Bigger frame, and a question about transition dyeing

When I was at the Stash Sisters guild meeting a couple of weeks ago, one of the other women there noticed me struggling with my small frame now that my Palette Constellation rug has become so big and heavy.  So she kindly offered to lend me the frame that she uses for big rugs. 

I am so grateful to Marguerite Evans who has lent me her frame and Sondra Ives who dropped it by my home this afternoon. 

I have set it up and already started to hook the final 1/4 of the rug.  I have four more rows to complete and I will be finished with this rug. 

I need to dye three more colors before I can go on much farther with hooking this rug.  I hope to get to do some of the dyeing tomorrow afternoon after I pick up Alexander from school.  Since it takes me about four hours to complete the hands-on part of my dyeing process (then I let the material sit overnight in the dye bath), I have to be home for a good chunk of time to do it.  I should be able to get two of the colors done for the Constellation rug, and another one of the twelve new colors of my second Starter Palette that I am preparing for my Sauder class project.

QUESTION: Can anyone point me in the right direction for instructions on transition value dyeing?  I don't want instructions for dip-dyeing transition, but for creating gradated values that move from one color to a completely different color (like from yellow to purple).  I have been experimenting with this, but not with any real success yet. 

Rug Beat is here!

Okay.  The other day I received an email from Rug Hooking Magazine introducing their new online rug magazine called the Rug Beat.  It cost about $10 a year.  I said to myself, "Why not?"  So I purchased it and just logged in today.

Wow.  I am impressed.  This is not just another version of Rug Hooking Magazine.  This is trendy.  This is edgy. This is wonderful.  There are videos, pictures, sketches, stories, chats, and more. This is rug hooking pushing the boundaries.

I am so happy with this online magazine, I can't say enough about it.

Here is the link to sign up if you are interested.

http://www.rughookingmagazine.com/content/rug-beat-1-year-4-new-issues

Register for the Hankamer Hook In

THE STASH SISTERS

Seventh Annual Hankamer Hook-In

American Legion Hall

1704 South Main, Anahuac, TX 77514

 JOIN US FOR ONE OR TWO DAYS OF FUN!

Friday, March 2, 2012 – 9:00 – 5:00 pm and Saturday, March 3, 2012 – 9:00 – 3:00 pm

WONDERFUL VENDORS: A Nimble Thimble – Katie Hartner; ONE RUG TWO RUG – Carrie Martin; COUNTRY GATHERINGS – Trisha Travis; DESIGNS BY DEBORAH – Deborah Neslage AND THE STASH SISTERS

VENDORS! DOOR PRIZES! FUN!: No Silent Auction This Year; Rug Show open to the public, Saturday – noon to 2:00 pm; Hookers bring your rugs and show them off

• One day of fun for a happy hooker - $20, includes lunch
• Two days of fun for a happy hooker - $40, includes lunch

Reserve your place by February 15, 2012

Mail checks to Sondra Ives, 4522 Merrie Ln, Bellaire, TX 77401

Payable to The Stash Sisters

Questions??? Sondra Ives (713)665-7749, twoives@swbell.net; Pam Herrington (936)258-7828

Name __________________________________________________________________

Address _______________________________________________________________

City, State, Zip ______________________________________________________

Email _________________________________________________________________

Friday ________ Saturday _______  Both Days ______ 

Amount Enclosed  ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_______________________

DIRECTIONS FOR NEW LOCATION

From I-10 between Houston and Beaumont, take exit 810 which is the 563-Anahuac exit.  Travel south on 563 for 6 miles until you come to a 4-way stop.  Turn right onto Miller Street and continue for .8 miles, turn left on Main Street and travel .9 miles.  Turn right at the large green cannon.  You will see the brown American Legion Hall on your left as soon as you turn.  Parking is in the front.

Turning down the next row

So my Palette Constellation is a BIG rug, although Alexander has grown taller than it is high.  At least it is the biggest rug I have ever tried to hook.  It is going to end up about 9 feet long and 4 feet wide. 

