Two Countries One Bay Art Studio Tour

The 2nd annual Two Countries, One Bay Art Studio Tour is a great opportunity to see a variety of inspired art work, visit the studios of creative artists, and experience the international cultures of two distinct countries — eastern Maine, USA, and southern New Brunswick, Canada — while enjoying en route the breath-taking coastal scenery of Passamaquoddy Bay. Ferries facilitate completion of the Quoddy Loop.

September 19-20, 2009, Saturday and Sunday
10am to 5pm, Atlantic & Eastern time

Ray and Maureen will be demonstrating and exhibiting their work for sale at the Kingsbrae Garden Visitors Centre*, St Andrews by-the-Sea, New Brunswick [Canada]. Ray's work is pictorial quilting in her own style, inspired by the scenery around the province. Maureen practises traditional rughooking with original designs created with woollen cloth or yarn on burlap or linen. Patterns will also be on sale.

Ray Peterson's pictorial quilting & Maureen McIlwain's mats
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During this self-guided tour you’ll meet world-class artists in the places where they create their work — their studios. This setting provides a unique opportunity to watch demonstrations or try your hand at techniques, inquire about the artist’s creative process, or experience art in an intimate setting — with the chance to talk with the artist directly. Organized by the Tides Institute and Museum of Art / CulturePass, Bertha Day Art and Craft Gallery and Michael Chesley Johnson and funded by participating artists and sponsors, this juried tour has found the best of the creative work being produced in this international coastal region.

Offering a wide range of media, from painting to printmaking, textiles to stained glass, from contemporary sculpture and jewelry, to traditional crafts, you'll find the unique and unusual — an art adventure not to be missed!

Additional support provided by the Maine Arts Commission, Maine State Office of Tourism, the Province of New Brunswick Department of Tourism and Parks, and East Coast Ferries.

* no admission fee is required to access the studio stop at Kingsbrae Garden, but 2 for 1 Garden admission is offered to Art Studio Tour participants. Pick up a coupon after viewing the artwork on display.

The licensed Garden Café is a great spot for lunch or afternoon tea — or just a coffee and dessert! The Café is open 10 am to 5 pm in September.

Full info on the tour is available online and the poster, as a PDF file

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Ten minute rughooking challenge & giveaway - Red Jack Rugs

April DeConick is a rughooker, author and designer living in Texas. She has had rugs featured in the Celebration juried series and Rug Hooking Magazine. She has authored articles for the ATHA Newsletter and Rug Hooking Magazine. Her rugs have been exhibited at Sauder Village and local events.

April decided to house a few rug hooking challenges on her Red Jack Rugs blog "in the hope that together we might support and inspire each other to 'make rugs' even though we live far apart. So my thought is, let's apply that to rug hooking and make it even more fun by including a prize give-away, one of my 10 by 10 pocket packs which I will hook and sew and give to one of the formal challenge participants every January 31st for as many years as this challenge goes on."

This is the first challenge:

Work on your rug at least 10-minutes a day, six days out of the week, except holidays, for at least six months. "Work" includes anything rug-related: designing, drawing, laying out, dyeing, hooking, binding, even shopping for materials and attending guild. NOTE that the 10-minutes is not accumulative, so if you hook for 30-minutes one day, this does not count as three 10-minute days. The challenge is to work on your rugs at least 10 minutes every day. You are your own log-keeper.

Click on the badge or link above to go to April's site to join up!
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Scrappy rugs & wonky perimeters

The recycling and 'use it up' nature of scrappy, hit-or-miss rugs and mats is very appealing to me. They are like fun snacks rather than a full meal or formal banquet of a pictorial or fine design rugs/mats. They are less work, requiring very little thought and I find them mostly cheerful and charming. Having just finished my first biggish [2 ft by 4 ft] scrappy rug, Live simply, in an effort to use up my woolly worm leftovers, I was interested to see a lovely hit-or-miss rug on Gene Shepherd's blog. A friend of Gene's wrote in, asking for advice, as her simple oval was losing its regular shape, partially due to the use of different widths of wool strips from her scrap basket. Gene had several very good ideas on how to correct the problem and restore the rug to its original oval shape.

The problem of rugs with wonky borders/edges is one that most of us have probably faced, and this is a great lesson on how to deal with it. I went looking for a hit-or-miss rug from our Quoddy Loopers group to illustrate this, and realized that either no-one else in our group likes doing scrappy mats or else I don't have enough photos, because another of mine is the only one I have--Live, love, laugh.


