Second Sunny Day!

I’m so impressed — two sunny days in a row. It’s amazing! Yes, we are very tired of rain around here though the ducks are very happy. I put an extra blankie on the bed last night and slept like the ol’ proverbial log. So here’s where I spent half my day yesterday and several hours today:

And this is how far I got:

And now I have to cut some more strips with my trusty Bliss:

Good thing I dyed extra fabric after I realized that I was going to run out of green. Now I have way too much but that’s ok. Who knows — I may have trees or grass or something in my next rug. Just in case you were wondering why this particular rug (wall hanging, actually) has this particular colour palette, I have to admit that my bedroom walls are dark green and the floor is kind of brick red (cheap vinyl flooring). The dresser and the shelves are red cherrywood-coloured (not real cherry though). It’s not as dark in here as you might think because the ceiling, door, and window frames plus the handwoven curtains are white. Red and green tend to be a theme in my house, at least on the main floor, but it’s not at all Christmasy due to the particular shades of red and green that I like. Think bricks/chili powder/red sandstone and fir/hemlock forest with some turmeric/gold and a smidge of lighter dusty green. So you can see the reds, golds and the green in the rug, along with the slightly dingy white of a lot of my house trim. The sky in the rug is completely off the colour scheme, however the blue-violet (as I’ve discussed in past blog posts) is present up here in my study/studio area and outside on my house doors. Since I dyed all the colours in this rug myself, I got to use my favourites! I love the uneven look of mixing different mottled strips together. It gives life to wide boring areas like the sky and the border. And the blue-violet (I almost typed blue-violent, which it is!) is the hint of “poison” or spark that punches it up. That particular dye is Lanaset (or Telana) Violet and it’s just brilliant. The fabric is pure wool flannel from my mail-order supplier Highland Heart Hookery in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Anne has the best price for natural wool at $25 a yard for 3 or more yards. That sounds pricey but this is Dorr wool which is kind of the Rolls Royce of wool fabrics for hooking. Another supplier I’ve purchased from who’s closer to home is Sage House in Chemainus, BC. I’m happy that good Canadian resources exist (even though most of them are in the east) since rug hooking is similarly popular on both sides of the border.

Tomorrow is the monthly meeting of my dye/surface design study group known as Spectrum. I need to make a potluck dish because we likes our lunches! We’re supposed to be doing some more monoprinting and rubber stamping but I wonder if they would mind if I brought my hooking? Maybe I’ll bring both just in case I feel inspired to play along for awhile but then feel uninspired. Sometimes I can be a bit of a rebel. Must be my Scorpio sun sign or something.