I am measuring my progress by the rows I finish and I am now working down the 8th row.  That means that I am almost 3/4ths finished. What holds up the show is when I come upon a color that I don't have dyed in my stash anymore.  So I dyed a couple of colors last night and will work on a few more in between other commitments this week. 

On the dyeing front, I have started to dye up a second palette which I am going to be using as my Starter Palette for my dye classes.  The recipes will integrate into my primary palette, so that means I am creating a subsidiary palette that will give me another full range of colors to complement the 67 I already have.  These are the basic Starter recipes that I included in the Revised Edition of my book, The Wool Palette.  I have quite a bit of yardage of the Starter Palette to prepare for my Sauder dye class this August, so I am starting on it already with a yard of 201, my Starter Red.  I liked how it turned out; just took it out of the pot so will post pictures another day.

Just for the record. It is fascinating hooking the Palette Constellation rug because I am getting to double check all my colors.  When I see something off in the progression of color, I am going back and redyeing to see if something was off the first time around.  What I am finding is that when the dry dyes go into solution, that blue dyes are unstable.  If they sit in solution much longer than a week (and then they need to be refrigerated) they turn gray.  When you go to use the old solution, the blue dye has turned into something else.  So this means that any recipe that uses a blue dye of any sort is vulnerable.  I have not found this to be the case with any other color which all seem to last quite a long time (not refrigerated) in stable solution. 

Gone are the Christmas decorations

As the holidays come to an end today, I have gathered up the Christmas decorations and repacked them in their boxes.  I reorganized my mantel which I decorate all year long as the seasons change.  It is covered now in icy branches and cones. 

I was at a lost for what rug to put in my shadow box since I have nothing yet hooked for January.  I went upstairs and rummaged through my box of old hooked rugs and came upon a little rug that is perfect. 

It is the only rug that my mom hooked for me.  She and my sister started hooking two years after I began the craft.  At the time, I was living in another state, so I never really got to hook with my mom before she died in '99.  The last year of her life, she designed and hooked Fawn for me and gave it to me for Christmas in '98. 

When I look at Fawn, I am drawn to the sweetness of the animal and the boldness of the flora she encounters.  I am also struck by the  the fawn as she stands alone, her mother nowhere in the setting.  The metaphor is not lost on me.  Only a few months after receiving this mat, I stood alone, my mother gone from this life. 

Yet the mat leaves me not with feelings of loneliness or abandonment as you might imagine, but feelings of strength and direction.  Like the fawn standing proudly on the bank, I can journey confidently in this world on my own.  This confidence was shaped in me when I was a child by my mother who loved me deeply.  So I am comforted by the mat, with the traces of my mother's hand that cut and hooked each strip of wool and worked her initials into the corner.  In this mat, she is still here and she has left me with a powerful message whether she intended to or not.

In this New Year, if there is a mat that needs to be hooked for someone, hook it and give it.  Our time with each other is shorter than we imagine.

My sister's gorgeous rug

In August, when I was visiting my sister Tiffany, she wanted to try her hand at a big portrait of her daughter Madison.  When I was creating the palette dyeing process and developing my own colors, my sister was also creating her own palette and testing the process with me.  So she has a complete palette of her own 67 colors in 8 values each.  So she had everything she needed for her portrait project. 

As some of you know who have been following my blog, for the last year and a half I have been working with color in my hooking in order to create a simple procedure to hook gorgeous portraits.  I call the procedure VIP (VALUE INTENSE PALETTE) Hooking. 

My sister is the first person other than me to put my procedure to the test, and wow, the results are stunning!  All I did was share the five color hooking principles with her, and three months later, she was done with this fantastic over-sized portrait of Madison.  She brought the rug (Madison) to my house at Christmas and it knocked my socks off. It reminds me so much of the famous portrait of The Girl with A Pearl Earring by Vermeer.  Madison is captured by her mother in this hooked piece better than any photograph could.  She is a true Mona Lisa.  Tiffany hooked it in a #6.  It is about 2 feet by 2 feet, and bound with Canadian Show binding procedure.

Here is a picture of my sister and her daughter holding the rug in front of our tree. 

Merry Christmas from my house to yours!

