Saint Nicholas 2009

I am starting Saint Nicholas 2009. My intent is to make a pocket pack out of it. Its outside measurements will be 10" by 15", so a little bigger than those 10" by 10" pocket packs I hooked this summer. I need a bit more room for all the stuff I carry around with me!

Here is the picture that inspired me and the sketch I made of it on my linen backing. Since I will be hooking by value, I made a black and white copy of the color picture so I can watch my lights and darks, hooking lighter values in the light areas and darker values in the darker areas. This will allow me to not worry so much about what colors I am hooking, but concentrate on values which will cause the face to emerge more creatively.

I probably won't hook the same colors because I'm a purple person and Christmas is purple and white for me. So I have to use some shades of purple. I am using the wool palette I dyed this season as I have been teaching the Palette Dyeing rug camp on Rug Hooking Daily (join the group for details). So first the neutrals. These are the two neutrals I am going to use. In lefthand photo: the wool on the left I created by mixing half and half of my recipes for 11=PURPLE and 5=YELLOW; the wool on the right I created by mixing half and half of my recipes for 1=RED and 6=Green. In the righthand photo, these are the other hues I will use (from left to right): my 6=GREEN; my 11=PURPLE; my 12=PURPLE-RED.

Alexander and the girls with their pocket packs

Here are a couple of photos from our trip down to Galveston and The Strand today. After swimming, we headed over to Rocky Mountain Chocolates for ice cream.

Modeling the packs outside the store front.

Watching fudge being made inside the store.

Tiffany will meet me in Paris

Don't I wish! I love Paris, and so does she. We need to take a trip there together someday. In the meantime, here is her pack: Meet Me in Paris.

Hooked July 2009, in 4 and 6 cut wools and yarns. Original design.

Madison's Mr. Frog's Pad finished

Here is the photo of Madison's pocket pack. She especially loved the flower. She looked very pretty carrying her pack tonight in the Village.

Hooked July 2009. 4 and 6 cut wools with yarn. Original design.

Abigail's Chocolate Kisses Finished

Here is the photo I promised of Abigail's "Chocolate Kisses" pocket pack. She loved it, carrying across the street to The Chocolate Bar tonight, where she ate Oreo Cookie ice cream!

July 2009. 4 and 6 cut wool and yarn. Original design inspired by a chocolate love stamp.

The pocket packs are done!

It is 10:30 pm, and I just finished tacking the last of the three mats onto the pocket packs. Tomorrow I will post pictures. But I can now relax, knowing that all is ready for my nieces and sister when they arrive tomorrow.

Loopgram: Hooking eyes

Last night I finished hooking "Meet me in Paris" but I can't post a picture of it until my sister is on the plane Tuesday. I want her to be surprised. So check back then for a picture.

I have to bind off all three pocket packs and sew the packs today. So I have a lot to do.

After finishing "Meet me in Paris," I went back and studied the frog's eyes on Madison's mat. I haven't been satisfied with them. Even though the photo's of frog's eyes have a tiny white line around the black center, I felt that this line was closing off the hooked eye. So I pulled it out and adjusted the eye, including a bigger white reflection dot.

I was careful to keep the eye from bulging by keeping the top lid line so that it cuts across the top of the black part of the eye (so that you don't have a round black circle, but a circle with the top cut off). If you hook a black round circle that the top lid line goes around, you end up with an eye that pops out and looks unnatural. I also expanded the jaw line to give a more rounded feel to the mouth.

Alexander says that it looks like a baby frog now - so the bigger black area has made enough of a difference that a 5-year old recognizes it as a "baby" now!

This is the result:

BEFORE

AFTER

Something different with "Meet me in Paris"

My sister asked me to make her a pocket pack with the theme "meet me in Paris." Tall order. What to do?

I browsed internet images of Paris and was inspired to make a collage "postcard" with my own memories of Paris when I traveled there a few years ago for an academic conference. So the collage had to have the red bus tour which I took the day I got off the plane and was waiting for my hotel room to be readied. The Eiffel Tower, the Arch, Notre Dame, the bridge and river, and a sidewalk cafe.

After drawing this on my backing, I looked at it and thought, how am I going to hook this? After some consideration, I decided to outline everything in black and to proceed to color in the elements with colors of the French countryside. Here is a picture of what I've done so far.

One of the fun things about these 10 by 10 pocket packs, is that they are a good way to try new things whether it be proddy or outlining in B&W or using metallic yarn and other embellishments. They inspire creativity.

These pocket pack mats only take a few days to hook and give a nice break from the bigger more committed projects that I have on-going.

My five-old son just asked me, "Where are you in the picture?" I said that I'm sitting in the cafe drinking tea and looking at the river. It took him a minute, but I think he got it because he is now pretending that he is drinking tea and looking at the water flow.

Madison's pocket pack hooked

Here is the picture of Mr. Frog's Pad that I promised to post. The hooking is done, but I need to bind and complete the back pack yet. But on to Paris - my sister's request for her pocket pack. They arrive in eight days. Can I do it?

Progress report

I have been spending the last three days painting, cleaning out the garage, organizing, and being exhausted in 100 degree heat. But still making some progress in the evenings hooking on Madison's pocket pack, a frog on a lily pad. I am going to try to finish it tonight with a gold sky behind the moth and the dragon fly. Will post a picture when done.

Chocolate kisses hooked

I just finished the fringe on my nieces pocket pack, Chocolate Kisses. I have to bind yet and make the 10 by 10 pack. But I'm done for now because my sister and her family will be here in two weeks for a visit. So I need to move on to hooking Madison's frog tonight.

Loopgram: Hooking with yarn

My sister and her family will be coming to Texas in mid-July to visit us. I have two nieces about my son's age, and when they saw his Woof backpack on this blog, they wanted one too. I am going to try hooking them "Pocket Packs" - 10 by 10 mats to attach to small purse-like packs I will sew.

So each of my nieces has told me her desired design. One a frog with a dragonfly, the other a chocolate kiss which, she said, I can hook white if I don't have silver wool.

Now I have gray, but gray isn't silver. So what to do? I went to a specialty yarn shop thinking metallic yarn. They had none. So over to Michael's where yes! they have metallic yarn.

I have never hooked with yarn before, and after working with it last night, I have a new appreciation for all hookers who use it as their primary wool-of-choice. Yikes it is tricky to use. I found it too thin, and easily pulled out each time I tried to ply a new loop. When I tried hooking one row after another consecutively two strands apart, it was impossible to see what I was doing and the yarn flattened out and was very hard to deal with.

So this is what I found with some experimentation. First I used two strands of yarn at the same time, twisting them onto the hook as I pulled it through the backing. I hooked one row across, another row about three fibers away from the first, then back across between the two rows I had already hooked. Hooking in this trench helped me be able to keep my loops high enough and it was easier to see what I was doing. I don't know if it shows well in this picture, but there is a metallic thread running through the yarn and it makes the hooking sparkle like foil on a chocolate kiss.