Gene Shepherd's Internet Rug Camp

It was a big weekend for us.

Our granddaughter,  Jane Locke, graduated from Biola University Saturday evening.  She received a BA in Bible, Theology and Ministry through Biola’s Talbot School of Theology.  It’s the only real graduation she’s had since her High School graduation, during Covid, was a drive through one where they just handed her diploma through a cracked window!  Therefore, getting a real graduation just four years later that came with a BA, was pretty special!

It was a great night for graduate, mom, grandparents and aunt.  Because the affair did not get over until almost 10 PM we had her real graduation party Sunday afternoon.

Because Sunday was May 5, she wanted a Mexican Fiesta.

This required a lot of decoration and the right food.

Her mother found some wonderful folded fans we could put together and I found all my outside clothes lines to hang them.

It never hurts having a fiber artist around when decorating for a big event, especially when something is needed to snap a decoration in place!

We also made lots of big paper flowers to go with several vases of fresh cut flowers from the store and grandma’s garden.

It made for pretty center pieces.

Mother Ruth spearheaded the making and serving of everything on the taco bar.  Grandma made carnitas, Ruth and friends made everything else, including the tortillas.

It was a beautiful afternoon in the garden – a great time to share with friends.

During the 3 hour event, 49 friends joined the party.  It was a lovely event.

A nice memory to have with our family.

Thursday found us, litterally

Whipping our projects into shape.  Or, at least one project got whipped.

Others are making very noticeable progress.

While we’ve been chronicling the hooking of the fine cut fruit rug on the right for the past few months, another member brought a finished version for show and tell.  After buying that pattern many years ago, she decided she wouldn’t hook it and got Norma Flodmon, Jane Olson’s sister, to hook it for her.  It was nice for all of us to see the different takes on this project.

I’m thinking this piece is on track for a December reveal.

There was some tweaking on this one – changing leaf colors here and there – as well as picking out the wool for all the other leaves.

Close … very close.

This one is also close … very close.

My contribution to the day centered on the efforts I made for for easier hooking.  I rolled up my long ends, clamping each side together.  The tails on that long rug slows down my hooking time as I continually get the lengths tightly wrapped around the center column.  By utilizing this clamping method, there is nothing hanging down to impede my progress.  That speeds up everything. Happily I got the last three leaves of one pointy end hooked on Thursday.  While my rug isn’t exactly whipped into shape, it’s been brought into submission.

I took a pause from hooking to prep for 1st Thursday, which meets this Thursday in my studio.  Although I didn’t have that much do to get ready, I spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon doing it.  After all, even when you only wash dishes once a week, it takes a pan or two of hot water to do it.  And, the freedom of having my Lincoln wool spread all over the place has to be given up if students are coming in.  So, I did all that tidying.

I also had one little redo to do.

Babara wants to hook a pattern that looks like this.  Unfortunately, she bought a sheep pattern with a fairly plain sheep basically shaped like this but with lots of houses and no real grass.

She said:  Can you just redo the sheep so it looks sort of like this?

The short answer is yes … except I just have to find time to do it, which I did on Wednesday.

However, there were some issues.

Barbara’s new plan required a square plan and her pattern was rectangle … which was no problem to change as I just edited out some on each side.

Her sheep, however, only had 2 legs drawn in and the inspiration pattern had 4, a detail neither of us noticed before I started redrawing, although I must admit that most of the sheep I have seen in the US, England and Australia have 4 legs too.  After a consult with her about how many legs she wanted her sheep to have, I drew in two more.  Actually, I drew the new, foreground leg twice as I didn’t like where it was on the first go round.  Even so, this is still a better plan as how would this sheep even get around without 4?

The old sheep pattern was too skinny, so I added several pounds to the redo with a new arc from the jaw to the foreleg of her pattern.   It also makes the sheep appear to be turning in  just a little, which she can now do with 4 legs.

I created a slopping hill under the sheep, which was easy … and we are just going to ignore the houses, although, as I was working on the redo, we did experience a 4.3 earthquake … so consider the houses demolished without me bothering me to cross out anything.

Most of my time, however, has been putting in padulla  flowers on the body of the sheep.  This is just an artistic addition, which I will space out over at least two days.

I will do a final consult on Thursday after she arrives but, for the time being … and in case she wants more legs or different legs … I’ve got enough done for 1st Thursday to begin … I hope.

I spent about 5ish hours hooking on Tuesday.  About 3 in the morning and 2 and a little more in the afternoon.