It has been a very busy holiday here.  My sister's family and my inlaws are staying with us and we have been traveling around Houston, San Antonio and Austin.  Today we go down to Galveston Island for a nice dinner on the pier. 

Santa was good to all of us, but me especially.  Wade and Alexander gave me a Snap Dragon frame for my stand.  I declare it to be the Cadillac of frames now that I have been using it the last couple of days.  Here is a picture of me hooking my Palette Constellation Rug on the Snap Dragon frame.  It is getting BIG and finally I have a frame that can handle it!  My goal is to finish this rug by the end of February.

Green Mountain Rug Show Video

Don't know if you have seen this video yet, but it is a wonderful review of Hooked on Mountains XV show.  Wish I could have been there!  Wow what fantastic rugs.  It was uploaded by Stuck in Vermont vlog and passed on to me by Sondra Ives.  Enjoy.

It's Christmas at my house

Made it back from the conference and was thrown back into the last week of classes and trying to get decorations put up and shopping done and cleaning underway.  So haven't been sitting at my rug stand hooking too much, although I have hauled out the Palette Constellation rug and have worked on it a bit.  I need to get it done so I can move on to other projects in the wings.

My in-laws arrive this afternoon for the holidays and my sister and her family are coming down next weekend to stay through Christmas.  Tiffany has been working on a large portrait of one of her daughters, using her own palette wools she created.  So I am very excited to see the finished piece.

Christmas decorations are finished here.  Here are pictures of three of my favorite things.  St. Nicholas has taken over the shadow box above mantel.  I painted it white to show off against my eggplant wall.  Father Christmas stands tall in a rug hooking box on a table.  And of course my sugar plum fairy tree in front of my french door in the living room.

I will try to get back to posting more regularly, but it may not be until after the holidays.  A blessed Christmas and Hanukkah to you and yours!

Out of town for a few days

This is the weekend of my annual professional conference, so won't be rug hooking this week.  I'll be back after Thanksgiving with an update on the Palette Constellation rug.

My Thanksgiving shadow box

So Matilda is gone until next Halloween, and Squanto is here.

Squanto finished

Except for binding, Squanto is finished.  I will work on binding the mat tonight.  It will be around 12" by 13" when all is said and done.  I had planned a larger piece with more of his shirt and ornaments exposed. But once I hooked it, the focus of the picture changed to his ornamentation, rather than his face.  So I ripped out about 5" of hooking at the bottom, pulled out the dream-catcher circle in his hair, and worked to edit out all the details so that only his face, with all its gratitude, was left.

Hooking this piece again reminded me that less is better.  Period.
Rip out what I don't like.  Because just adding more hooking to what I already don't like isn't going to make me like it any better.
It is tough to hook a "monochromic" picture.  Now this really wasn't monochromic because I didn't use a single swatch of wool in one hue.  I used five different, yet closely related swatches to give the impression of a monochromic picture, while allowing me some freedom to cluster certain colors against others.
I also want to say that the background was really fun to do.  I just used up my scraps from the rest of the piece, trying to cluster color and values to get a soft out-of-focus landscape background effect.

ATHA Ebay Auction Starts!

Just received this information this morning.  Some of Jane Olson's hooking items are being auctioned.  The proceeds are going to ATHA.  Interested?  Read on the information sent via email.

Fundraising efforts for the 2013 ATHA Biennial in Long Beach, California begin this Friday, November 4!
A variety of donated items will begin appearing for sale on eBay website!
 
To find these items, all one will have to do is type in ATHA Biennial 2013 in the eBay search box and hit “go.”  To be kept "in the loop" save ATHA Biennial 2013 as one of your saved searches on eBay and you will automatically receive updates!!!
 
Many of the items going up for sale come from the estate of beloved fiber artist, Jane Olson.  For those students and colleagues who would love a keepsake of Jane’s, you will find her treasures listed.  
 
Items of interest from Jane’s collection that will be sold are:
 
One rug hook, a vintage handmade wooden braiding clamp, pieces of needlework done by Jane, milk glass, china serving pieces, “Hooked Rug” Springbok puzzle, dye spoons, antique needle holder, quilt handmade by Jane, quilt owned by Jane, various collectible antique pieces, flatirons and other items loved by Jane.  
 
