Rugs on Display, Kathmandu Nepal, 1983
I’m Tempted June 19, 2016
This a photo of rug hooking – Something I have done in the past and enjoyed. It’s hard work but oh so satisfying. I am tempted to take a class in it just to get together with other “hookers”. The Weaving Works here in Seattle is offering a class in July.
I Do Other Things in addition to knitting scarves but … January 14, 2015
You might think that all I do is sit around knitting scarves but quite the contrary. Actually I’ve joined Facebook and that is a big time consumer. It is easier to interact with readers through Facebook and also to expand one’s circle of friends, both new and old. Still, blogging is useful in a different way. That said, here is Scarf Number 11 
After I finished this scarf I found a small sample I made in a knitting workshop – note that I used similar colors. I can also think of a rug I wove many years ago and I used a similar combination of colors. That rug was chosen as a present to the owners of a “magic cottage” down in the west of Ireland. My sisters and I had a marvelous visit to the cottage in 1995.
p.s. In my ongoing reorganization and tidy up of our belongings and the house, I just came a tapestry I wove when we were in Kenya for the second time (1989-1994) 
familiar colors?
Thinking About Another Rug August 8, 2011
I found that little booklet giving the nice rya Norwegian designs and more or less selected one to use as a starter for doing another rug myself. But I’ve decided to use a crochet hook and the stiff rug canvas commonly used for latchet hooked rugs.
progress so far, starting out with an idea to use orange and red, now finding that using the crochet hook means pretty much going in straight lines – and it’s hard on the knuckles wielding the crochet hook and pulling those strands of rug wool through the canvas. Then I began to think more about Emily Carr and her paintings of trees. Now I am leaning in that direction as a source for my design ideas.
This was the rya design I liked in the little Norwegian booklet.
Emily Carr painting (from the internet)
report on my design process to be continued…….
New Yarn New Project August 3, 2011
a little booklet that I thought was lost but has turned up quite unexpectedly. This is the booklet I used 40+ years ago to make the following 3 rugs.
design for the first rug I made, using the latchet hook technique, and buying little packs of precut wool as I went along. Following my husband Ian’s advice I made a grid on the picture to correspond to the grid on the rug canvas I was using. Then I followed the design quite religiously, even down to the choice of colours. The resulting rug lasted for years and years.
This was the next one. Slightly bigger than the first one. Again I used pretty much the same colours.
the third rug, by the time I finished this rug I had had enough.
Off we went to St. Lucia for 2 years and the rug making phase of my life receded completely as we turned to other activities with the 3 little boys.
we had playmates living next door
and the third was still in his high chair
Now these three little boys and their friends are well grown and following their respective life paths. I have refound my little rug booklet and I am getting the urge to make another latchet hook rug, after a lapse of quite a few years. Since I no longer have a loom but am still primarily interested in making rugs, I think the latchet hook is the answer.
while we were in Victoria I did nip in to the local yarn store, The Button and Needlework Boutique, and I found this lovely green yarn – a yarn I have used before. I just couldn’t resist the colour and know I’ll use it sometime. But for now with my rug-making ideas, I am turning to my little booklet and my stash of coarser and sturdier yarn.
possible choices for the next latchet hooked rug
Object Identification January 28, 2011
a few days ago a few of us had a few comments to make about rug making way back when. See Jean’s Knitting Did any of you use this gauge? I just found it in my stash.
Detective Stories August 17, 2010
After writing about the Nancy Drew series of books in my previous blog, I came across some other information about that genre of literature. Several articles in other issues of The Book and Magazine Collector caught my attention and set me to thinking about these types of books. Some are mystery stories, some are detective stories, some are police procedurals, some are thrillers. Have I covered them all?
Incidentally, the most famous literary spinster of all time made her novel-debut in 1930, the same year as Nancy Drew. Miss Marple in The Murder at the Vicarage, first published in 1930.
image from The Book and Magazine Collector, April 2010
It’s not a genre I read very often – that is until recently when I have been going through a spate of them. But the ones I have been reading are not the traditional cosy Miss Marple types. I have never taken to the Agatha Christie books but I love the films. Authors I have read occasionally in the past have been Georges Simenon and Graham Greene. No Ellery Queen or any of the American writers. Ellery Queen was one of my brother’s favourites.
But now I am caught up in reading a number of Scandinavian thrillers. First there was Henning Mankell, then the Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo Martin Beck series of 10 books. Feeling in the mood for more Scandinavian thrillers I tried one from Finland and that turned out to be very good. Against the Wall by Jarkko Sipila. For a review of this book and information about the upsurge in Scandinavian crime fiction being translated into English I refer you to this website.
photo from the internet
Jarkko Sipila has written a second book, Vengeance. It is now available in English so I am on the look-out for it. Again, the photo is from the internet.
The photos of these covers remind me of the cover of a book which I saw recently at my Irish Conversation Group, Cupla Focla. One of our regulars, Seamus, aka James, has written a book on the History of the Irish Astronomical Society. This book was self-published in 2006. For the cover he used a detail of a rug which he and his wife had hooked. The image was the Belt of Orion. A very striking image in black and red. The general conclusion of the Irish Group was that it was a latchet hook rug done from a kit. But I don’t think so. (Of course my comprehension of Irish isn’t brilliant so I could be all wrong.)
Those kits for doing latchet hook rugs had much more mundane images, like horse’s heads or whatever. I suspect that Seamus’s wife had designed the rug and then they could well have purchased the cut packs of rug wool and indeed used a latchet hook and rug canvas purchased from the famous Needlecrafts store on Dawson Street here in Dublin. Alas, shop is long gone now. That is the way I did a number of hooked rugs back in the 1970’s. I had a small book from Norway and it had some lovely designs for hooked rugs. I put a grid on the small pictures in that book and then enlarged the design for making the rug on my rug canvas. I used a latchet hook and I bought little packs of cut wool in the colours of my choice. Below is a photo of one of the rugs I made.
The book with the designs was very small and somewhere it disappeared – how I would love to find that book again. It was from Norway and on the cover it had a picture of a family grouped around a rug frame and happily doing their hooking.
