FALL IS IN THE AIR

 Stepping outside this morning in my bare feet was a bit chilly and wet and I guess that means "Fall is in the Air"

I don't know about you but I'm feeling like, sweaters and all things wool and cozy warm.

Here is a photo of Rosemary with another one of her beautiful ponchos, sure to be a hit wherever it goes.

                                                 Think she's done a bit of modelling??????

                       Stay tuned for further updates on in-person meeting changes and keep safe!

Chez Joyce

We had a wonderful, tho rainy, visit with Joyce last Thursday.  She kindly allowed us to descend upon her home for a morning of chatting, laughing, munching….and rug hooking.  Here are some photos from the day:

As always, Joyce’s cat Kitty managed to “help” at every opportunity.

Hooking in the rain!

 

As promised, we held our 2021 inaugural in-person hooking day on July 8….but you clearly weren’t thinking those “dry” thoughts we were asking for!  We had lots of rain, and couldn’t really use the park for our gathering, so Christine graciously offered us the use of her garage!  A big thank you to Christine for coming to the rescue….and a big thank you to Karen Kaiser for bringing her wools to us!

Here are a few photos from the day.  Hopefully next week you will be thinking those dry thoughts and we can actually meet in the park as originally planned.  

Karen and Cathy are consulting on a colour plan!

A snippet of Jennifer’s behemoth rug in progress

Martina’s Fish!

Fran’s farmyard

Martina’s poppy, with beads!

Martina’s Mushroom

Gord’s cartoon panel

Karen winding wool!

Christine showed us her yarn painting in person

Dianne, Rosemary and Sandra

Jennifer’s bag (photo taken at the cottage)

First In-Person Gathering - July 8

Are you ready for summer?  We could certainly take more of today’s weather, couldn’t we?

With things starting to open up, and more folks getting 2nd shots, it seems an appropriate time to be considering our summer meetings.  Last year we held several successful hooking days in Victoria Park in Cobourg and we’d like to do the same again this year.

Our first gathering will be on Thursday July 8 at 10 am!  We’ll be assembling in the area adjacent to the parking lot at the foot of McGill/Charles street.  Parking in that lot is charged, but you can also park a few streets away for free, and walk over.  Please bring a chair and your hooking for an enjoyable morning!

We will be watching the Covid restrictions closely, and need to bear in mind what the limitations are.  Here’s a link to the official Ontario rules in place as of this morning.  

https://www.hkpr.on.ca/2021/05/21/roadmap-to-reopen-businesses-and-services/

- currently gatherings of 10 are permitted outdoors, but there’s a chance those could be extended to 25 by the first week of July.  Either way, once our gathering reaches whatever the limit is, all we have to do is start up another adjacent circle of chairs.

- physical distancing is required - so our chairs s/b kept 6 feet apart. 

- masks are required if you are within 6 feet of another person - but if we can keep our chairs apart, we s/b able to drop the masks.  Bring one along, tho, just to be safe!

For now, we’ll suspend the monday meetings, as we usually do in the summer months, and will figure out how we want to proceed come September. 

Please keep your fingers crossed for good weather on the 8th!   Btw, rumour has it that Christine will bring some goodies for those looking to augment their stash! ….and late breaking news, Karen Kaiser will be there, too!  Contact her by phone or by email to place an order if you need something specific!

Hope to see you there!  Holler if you need directions. 

 

Memories: the series

Here are some recently completed projects by Francine.  She obviously has some great memories of her travels in pre-Covid days!

“I just finished my Covid-19 coping series called Memories!!!!    You saw Memories:  Giraffe at dawn, Masa Mara, Memories :  Denali Ntl Park [at the Annual], now I added Memories:  The Feeding Blanket, Nairobi, Kenya, and Memories:  Zion Ntl. Park.  I might have tried to cram too much scenery in some since they are smaller pieces, just 10"X17" but I still enjoyed working on them.  Smaller elephant was a challenge as he was in the shade but I needed to make him visible.”

Well Done!

A big tailgate thank you!

 The day of our inaugural photo-bee-for-the-annual arrived bright, but windy and cold!  We had lots of folks come out!  Here is a wee snippet of some of the photos we collected:

Gwen set everything up on the east side of the church where there was the least amount of wind. She arrived loaded with tarps and bricks and ladders and other paraphernalia to assist us to take photos of our members’ rugs. We’re very fortunate to have someone in our midst with these photography skills, and who is willing to share her time with us!  A big thank you to Gwen!

Everyone brought their rugs to the east side, along with the notes we’ll need to do the file naming required by the OHCG. This file naming is an important component that will allow the OHCG Image Advisor to manage our files and to create the slide shows that we’re looking forward to enjoying on the 17th of April.  A big thank you to everyone who brought rugs to be shown/judged at the Annual - your participation will make the day really special for us!

Everyone showing their best sides!

The waiting area

Francine and Brenda brought coffee along, which was gratefully consumed by all of the folks who were cold!  And there were cookies!  A big thank you to everyone who brought food and drink to share!

Karen Kaiser was there with lots of wool and patterns, and seemed to be selling lots!  This is from her email to us this morning:  What a wonderful day!! Thank you so much for organizing this.  I lowered my inventory significantly, had some great visits and thoroughly enjoyed myself.🤗🤗  A big thank you to Karen for allowing us to lower her inventory, and for driving in from Belleville!

It was hard to recognize everyone as we were so bundled up against the cold, and masked, etc.....

