April, where did you go?

 Last weekend’s two-day workshop went very well. Caroline Simpson, our teacher, taught on hooking all our extra wool worms using values, not colour. (We had two huge tables filled with extra worms to share.)

Made easier by photographing piles we constructed then looking at them thru grayscale filters (silver tone on my phone), on our phones and iPads. As you can see, I did a fair job separating these by values, I’ve I got the hang of it. 

Caroline is a fabulous rug hooker and a natural instructor. Lots of laughs, tea, and cookies added to the 

fun weekend. 

Our big guild here in town is having their 40th year hook-in and celebration in May. I’m collecting ruby coloured glasses and 40th anniversary knickknacks in the thrift stores I frequent. The sign-up reached capacity in three days. Wow.

In other hooking news, New Brunswick Mat Registry held another registration for mats hooked 25+ years ago. I was trained at the identification station, charting everything from loops per square inch to type of foundation. Fellow blogger Julia was working there too! 

In reads, I finished Bellman and Black, recommended by Robin of Cranky Crow. A good read by a talented author. I’m back to my beloved cozy mysteries; I vastly prefer the ones written in 1990s and before as the writing and plots seem so much more intelligent. This is current read:

August will mark our third year in the small apartment half underground. Yesterday we hit the roads to determine how far we’d be willing to live out of town and still travel happily enough to work.

Our agent told us that if we were pretty happy with a house we saw we should just jump on it. Sigh. I don’t know about you but plunking down several hundred thousand+on “pretty happy with” is hard to wrap my head around. 

On a higher note, the song birds are in full singing gear beginning at 4 am and the daffodils and forsythia are in bloom!!! Ahhh late spring…

Spring Sprung

Last Saturday was the hook-in in Rothesay, NB. What a great sparkling Spring day for the drive and what a sweet, big group of people! I believe the number was around 110 people. I took this mat I’m working son as a “de-wormer.” It’s 20”x 7 ft and is three panels of linen stitched together. 

 Below are a couple pics of mats there. I love the idea of the one hooked on snowshoes.

As you can see I didn’t take many as I was too “busy” hooking and chatting. I won a sweet hooked tool carrier bag and a sheep mug.

 Because we are still adjusting from Covid days, hosts of hook-ins do not prepare and serve lunches. We bring our own but prepared muffins and cookies we’re in abundance and they were great. I don’t know the reasoning behind all this but I am sad that the days of potluck style gatherings seem behind us. Anyway… a superb day!

This coming weekend, our small guild is hosting a workshop taught by Caroline Simpson on the Value of Worms. We will be separating our worms based on values, not colours, and hooking them into a pyramid or spiral pattern. We will use our cell phones/ipads to see the grey scales of our worms! Can’t wait! I’ve been organizing this and have cookies to bake and people to contact this week. 

Here are some mats I’ve come across in my volunteer work. Interesting note: when I do data entry on these into our museum system, I am told to use the word “mat” not rug. Old entries with the word “rug” are also changed over. I still struggle between the two terms. 

And I can’t resist one gross snap from one of the dirtiest and moth-ridden mats I came across. I had unrolled it for a photo before putting it in the freezer and this was left on the inspection table.