Hanging rugs with map pins

Sondra Ives just directed me to a video that Deanne Fitzpatrick posted on UTUBE about how she hangs her big rugs.  She uses map pins every 2 or 3 inches along the rug.  That is easy.  I think that this might be the solution to hanging my Palette Constellation Rug.  Well at least I am going to try it, and if it works great.  If it doesn't, I will have to think about another option.

Palette Constellation Rug

I am off to guild this morning and as I was packing up my rug, I snapped a shot of it to test out our new camera.  I think we finally bought one good enough to handle low light indoors shots.  I think it did a pretty good job.

The rug is coming along.  I have two more rows to go, and am loving the power of the blue as it enters the rug and comes down the final columns.  This rug is going to be really stunning on the wall behind my couch.  I might even get inspired to actually do some decorating with it as the centerpiece.

Oh, the rug looks small here, but at this point it is almost nine feet long.

My favorite color

Have been hooking more colors in the Palette Constellation rug.  Marguerite's big frame is allowing me to hook two rows at once.  This seems to be making a big difference. 

So I have also been dyeing, since I am coming along in my rows onto colors that I don't have in stock.  Pictured here is probably my absolute favorite of all my colors, Black Orchid 146, that I just hooked into the 10th row (Blue row).  It is a combination of my blue dye and my red-orange.  A lovely purple that I find myself wanting to use in everything I hook.  Maybe I will make it my signature color.  Hum...

New Starter Palette

As I have been dyeing colors to complete the Palette Constellation Rug, I have been also working on dyeing the new colors for the Starter Palette that I included recipes for in the revised version of The Wool Palette (see sidebar to order).  I created starter recipes to help people begin the palette process without needing to create their own colors if they don't want to.  The recipes I created allow the colors of the second palette to be integrated with my original palette.  This way I have extended my color palette to 134 colors instead of 67.  The second Starter Palette contains foundational dyes that I use in my original palette, so there should be a seamless integration when I use colors from both palettes in my rugs.  I am excited to extend my value options from 536 to 1076!

Pictured here is the red color wheel family: 201 (red), 202 (red-orange), 203 (orange), 204 (orange-red).  These are some of the wools that I will be putting into my kits for the Glorious Color Caddy we will be hooking at Sauder in August.

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. 

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. 

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.

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.