In addition, other items of interest  will include a signed Patty Yoder poster, vintage hand painted rug patterns, hooks, books and a variety of other items too numerous to mention.  
 
Join the fun--it starts November 4 with our initial listings, will be updated regularly and continue indefinitely. Check eBay often or save the search – ATHA Biennial 2013 -  to see what is listed as new auction items will appear regularly.  
 
Please tell all your friends and, yes, we would love for you to donate an item to ATHA Biennial 2013.  FMI:  Please contact Barbara Holden:  montairgal@gmail.com  

Squanto

Well it is after Halloween, and Matilda is still hanging above my fireplace in that wonderful shadowbox I bought a month ago.  So this can't continue.  Matilda has to come down. Her month is over. The problem is that I do not have a mat hooked to fill the space between now and Christmas when St. Nicholas will be pinned up.

What to do?  Guess I have to stop hooking the big Palette Constellation rug for a few days and get a Thanksgiving mat done.  I browsed the web and located an antique photo circa 1900 that I fell in love with.  Very soulful.  And thankful.

So I have started to work on it.  I have a photo to the left of the colors of wools I am using: Wilde Wood 117; Faune Brown 114; Hubbard Fig 119; Sea Shells 142; Red Oak 144; Toadstool 121.  All are 8-value packs.

I have no idea who the man is in the picture, but I am calling him Squanto in memory of one of the Wampangao who was known to help the Pilgrims.  Governor William Bradford wrote that Squanto was "a special instrument sent of God."  He appeared in Plymouth in the Spring of 1621 and helped the few Pilgrims who survived the winter of 1620 after landing. Bradford wrote about him, “Squanto was a native of these parts…one of the few survivors of the plague… He was carried away with others by one Hunt, a captain of a ship, who intended to sell them for slaves in Spain; but he got away for England, and was received by a merchant in London, employed in Newfoundland… and lastly brought into these parts by a Captain Dermer. Squanto stayed with them and was their interpreter…He showed them how to plant corn, where to take fish and other commodities, and guided them to unknown places… Nor was there a man among them who had ever seen a beaver skin till they were instructed by Squanto.”

Glorious Color Caddy

FRONTBACKI know my posts have been infrequent last month.  I got really busy at work, and then got sick.  My rug hooking slowed down, but didn't cease.  The one thing I accomplished last month was designing and hooking a sample of a caddy for the Palette Dyeing class that I will be teaching this coming August at Sauder.  I thought it would be fun while the dye pots are simmering in the class, to be learning about color theory and hooking a caddy as a handy reference to that theory. 

I think it turned out cute.  It is made from one piece of linen, even including the handles, with minimal sewing.  In fact, the sewing can even be done by hand if a machine is not available.  The overall size is 20"by 14"by 6".  So it holds lots of stuff, even my cutter and supplies.  In the picture I stuffed it with skeins of yarn.

The link to my workshop is on the Sauder Village website, and it just went live today.  Registration for the Sauder retreat and all the workshops and classes begins on Wednesday, November 9 at 10 am EST.

Revised version of The Wool Palette

I have gone ahead and revised my dye book, The Wool Palette.  When you click the sidebar image of the new cover, you will be taken to more information about how to order it.

WHY A REVISED EDITION?

I have corrected and amended the book wherever I have found errors in the first printing.  I have revised the method for creating the secondary and tertiary colors, by halving the dry dye recipes for the primary colors instead of doubling the water.  This makes for more consistent dyes overall and better results for the tertiary formula.  I have also switched from vinegar to citric acid, so I include directions for using citric acid in my dye process.

I decided to produce a revised edition of The Wool Palette in response to a question that several of my readers have posed to me.  "Can you suggest some dyes for me to start creating my own palette?" I have been asked.  "Yes, but I can do even better than that," is my response.  "I can provide you with easy recipes that will create a beautiful starter palette for you."  The recipes for this palette only require you to purchase six dyes, which amounts to less than $20. From them you can easily create all 67 colors around the wheel using the simple procedure outlined in this book.  If you wish to customize your own palette, you can still do this by adjusting the recipes I provide in this book, or creating your own recipes for a red formula, a blue formula, and a yellow formula from scratch.  The instructions for creating you own customized palette remain.  But now you also have the option of using starter recipes too!