It illustrates the wonkiness of the outline [now pressed and hung, looking much straighter!] as well as using hit or miss in the log cabin border and to a lesser degree in the background, with different darks.
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Celtic Knot tote bag

Celtic designs move me - must be my Irish and Scots forebears... and the sinuous charm of interlocking curves and lines. I'd had it on my to-do list for ages to do a Celtic rughooking, and finally found the perfect project. I bought a new to me [and unused] tote bag at one of our local Frenchy's stores [treasure troves for rughookers, with woollen clothes ready for recycling], and used a classic Celtic knot from a book of designs that a friend gave me [thank you, Mary!] -- the Ulbster Stone from Caithness, Scotland.

I hooked the Celtic square with nylons, rather than wool, so as not to add too much weight [as-is, handcut, on monkscloth]. It hooked up quickly. Lots of pockets, a good wide strap and light [until I get it loaded up]. The thing I learned from this first time hooking with nylons was that I don't like cutting rings across the legs [too many ends], but rather cutting spirally, like paring an apple, to get continuous strips to hook with. Also you have to be careful not to twist underneath, just like with wool, but the idea is to keep the rolled edge of the nylon strip uppermost, not the cut edges.

Free patterns!

There are numerous websites with free patterns, some specifically for hooked rugs and others that are easily adapted to hooking. Try P&B Textiles - meant for quilting, but many would make lovely rugs. I particularly like Bella's Blooms and there are many geometrics that would be great either in hit-or-miss or in a planned colour scheme. Here's a page with 1295 sites, all offering free patterns, and categorized by theme, holiday or subject [Fish, Frogs & Bugs or Snowmen, for example]. Again, this is a quilting site, so some of the paper piecing patterns might not translate so well, but for anyone who is shy of drawing their own pattern, these are treasure troves!

Donna Hrkman, a talented rughooker, shares a free snowman pattern on her site: at Blue Ribbon Rugs; it may change seasonally. Her Women of the Congo rug was featured in RHM/ Rug Hooking Magazine (Jan/Feb 2006) and is a powerful work of art and compassion.

Stained glass patterns are also ideal for hooking; though this 'fantasy' site has a strong cartoon and juvenile bent, it does have many free stained glass patterns! And yet more, at Spectrum, where you are asked to log in with a password, but it's quick and easy, and free patterns are searchable by category.

For some fun free primitive patterns, Jennie Baer at Homeberries has 'freebies' - just click on the category you are looking for - seasons, ornies, nursery rhymes and everyday (e.g. "A Happy Home is Early Heaven"). They are meant for embroidery but I think would make sweet mats.

Ship to Shore

Well, that was my browse for today. Here's a doodle of mine that you are free to hook, if you like, but as with most free patterns, it's for personal use only, please.

Finally on the floor! Live Simply is finished

It has been way too long in the making, but I finally finished whipping my Live Simply rug last night. Not steamed / pressed yet, but I couldn't wait to get it on the floor and it did make me smile when I woke up this morning, which was the whole idea in hooking it. Most of my other mats are on the walls, chairs or tables, rather than on the floor, but this one was always destined for the floor by my bed. It did use up a fair amount of woolly worms in the hit-or-miss portions, but not as many as I'd hoped, so I'll be starting another scrappy rug soon.

There are so many wonderful rugs out there, and inspiration at every turn. The first border of this rug echoes the quilt pattern 'flying geese'. There are thousands of quilt patterns and many of them would make great rugs. I've always loved paisley, so the final side borders are paisley-ish. It's been a fun rug to hook; mostly in #6 cut wools, with some #8 and a bit of woolen yarn, here and there, when the colour was right. It's approximately 3 ft wide by 2 ft high, on primitive linen, bound in wool yarn from Cottage Craft Woollens, right here in St Andrews, NB [Canada]. They didn't have any black in stock, so I overdyed some darkish purple with Cushings black dye. It kept looking navy to me, so I added more black and was finally happy with the colour - it actually has some liveliness, rather than being a flat black, which was a happy accident.

