dry the yarn outside - so much easier that way.

I have a lot of natural yarn that I found at a thrift shop and I wanted to make a cardigan for myself. That takes a lot of yarn.

Natural is not a very interesting color and I knew it would need to be dyed. I spent yesterday morning skeining the yarn. Thank goodness for my niddy noddy. Then, while it soaked, I tried to decide on a color that was more interesting. I've actually been trying to decide on this for days without much success. I picked up each dye color and put it down again. I was so tired of the blues, greens, and even the reds and purples. Orange was a non-starter even for me.

What was left but yellow? This really is my favorite color but I'm a bit wary of a whole sweater of yellow. As you can see, though, I did do it. I threw in a touch of blue to take some of the glare out but it's still pretty bright. There are a lot of shadings, too, as it's hard to get the color evenly distributed. Now I'm just waiting for it to dry.

Arguments

I hook with wide-cut strips on a burlap foundation. Even though my designs may look non-traditional, they are still being hooked in the traditional primitive style. It's important to me to continue working to produce beauty with a purpose.

The other day I was reading about the virtues of hooking on a linen foundation as opposed to one of burlap. I have often read these arguments and I keep wondering what all the fuss is about.

I watched my mother hook rugs for our home. She saved all the wool - and wool-type - garments and sewing remnants in a cupboard. When she saw a need to have a mat at a door or bedside, my father would get out the frame and he's fasten on the burlap for her. Mom drew her design and worked at the rug in her spare time - she had 5 kids. My favorite design was the Kellogg's Corn Flakes 'rooster' logo. It was green, red and yellow with a gray background. She thought it would be a cheerful addition to our kitchen floor - and it was.




I can't remember how long it took to make one but it didn't seem like more than a month. I was a kid, who knows? Suddenly the mat would appear. And then it would go down on the floor and it would be used. Our floors were hardwood and every bedroom had a mat beside it. Some were hooked, not by my mother, but by older women in the family whom I had never met. They were all hooked on burlap with wool strips or wool yarn. Some were quite old then.

The argument is that the linen doesn't break down as does burlap and will therefore last longer. That rug that you spent time designing, collecting and/or dyeing the wool, cutting the strips and finally hooking them in will disintegrate. Well, duh! Of course, it will. And, do I care if it disintegrates in hundred years or a thousand? Not really. I am not creating museum pieces...I want my rugs to be used. Walked on;, sat on; slept on. Loved for their warmth as much as for their artistic merit.


If I compare the mats I hook to the knitted garments and socks that I make, well, I sure wouldn't want the socks I spent time designing and knitting to be hung on a wall to look at. Is there a difference with rugs? I don't really think there is. I love how working in this way connects me to the story of people who have made garments for their families and objects to use in their homes.

I'm happy with the way things are. For me.

Dye job

Being a rug hooker is being a recycler. It fits very nicely with my personal philosophy of re-using and making do. There's nothing so satisfying as finding a new and unexpected use for something others would throw away.

The other day, I was reading Gene's blog about dirty salt and was inspired to try it, too.

When I mix the dye colors, I have to clean off the measuring spoons after each color. How I do it is to clean the spoon in a bag of kosher salt. Then I further clean it with a cotton swab. The bag of salt never got changed and just continued to take on the various colors. As his salt grew dirtier and dirtier, Gene was tempted to discard it. But instead, he dyed with it.

I thought: hey! I can do that, too. And I did. I used some white wool cloth that had very little texture. I scrunched the soaked wool in a casserole pan and just shook the salt mixture over it. Then I cooked it in the microwave. This is the result. I kind of like the birch tree look it has but of course that might be lost in hooking. It's also very earthy. Who knows what it's next life will be? It was fun playing, though.
Now I have to wait until I get another bag full of dirty salt. Could take a while.

Woolly find

Look what we found at the thrift store! This is all wool and there's 2200 grams of it. Each of the 'balls' is quite elongated - about 15 inches - and wound with a center pull. I've never seen yarn wound like this before. I did have to do a wool content test because the yarn seemed a bit hard and I just wasn't sure what it was. And there are several different shades of white here. Some are kind of off the white scale altogether.

Because I'm getting out the dye pots today for some rug wool, I thought I'd see how this yarn takes dye and whether that process will soften the yarn a bit. So I skeined one of the balls - about 100 yards - and I can play with it to see what it does. If it softens up significantly, then I'll probably make some fingerless mitts as a gift. Here's hoping for change.

The other thing I'll be testing, soon, is how well it felts. I sure wish my hands could produce things as fast as my mind. I have a number of felted projects sitting in the back of my imagination. Along with all the rug designs, a few quilt ideas and not so many, sewing projects. Oh, well, one step at a time.

At last!

No, not my presence...I have finished the rug I've been working on for what seems like years. I think it's only months, though. The background looks simple but actually takes a lot of time. And I'm such a control freak, I can't just have hit and miss with random strips. Oh, no; I must use only 7 or 8 different fabrics and they all have to relate to the picture. But, enough whinging.

I love it and, more important, Anne loves it - since it was made for her. It's on the white plank floor of the sewing/hooking room now. Looks pretty good there, too.