Hopefully our next tailgate event will take place during warmer weather!

If you’re into stats:  we took almost 200 photos of 73 projects to be shown and/or judged!  That’s a record for this group, I’m sure!  Thankfully, no stats were kept on the number of cookies eaten...

....and now on to the file naming......

Drive-Thru Photography Bee!

This is a draft post!  We’ll update it as more info becomes available.  (See late breaking news below!)

Time: 1pm March 13

Location: Grace Church

Around this time of year we usually bring our rugs to Grace Church where they are transported to the location of the OHCG Annual Conference and put on display with rugs from other branches across Ontario.  It’s pretty amazing to see hundreds of rugs all in one place - such works of art!

This year will be different as the OHCG Annual will be a virtual event.  They’re going to do their best to ensure we have as great an experience as in previous years, but it will be delivered via Zoom.  We will still see an amazing display of rugs, but it will be in a slide show instead of in person.  We didn’t do a display in 2019, so it would be great if we could pull out all the stops and do a really big one this year!

The OHCG has asked each branch to gather photos of their members’ projects, and submit them to our Image Advisor, who will create a slide show for the Annual Conference on April 17.  Normally we’d do this as an in-person thing, but with Covid conditions, we need to be mindful of how we approach it.

We’re going to do it in a “touch less” manner, where we can photograph your projects while you remain inside your cars - think of a drive-thru photography bee!  It will take place on Saturday March 13 at 1pm at Grace Church, 440 King St E in Cobourg. Here’s how it will work:

1. Select the projects you want to display.  They can have been completed in any year you like.  The only caveat is that the project cannot have been displayed at a previous annual. 
2. On the day of our Photo Bee, put your projects into the trunk of your car, along with a page providing specific info about those projects.
3. You head to Grace Church and pop your trunk open (hopefully without even getting out of your car).  We’ll have helpers on hand (masked, of course!) who will collect your projects to be photographed outdoors.  (We’ll also be using liberal doses of hand sanitizer before we approach every car!)
4. We’ll ask you to park in the church parking lot while we take the photos.  On hand will be member Gwen Brice who knows her way around a camera!
5. When the photos are complete, we’ll put them back in your trunk, and you can head on home!
6. Gwen and Jennifer will assemble the photos and deliver them to the OHCG Image Advisor.
7. April 17 you’ll be able to see your projects, along with all the other branches, in an amazing cavalcade of projects!

A few things to be aware of:

• Gwen Brice will be our primary photographer for the day - she has lots of expertise in photography, so we’re fortunate to be able to access her skills!
• we will keep an eye on Covid restrictions and will adjust the above plans to ensure we comply with the latest public health guidelines for social distancing
• If it’s at all possible we will also try to hold tail gate party on the photo bee day.  We won’t decide this until the week of the photo bee, so stay tuned for more details.  Even if we do the tail gate party, if you prefer to remain in your car to minimize your social distancing, that’s ok, too!
• The church will NOT be open to us, so no washrooms!
• What if you prefer to remain in your home, but have projects you want to display?  You can send us your photos via email and we’ll include them with the rest! Just make sure that they’re at least 1024 x 768 pixels and at least 1 MB (megabyte). Format can be jpg, png or tif.

If you’ve got a project (or more) that you want to include in our display, let us know via email to nrhookers@gmail.com, and tell us whether you’ll come to the touch-less event, or you’ll send us your photos via email.  Alternatively you can call Jennifer with this info.

*** Late breaking news:  Karen Kaiser may also be there on March 13, with things for sale!  This is, of course, subject to weather and pandemic conditions permitting.....fingers crossed!  Stay tuned for further updates.***

Zoom Bigger!

Tanya’s latest rug

Have you considered zooming, but are put off by having to look at such a teensy screen?  Never fear - we have a solution.....if your TV is new-er - eg purchased in the last 5 or so years, it can take the place of your teensy screen!  I tried it out this morning, and it works just fine! If you’re not comfortable monkeying with your TV settings, perhaps you have someone in your household, or bubble who can handle this for you?

Here’s how to tackle this “zoom bigger” thing:

“Airplay” is a feature that allows you to use screen mirroring with an iPhone or ipad.  It won’t work with Android stuff, sadly.  It’s commonly found on TV’s purchased in the past few years.  There are similar products like GoogleCast, but I’m not familiar with them, tho i suspect they do the very same thing.

a) with Airplay all you have to do is select “input” from your remote, and choose AirPlay.  Then go to your phone or ipad, swipe down from the upper right and choose Screen Mirroring and

b) select your TV (probably the only option there), and

c) bingo, whatever is on your phone or ipad is now on your TV screen.  Here you can see a shot of Tanya’s rug that she texted to me.  I’ve shown it on my phone, and because i have screen mirroring turned on, it’s now also appearing on my tv.

This feature is great to use when you want to watch a youtube video....or when you’re on a zoom call, and want to see it the big screen.  Particularly useful if you’re taking a zoom workshop, like all those lovely ones available through the OHCG for the Annual Conference!

Here’s a screenshot i took of a test zoom meeting (between the hubby and i - the only people here!).  If you squint really hard you’ll see my teensy iPhone in front and the same image on it as on the TV.  You still need an iPhone or ipad to act as the camera for the zoom call, but your TV screen replaces your ipad/phone screen.

Another possibility to do all of this is via a laptop with an HDMI port - it all sounds quite techy but if you have access to someone in the know, it’s really quite easy.