The vast majority of that time was spent working out the sea shell, which is a major motif.  Like the center flowers, it’s mostly hooked with a #5 cut.  Given the fact that there are pink opalescent sea shells owned by the Lincoln’s in the front parlor, as well as in an other room in the house, I wanted to make sure  I got the colors about right.  Therefore, I did a sea shell tutorial earlier in the week to find some examples that allowed me to use white, various pinks and some pale beige colors – all colors already used in four of the big flowers in the center.

I was happy to get that shell motif worked out, as well as put in more of that center stripped background.  My only disappointment with the project thus far is that the center stripes just don’t show up very much in the photos.  In person, however, they are quite noticeable.

As far as flowers go

It’s 2 flowers down

A very red one

And a reddish one, peaking out of the nosegay.

That completes the 7 big flowers, leaving two rose buds and some leaves to go before the center is complete.  I see a little tweaking to do, when looking at this shot but, I am generally happy with where I am and well into my plan for the few leaves left to go.  I spent most of Monday working on this rug and will get a few hours in on Tuesday.

I will be glad when this center nosegay is done and I can move on.

I managed to get in quite a lot of hooking over the weekend.  That’s partly due to the fact that I am trying to set up my approach to several things.  My other concern is having enough done so I know what wool I have yet to dye for the big scrolls.

So, I did things like

get the leaves figured out and either hooked or started on both ends of the center

finalize the color for the rest of the flowers

figure out and start hooking my rosebuds

put in some big scroll outline based on my guess … but knowing it may just be a holding line

get the stripped background started on both ends of the center

While I certainly may change things as I progress

I am feeling good about whats going on so far.

As I am hooking this in the big studio, I’m using the remaining Townsend long head system I have.  All the flower and center leaf motif is being hooked in a #5 and the big scrolls and background is in a #7.

Problem is that the long heads cut more 5s than I want.

So, I brought out Elizabeth Black’s cutter, with a 5, that I keep in the house to use infrequently when I am hooking #7s in there and don’t want to take the time to switch my Honeydoo for a vein.  It really lowers the amounts of excess worms I end up with.

Finally

I brought in help to clean out the chicken house on Saturday.  We’ve got a graduation party in the garden next Sunday evening and the hen house needs a bit of sprucing up.  Thankfully, I found a young man who could help me get things set up for the party.

I’ve been going crazy looking for missing patterns the last 2 or 3 weeks.  One pattern, the Biennial elephant rug,  actually went missing about 2  months ago.  With it was all my work and computations about the different colors of nylon loops I would need.   While I’ve soldiered on without it, hopeful it would show up, on Wednesday, I was at the point where I either needed to find it or create all new patterns and computations.  The other two patterns were things that clients have wanted which I couldn’t find.  One for a while and one for a couple of weeks.  Fortunately, I’ve not had enough steam to do much with those patterns even if I found them but, enough is enough and it was time to find or redo all three patterns.

I started by going over, while standing on a ladder,  all the patterns rolled up in my storage shelves … to no avail.  Then, I went through the three 5 gallon buckets I keep for patterns I use all the time.  Two of the missing patterns should have been in them.  I must have sorted through all three buckets at least 5 or 6 times with no success.  That left me with only one option –

Going through the rolls one by one which means I had to take each one out, look it over and set it somewhere else.

That takes a bit of time to do so.  Fortunately, I found one errant pattern during that process.  It was small, stowed in an odd spot and pushed all the way back where it got covered up with other bigger patterns.

The more I pulled them out

The more I sorted them.  That’s partly for organizational reasons, when I am ready to put them back and for editing purposes.  For example, some designs have 8 or 10 rolls covering different kinds of patterns for that design.  Big Momma has a 6.5’ rug, a medium 4+foot rug, various table runners, pillows and other odd configurations that some people have asked for over the years.  A couple of designs have 2 or more finished versions … probably because I couldn’t find that pattern once and had to make another, so now have 2.  Several geometrics have patterns for 6, 8, 10, 12, 20 and 24 inch blocks, plus other over large sizes.  Then, there are all sorts of odd ball chair seat patterns, odd patterns I made once for a client and other things I’ve kept.  Hopefully, with everything out and sorted, I can condense many of these patterns into one or two bundles for each design and to save space.

I did find a couple of blasts from the pasts.

My favorite find was for Gene’s Birds, my 3rd rug, which I made at my first CPRC  (1999) and then sold.  All these parakeets were my actual birds – many having been raised from breeding pairs I also raised.