For convenience's sake, I have included the Starter Palette recipes in a new reference guide at the end of the book. I also interspersed the Starter Palette recipes in the different lessons.  The recipes for the primary dyes (red, yellow, blue) are found in a big red box in Lesson 5: Creating Your Magic Primary Colors.  The recipes for the secondary dyes (orange, green, and purple) are found in Lesson 6: Creating Your Secondary Colors.  The recipes for the tertiary dyes (red-orange, orange-yellow, yellow-green, green-blue, blue-purple, and purple-red) are found in Lesson 7: Creating Your Tertiary Colors.  Watch for the boxes that include the recipes.

The reference guide at the end of the book is new.  As I myself used this book in my dye kitchen, I found myself constantly flipping through the pages to find this measurement chart and that formula chart.  I kept asking myself why I didn't reproduce these charts at the end of the book?  Wouldn't have that been handy?  So I have added a reference appendix, where I reproduce all twelve Starter Palette recipes, the measurement formulas for 8-value dyeing, and the measurement chart for dyeing yardage of a single color and value.

As an extra bonus, I have included photos of more rugs because I have been busy hooking since the first printing of The Wool Palette.

Back to my Palette Constellation Rug

Now that I have finished with the lion, I am returning to work on my Palette Constellation Rug, the nine foot long rug that displays my entire dye palette.  Each of the 67 colors in their 8 values is arranged by family in terms of how that particular color was created.  So it is a chart of 12 rows and 12 columns that reference the color wheel. 

I am half way done at this juncture.  I like hooking on this rug, except that every other panel I find that I have to get out my dye pots and dye up the color I need for it.  So it is slow going.

But when this rug is finished, I will have a visual color reference for each of the 67 colors that make up my wool palette.  This should make color planning, as well as dyeing, so much easier.  The trouble is going to be finding a place to hang a 9 foot long rug.

Rug in place

We don't often see each other's rugs in situ.  So I thought I would post a picture of Jonathan hanging above my couch.  My living is not well lit, so the photo is darker than I would like.  I sewed the rug onto black foam board so that I could mount it directly on the wall.  Then I sewed up two orange throw pillows for the season.  Now it feels like I am greeting autumn into my home.

By the way, if you live around Houston, High Fashion is the place to go for home decor material.  I bought this gorgeous orange fabric there.  I am blown away by that place.

Wade's comment once we got Jonathan hung.  "April, you need to hook two more animals for either side of Jonathan."  Guess what two of my next projects are going to have to be?

Presenting Jonathan the Lion

What do I like about this piece?  I like the way that it is an abstract while still maintaining a figure.  When it was finished, I was so pleased to see how my abstract work these last two years is now breaking into my figural art.  If I look only at elements of the rug and not the whole piece, I am viewing colors abstractly flowing into each other and tiled against each other.  But when I take in the entire rug, not only is a lion clearly in view, but a very particular lion.  There is no mistaking that this is a picture of Jonathan the lion at the Houston Zoo.

2011.  Jonathan the Lion.  Original.  25" by 30".  Designed, dyed and hooked by April D. DeConick.  Red Jack Palette Wools used: 8-value packs~Hubbard Fig 119; Butterfield 122; Sunkissed Gold 157; Somerset Sunset 104; Goodfellow Yellow 105; Black Orchid 146; Highland Lilac 133; Faune Brown 114; Milkweed 115; Sea Shells 142. Texture packs~Hubbard Fig 119 (value 5 and 8); Sunkissed Gold 157 (value 5); Goodfellow Yellow 105 (value 5); Faune Brown 114 (value 2 and 8).

Finishing

Yeah!  Whahoo!  I am binding Jonathan the Lion.  Pictures to follow tomorrow when I can take some photos in natural light.