My Intro to Rug Hooking and an April TUSAL

Wow, it was a busy, busy weekend but also very productive in many ways!  One of the things I did on Saturday was to take a Rug Hooking class at a shop called the Wool Basket in Loveland.  I had been up a few weeks ago to check out the shop and ended up signing up for class then!  The ladies there are very nice and it was a fun lesson.  Here's my progress so far:.

It doesn't seem like much to me but I was assured that I picked it up quickly and made more progress than a typical beginner (this made me feel good and I am very encouraged to keep going)!  And yes, I am hooking a black cat rug, that pretty much sealed the deal for me since I love black cats! 

I haven't been stitching too much since I've been so busy.  I did get to work on the letters of Mary Roe a bit, and I was able to get a start on the vine.  I was traveling on a plane with this piece and the little over one letters just would have been too much so I moved on to the vine since it's over two.  I'm loving this little sampler!  I'd like to go back and do some more on the words and then maybe put the strawberries in the vine for some color.  I can't wait to get to all the fun motifs below the vine but for some reason I tend to like to get the hard stuff out of the way and then save the fun stuff for last.  It's not so much that the over one words are hard, they're really not, but they're just not as fun as the colorful motifs below the vine.  I absolutely love the way the little letters look and was inspired to see Tanya's model when I was at the Attic a couple weeks ago.  That alone made me want to keep going with the words and get to the super fun stuff!  Actually, these little letters are reminding me so much of stitching Elizabeth Sheffield's sampler!

I've also put some time into Spring Song lately and I have to say that even though it seems weird to me to be stitching with two threads I am really enjoying this piece!  And, stitching with two threads instead of my normal one thread is really filling up my TUSAL jar quickly!  Here's a progress pic:

And it's a new moon so it's time for my latest TUSAL pic.  Anyone can get in on the TUSAL fun, it's not too late!  Just go to this post on Daffycat's blog for details.  I decided that the jar always kind of looks the same and that the added weight of the ORT's each month just push the whole layer down just a bit.  So, after I took this picture I squished the whole thing down and oh my, it really squished tiny!  Oh well, it will give me room for more ORT's even though some of you may wonder if I've removed any when I post next month.

Happy Stitching!