Exposing the back

Gayle asked me to post a picture of the back of the areas I had pearled and waffled to show better how I did this. In both cases, I hook all the white (or light) wool. Then I go back in with deeper and deeper values, hooking between the white. As you will see from these pictures, I would never pass the grade on my back because these areas are not smooth and flat. But the only way to achieve the pointillism effect on the front is to sacrifice the rules for the back.

The pearled area is the nose. It has many more crossovers because I am jumping around more only laying the wool in one or two holes adjacent to each other. I stagger a lot. I work in the direction I would normally hook the area (contour of face, around the ear, linearly, etc.).

The waffled area is the beard. It has less crossovers because I am working by filling a greater number of holes adjacent to each other, although still jumping around. I still stagger, but less frequently.

Loopgram: Waffling

I haven't posted on White Tiger Beauty for a while - not because I haven't been working on him - I have! But as usual, I have spent some time reverse hooking. I posted previously on developing a technique to achieve a pointillism effect in the ears and on the nose, a technique which I have decided to call "pearling" , dots of color randomly hooked on the linen to look like beads of wool. I've come up with a similar technique I'm calling "waffling".

When I moved down the sides of the piece and began hooking the long hair extending from the face, I initially did so in straight lines as we have been taught to do, with no crossovers on the back of the linen. Good girl technique, like this:

Then a few nights ago I got into the bad girl mode and started to rug hook randomly-shaped lines with quite a bit of jumping around. As I did this, I discovered that it looked great (but it does have crossovers on the back). It is a very different effect and one that I really prefer to all those straight lines. In fact, it is feeling a bit "abstract" to me. I am calling the technique "waffling" because you hook in random lines and fill between the lines as you go.

So I went back to the white chin hair that I had hooked straight, and I waffled the area. I went in with white in random rows, jumping around so the rows aren't straight. Then I went back in with other #1 values and hooked more random rows in between the white.

The result is impressionistic and quite vibrant. There is so much more life and movement than there was with the straight row hooking.

Now I have to go back to the left side of the piece and reverse hook and then waffle the area. So it will be a week or so before I am finished with White Tiger Beauty.