Ajax Summer Social

Mark your calendars for this one!  This is from Jayne Nevins:

Please join us in celebrating Pickering Village Rug Hooking Branch’s 50th Anniversary together with the Ajax Rug Hooking Guild 

Sunday August 6th, 2017 9:30am – 3:30pm 

St. Andrew’s Community Centre 

46 Exeter Rd., Ajax 

Coffee and treats 

Vendors, Guest Speaker, Great Company 

No admittance fee – just RSVP to Jayne Nevins (jnevins "at" rogers dot com)

sounds like fun!

GIVING BACK

Look what happen when we use our "stash" to crochet, isn't it beautiful?

If anyone has any variegated wool please give it to Christine and she will pass it along to Sherry who makes these beautiful blankets for the cancer patients at the Lakeridge Hospital  in Oshawa.

Our feel good project of the day!

     Margaret Barber and Sherry Barber: Sherry will donate this to the Cancer ward in Oshawa!

ORIENTALS TO RIP OUT OR NOT

    designed by Christine Van Hees and re-designed to portray a true Oriental & drawn by Karen Kaiser              


Recently I was at an Oriental Workshop by Karen Kaiser and had the opportunity to learn all about Orientals and a little about colour planning.  Karen carefully  planned the  colours I gave her and also helped others to do the same and gave us a photo of our pattern and made sure that we had started all areas of our mat before leaving................well.................. o.k...............
I was happily hooking along and if you know me (Christine) I always change my mind and well, did it again. I decided to hook my Oriental from the opposite side that I started with.  Well I'll tell you never change your mind (well in in oriental anyway) as I was hooking all the turquoise and after completing the whole edge it was wrong and should have been navy above the greek key, not turquoise. There was a little voice in my head that kept saying, that is alot of turquoise but I didn't listen, Well I'm here to tell you PLEASE LISTEN to that voice.  Never the less it took me over a week to decide that yes I should rip it out! With pain in my heart, I did it but what happened next was unexpected, first of all we learned that you should always make a mistake in an Oriental, well I did it BIG TIME and next I created a surprise.  I looked at it and thought I don't want the dark navy beside the dark green so I created an additional border of turquoise and I LOVE IT!  So Karen says don't be afraid to make a mistake, well I am but this mistake created a surprise of another border..... and in Orientals...............borders are welcome!  I am so glad I had the courage (Jennifer said to walk away from it until I had the fortitude to rip it out) to rip it out and take the time to "THINK" which is not my strong suit, I am happy with how it is turning out!
So...........don't be afraid to" rip something out" and don't be afraid to "leave something in" you might end up with a surprise like me!!!

Dyeing without Dye

Did you catch this video that appeared recently on the Rug Hooking Magazine website?  It's a great demonstration of using the colour from existing fabric to unify pieces for hooking.

Click on this link to access the video.

From Flax to Linen

Did you ever stop to think about where linen comes from?  Many rely on it as our foundation fabric of choice, but I didn't quite realize the process required to produce it.

Here are some videos that get into a fair bit of detail.

This guy gets a bit long winded on the topic, but you really see how flax was turned into something spinnable way back when:



Here's a view of how linen is processed into fabric in the modern world.  It comes from an upholstery fabric website, but the method is the same for our foundation fabric:


...and for good measure, here's an example of how jute is processed into burlap:

THIS IS WHERE WE SHARE

Today we are sharing like most days but today it is not a happy occasion but a sad one but it is so important I thought we need to send out a blog.

Rosemary Davis, our funny , some times quirky, ever positive with an artist eye for colour and life has passed away.  She will be greatly missed on Thursday mornings and other times for her inspiration her modesty that she "IS" a great artist, she would just do "what she does" and think it as nothing special but we know different.
I will miss you my friend!

Rosemary doing what she does best, "showing ways to create art at the 

Art Gallery of Northumberand

Also in the background is her nature inspired rug where she added birds and flowers at will. It still boggles my mind how she could do that!

 Her beautiful Rooster rug at the Annual Rughooking Conference in Cobourg 2017