I love the feel of the cushy soft wool under my feet as I get out of bed. So long as our cat Katie doesn't think that it is a new thing to scratch at, all will be well.
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Christmas in July

Here's a cheery winter scene - Christmas Village, a Deanne Fitzpatrick design, which Carol has hooked in brights (28" x 8" framed). Carol is one of our newer members, and has done some lovely mats. She mostly works in #4 to 6, and also uses woollen and novelty yarns......................................

The striding Santa is designed by Monika Brint; Carol has accentuated the elongated trees and tall Santa with a vertically hooked sky in novelty yarn, with a festive metallic glimmer. He looks like he's in a hurry! (16.5" wide x 14.5" high)

We may not be celebrating Christmas, but we don't seem to be experiencing summer, either. It has been relentlessly cold and damp, and we've had way more fog than we are used to, in the last three weeks or so. It is sunny right now... long may it last.
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Super Sandra finishes another great mat!

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It's pretty hard to keep up with Sandra. Here's her latest mat, "Washday", designed by Patti Armstrong and hooked in 4 & 6 cut wool, some of it hand-dyed.

It shows how the most mundane subjects can make a great mat. The crows here are rather whimsical, but since crows seem to appear in rugs frequently [especially 'primitive' style rugs] , I thought I'd see if I could find out why.

Wikipedia says: Many mythologies - Celtic, Norse, Chinese, Hindu, Buddhist and North American aboriginal, esp the Pacific Northwest bands - feature crows in their legends. [They are generally regarded as] "harbingers of doom or death, because of their dark plumage, unnerving calls, and tendency to eat carrion. A group of crows is called a murder" - which indicates how kindly crows are perceived by some. Hardly a ringing endorsement.

I liked this WikiAnswer to why crows are so often used in folk art: "Crows and ravens figure largely in pre-Christian faiths and practices, and folk art draws heavily on past beliefs and practices. An artist friend of mine is more pragmatic. Crows, she tells me, are just easier to draw and paint than multicolored birds." So maybe it is neither philosophical or deep; simply convenient.

Then there are the superstitions regarding crows, as collected by CrowBusters. Did you know this one? "It was unlucky in Wales to have a crow cross your path. However, if two crows crossed your path, the luck was reversed. 'Two crows I see, good luck to me'."

Perhaps the crow is considered a lucky symbol and that's why so many primitive rugs have crows in their design, and have had, historically. Plus, they are smart - here's a neat video from Japan.
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Golf, anyone?

Here's another of Sandra's delightful mats - this one based on a photo of her sister playing golf. Note the flowers alongside the green and the water beyond... PEI is a haven for golfers.

St Andrews by-the-Sea isn't a bad spot either, for golf or anything else! We've got our fair share of water, the Passamaquoddy Bay off the phenomenal Bay of Fundy, and the Algonquin golf course is laid out alongside the Ste Croix River, overlooking the bay.

There have been more than a few people who have come for the sea breezes, quaint and well-preserved architecture & heritage, the whales, artisans, college, golf or for many other reasons, who have subsequently picked up stakes and moved here for the gentler, more human way of life. The beauty, clean air, safe and comfortable lifestyle are bonuses. We are blessed with well over average services for a town of 1850 people: the historic and beautiful Fairmont Algonquin Resort, Kingsbrae Horticultural Garden, a raft of creative people in many genres... and some of the best cuisine you will find anywhere. Naturally the seafood is as fresh as can be, and there is plenty of choice for delicious dining at many levels.
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in vino veritas

This rughooked mat was done for my sister's birthday. She and my brother-in-law also celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary, which surely calls for a party! I travelled up to Toronto/Beeton/Wasaga Beach for the occasion and our brother Colin also made it across the pond from Leeds [England]. Surprised whoops and glee all around, as we enjoyed a festive luncheon at the Globe Restaurant in Rosemont, Ontario. It's a lovely old building, set in charmingly old-fashioned landscaped grounds. There were all ages, from our grandson Ruben at 18 mos to the slightly wrinkly set, and lots of kids in the mix. They had a blast playing outside between nibbles, feeding and cooing at the peacocks, and generally doing what children do, in a happily well-mannered way. Lunch was delicious, our waiter couldn't have been more charming or helpful, and their daughters put on a marvelous party.

The weather up there was delightful and the lilacs and apple blossoms were astounding, everywhere we went, including an area I hadn't explored before - Thornbury and all around the Beaver Valley in the Blue Mountains, Grey County. We were glad to see that there still were loads of apple orchards, despite all the development and building going on. No recession there, it seems!
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