Last night I went to Wednesday night hooking

Everyone was very surprised to see 10 people together after a long winter of cold temperatures and bad roads.  It seemed that every Wednesday night I settled down and stayed home because of one or the other and I am sure that many others did as well.  With the time change coming up in a week or two there will be more light and travel will be easier.
Mary Jones, Susan Waddy and I each brought new books to pass around and Sandra Lewis brought a huge bag of recycled wool to share.  Sandra has started spring cleaning.

For Christmas I bought myself the book "Hooked Rug Storyteller, The Art of Heather Ritchie" by Lesley Mary Close. I have read it from cover to cover and it is a wonderful book full of pictures (many close up), stories and tips.
I have finished 4 rugs since last fall. Now I am making a scrap quilt so that I can get rid of the fabric and have room for wool. Honest, I am only buying what I need from now on and I don't need more fabric. It's getting difficult to find a place to store everything. With 2 hook-ins just a month away I can't imagine not buying new wool so I may have to start cleaning my sewing room soon.

A Big Boned Girl designed by Deanne Fitzpatrick. I made this Yoga Person for my friend Nancy and gave it to her for Christmas.

Another rug given as a Christmas present, to my brother-in-law, was a scrappy mat made with wool-of-the-month from Sande Gunning's shop River Gallery and Textiles.

For me to keep it's a mat designed by Carolyn Buttolph and again I used wool-of-the month from River Gallery and Textiles. She named it "American Quilt."

Check out Sande's website at www.rivergallery.ca.

Well, It's a new start for the Quoddy Looper Blog.

My ability to write and to hook are certainly not the same caliber as Maureen's but I am willing to give it a go.  Even though the blog seemed to come to a stand still the Quoddy Loopers have not.

Weekly hooking and  yearly hook-ins have kept us in touch with fellow hookers and solitary time with our mats and wool and hooks have kept us adding to our collections.

It is hard to know where to go from here but now that I have managed to get into the blog and see how it works I am almost positive that inspiration will strike.

Impossible! Where did the time go?

Things have been moving along, but posts to the blog are not keeping pace. Apologies for that! Quoddy Loopers continue to meet weekly, but sadly, I am no longer there. A dream job came up for my husband and we moved, leaving idyllic St Andrews and the whole marvelous east coast for central Canada. We are now condo dwellers, in the midst of Toronto. On the plus side, I've already found a congenial group to hook with. But then, aren't all rughooking groups friendly? They are, in my experience. I joined the Upper Toronto Group and may get to the Agincourt group as well. For now, I am still settling the astonishly vast amount of wool I've amassed over the last several years. It was squirreled away in various spots in our little New Brunswick house, but is now overflowing the shelves and nearly out the door of the little solarium that is to be my new rug/sewing room (the +1 of our 2+1 condo); lovely eastern light with a full wall of windows, but tiny. Maybe this week I will make more progress. The rug that consumed me at the end of my NB stint was the St Andrews mat I'd begun five or so years ago. Specifically with no deadline. However, as they say, life had other plans for me, and a push was on to get it finished before I left town. The Loopers pulled together and we had a few group sessions, where everyone worked on the mat together, around a quilt frame, finishing the lettering and rest of the border.

And soon, another Quoddy Looper will take over the reins of the blog - yay! Louise has kindly agreed to take it on. I do apologize for the long time between posts! I'll leave you with one last mat of mine, hooked in the summer. See the green grass behind it? It's coming back, I'm sure of it....