I did not know I had this pattern any more.  It’s rather fragile, being on newsprint paper.  If you can see all the writing it’s because I sent this pattern to my Cambria teacher, Jackye Hansen, before class.  She returned it to me with all her hooking suggestions neatly written all over it.

Of special note was the thin piece of netting rolled up in the pattern.  This is how I transferred my original  pattern to monk’s cloth.  I covered the paper pattern with the netting, then traced the design onto the netting.  Once done, I placed the netting on my monk’s cloth and retraced the design through the netting.  I also found a bundle for Good Queen Bess, another early (and still unfinished rug) that I also prepped in the same way for a class with Elizabeth Black after I moved to Anaheim.

Happily, another find was the stack of Biennial elephant project info stashed into and hidden by  several rolls.  That left me with one missing pattern.

After going through all the rolls taken off the shelves, I went through, again, all three buckets of patterns until,

I found the last pattern right in bucket 3 where it was supposed to have been all along.  I have no idea how this happened.

All the rolls will go back into the storage area, hopefully in edited and organized fashion with the next few days.

Now, the other thing I can’t remember is

Who wanted Elizabeth Black’s Tiger?  If you did, please let me know.

As predicted, I got up early and dyed 4 big batches of wool.

As it dried, Elise dropped by for help in finishing up a project.

Some time ago, I posted about drawing a pattern for her based on a rug her late mother hooked.  It was designed from a photo of 3 granddaughters staring at the ocean while on a family vacation many years ago.  With grandma gone, all three of those little girls (now grown mothers themselves) wanted the original rug that Grandma made with that design.  As a solution, Elise decided to make 2 copies of the rug so her daughter and two of her nieces (the 3 little girls) could have one of “grandmas” rugs.  Elise is showing the first rug I drew for her.  Instead of drawing a second “new” pattern, Elise brought me an ocean rug her mother started but never finished.  As it had sky, ocean, a light house and some ocean, both of us thought we could impose the 3 granddaughters at the right spot, allowing Elise to create that third rug with part of it actually hooked by her late mother.  After she picked almost enough sky and water, it was fairly easy to over draw that new pattern.  We both think how nice it is to use this unfinished piece of Grandma’s.

After lunch, I was able to dry the wool and did a little experimentation with some of it.

As suggested, I’ve added a striped center background to the Lincoln rug.  While it’s hard to see here

In person, it is quite noticeable.  Although I am still experimenting, I think I quite like it.  Remember,  the outer border will be all Antique Black.

All the different things I did made for a day with lots of welcome variations.

Although I started hooking at 5:30 AM, I don’t have anything I am ready to show today.

However

I did get three pots of wool soaking for a dye session early Wednesday.

Any time I work on one of my new patterns, I end up tweaking the design while I am hooking it.  There are 2 examples in the work I did today.

The longer I look at the background, the more I’ve weighed various options for hooking it.  After repeatedly having a nagging feeling about this part of the design, I decided to add some more design elements to the background.  I may end up not using them but, I can’t shake the idea.

As ideas go, it’s a very simple one.  I see some sort of striped motif in the center section.  While I don’t expect to replicate these new lines exactly, whatever striped motif I end up with will be improved if I have some scribed guide lines in the center section of that pattern.  That’s how I’ll keep my line- age straight and consistent from one end to the other.  And, as there isn’t too much done yet except for some stuff in the center, NOW is the time to get those guide lines in.  So, I quickly drew some on both ends of the rug before there were too many other competing elements going on .  As an FYI about this decision, I find stripes to be both very interesting AND rather formal.  After all, this rug is inspired by what I think the Lincoln’s had in their formal parlor.  Additionally, it will sit on a very busy carpet with a large lattice design – XXXXXXXXXX.  I think even a subtle decoration that suggests ========, with a bold black border, will stand out over the lattice and catch the eye.

I also was a bit unhappy with my big bunch of flowers in the center.  All the flowers are basically the  same round shape.

So

I turned one round padulla into a more pointy sort of big daisy.  Time will tell if this is a good decision … but I think it is.

What do you think?

In case you missed the explanation, the center white flower will be surround by 3 light/white/beige flowers and 3 deep red ones.

The odd juxtaposition of white/beiges/pinks/reds/oranges is because Mrs. Lincoln seems to have used those colors together in the formal parlor and adjoining dinning room.  When viewed separately, they seem a bit odd but, my theory is that odd colors will go together if you put them together in a bold and confident way.

Hopefully, that is what I am doing.