Our visit to Fredericksburg and Stonehill

On Saturday last, we made our way up to Fredricksburg from San Antonio, and visited Stonehill Spinning. The shop has a dual purpose, serving knitters and hookers. The front room is devoted to wool yarns and everything a knitter could need. The back room has a large workshop table in the center and part of a wall houses hand-dyed wools for rug hookers. There are a few bolts of undyed wools, with a few plaids available. We had a nice time browsing and selecting some wools for our home stashes.

Here we are in front of the store (I'm on the left and my sister Tiffany is on the right). It is the only store I have visited where the sign outside is rug hooked! Check it out.

Visit to San Antonio and Country Gatherings

We are back from our short visit to San Antonio and the Hill Country. One of our first stops was Tricia Travis' rug hooking barn, Country Gatherings. Her place is something to experience! It is housed in an old barn on a wonderful antique village property called Bracken Village. She has a nice selection of hand-dyed wools downstairs in one of the front rooms of the shop. But the real treat is upstairs. The entire hayloft is filled with shelves and shelves of imported wools from the UK. Here I am pulling a bunch of light-colored wools for over dyeing projects I have in mind.

I highly recommend making the drive to Tricia's barn and checking out her hayloft of wool. She also gives classes, so if you live near her, her classes are something to take advantage of.

My sister (left) and I (right) had a great time going through the wools and visiting with Tricia (center).

Tricia has agreed to be a featured Rug Rap teacher on Red Jack Rugs soon. So watch for that interview to come.

Getting ready for my sister's visit

Each morning we have been marking the calendar, counting the days left until my sister and her family fly from Michigan to Texas for a week-long visit. Only two more days now. Alexander told me tonight as I finished binding another of the pocket pack mats, "Mom. I think you are going to have to stay home tomorrow or you won't finish." Hum...I think he is right. I have one more mat to bind off, one more pocket pack to sew, and all three to tack on the packs. I promise to post pictures Tuesday, once I know they are on the plane.

On Thursday, we are heading over to San Antonio and since Tiffany is a hooker too - fine-cut and shading - we are going to frequent some of the Texas rug hooking shops in the hill country area while we stay there the weekend. So I plan to post about our rug hooking family adventures as we go along. At the very least, we plan to go out to Country Gatherings in San Antonio on Friday, and then Stonehill in Fredricksburg on Saturday. If you have other suggestions for us to check out, please post them in the comments. Neither of us is from Texas, so we don't know all the ins and outs of rug shops here yet!