Category: not-so-traditional hooking

July 18, 2023

MAVWA UPDATE – Punch needle class info (and more!)

Updated information

Logo for the Mountain and Valley Wool Festival

Mountain and Valley Wool Festival
Santa Fe in October

If you read the previous post from way back in June – hey, it’s summer and I’m enjoying a break! – you saw that I’ll be teaching an all-day workshop on punch needle rug hooking. At that point, I didn’t have the info on when the class would happen. I do now!

The class will be on Thursday, October 5. It starts at 9:00 and ends at 5:00 or whenever you decide you’ve punched plenty. Because MAVWA’s workshops happen on Thursday and Friday, students won’t miss any of the festival events that weekend. In fact, because my workshop is Thursday, you can still take a class on Friday too! See both days’ offerings HERE.

Punch needle rug hooking — Punch needle by Amy Oxford. Original design.

If interested, please note:
To allow folks from places afar to plan, festival organizers make decisions about workshops running in early September. If they don’t think they have enough students by around Labor Day, they will cancel a class. It happened to me last year. If you think you want to take a class, forget late registration. Do it now! Or plan on a private lesson here in Albuquerque. That also happened last year. LOL

In addition to this MAVWA update, take a peek at our CALENDAR page. There are some new listings just today. Most exciting is that I’ll be teaching a INTRO TO RUG HOOKING at Convergence in Wichita next July. I am sooooo thrilled. HGA (Handweavers Guild of America) hasn’t yet put up the info for Convergence, but keep an eye out for it. Back in 2014, before I moved out here, I attended the exhibits and vendors’ market at Convergence when it was held in Providence. Little did I know that I’d be a part of such a BIG EVENT so many years later. Or such a great organization. HGA promotes all fiber arts here in the US and abroad.

Lastly, I’m finally going to make it to Sauder Village’s Rug Hooking Week this year. WOOHOO! As a judge for this year’s Celebration contest, I was invited. I even get to put a rug in the Celebrations exhibit. How cool is that? Also very exciting: Because I hooked New Mexico’s cushion for the USA50 project, I have a piece in that exhibit too! I only wish that Ruth Simpson could attend with me. I did the easy part – hooking – while she had to put the whole thing together! Read about it HERE. So if you’re going to be there, I hope we can meet up. I’ve no plans other than soaking it all up and taking lots of pics. Let me know!

So, it’s been a busy summer so far. If you’re going to be in the New Mexico area, okay, a really BIG area, give a yell. High on Hooking will be at at Las Golondrinas in Santa Fe again the first weekend of August for the Beer and Food Festival. Stop by to say hello and pick up a gift for family, friends, or yourself. In the meantime, stay cool!

May 22, 2023

Santa Fe Spring Festival, June 3 & 4

18th Annual Santa Fe Spring Festival: Featuring Lavender and Fiber Art!

Celebrate Spring with our Spring Festival: Featuring Herb & Lavender, and the opening of our 2023 season! Learn about New Mexico’s rich cultural heritage through an array of fun activities and demonstrations. Experience traditional New Mexican ranch activities like sheep shearing, spinning and weaving, plus a fiber arts marketplace featuring local artisans and craftsmen, horno bread baking, crafts for children, and more!
-https://golondrinas.org/

We here at High on Hooking hope that you can make it up to El Rancho de las Golondrinas (just sounth of Santa Fe) to celebrate the start of summer here on New Mexico’s high desert. I’ll be sharing a booth with Barbara Knupper, weaver and jewelry maker extraordinaire. You can find her art at the Artful Artisan.

We invite you to peruse our wares and enjoy the atmosphere of the Spring Festival on the ranch! Bring the whole family!

PS – To those, like me, who might be from New England, Las Golondrinas is kind of like a more primitive Sturbridge Village, southwest style:

El Rancho de las Golondrinas is a living history museum located on 200 acres in a rural farming valley just south of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Museum, dedicated to the history, heritage and culture of 18th and 19th century New Mexico, opened in 1972. Original colonial buildings on the site date from the early 1700s. In addition, historic buildings from other parts of northern New Mexico have been reconstructed at Las Golondrinas. Villagers clothed in the styles of the times show how life was lived on the frontier in early New Mexico. Special festivals and weekend events offer visitors an in-depth look into the celebrations, music, dance and many other aspects of life in the Spanish, Mexican and Territorial periods of the Southwest.
-https://golondrinas.org/

April 30, 2023

In-Person Class May 20!

In-Person Workshop May 20, at EVFAC/NMFAC!

If you live in central or northern New Mexico or will be visiting later in May, and you’ve wanted to learn to rug hooking, now is your chance! I’ll be running a class up in Española at the Fiber Arts Center on May 20, 1:00-5:00 PM. Registration info can be found HERE. Any questions, please give me a yell at Laura@highonhooking.com.

Hope to see you there. I promise that we’ll have a truly excellent time hooking rugs and saving the environment!

April 21, 2023

Covid slows everything down!

Dog with sweater crocheted during Covid convalescence. — Bowyn’s been cooped up during these Covid weeks, scoring only a few short walks around the neighborhood. Still, he wanted in on the sweater photo. And a treat. This dog is a whore!

Sadly, the day after Easter, Covid darkened the Salamy home. Unfortunately, that also meant that three of our holiday dinner guests received a “souvenir,” and I’m not talking leftovers. Thankfully, they’ve all tested negative again this week. Tom and I, however, are still stuck at home with a case of rebound Covid. Seems like double jeopardy to me. At least, this week’s been more like a bad cold with congestion and runny noses rather than the sore throat, chills, and terrible fatigue of earlier in the duration.

The worst thing was that first week when I couldn’t really concentrate on anything. Forget hooking and the Yearlong Environmental Stitching project (YESP). Because I thought I had plenty of time till Sketchbook Revival 2023 closed on April 20, I’d held off doing all the sessions, planning on a leisurely pace. Yeah, that didn’t happen either. The sweater I’ve been crocheting. Nope. No books started or finished either.

But this week’s been different. I’ve actually gotten some things done and even attended a meeting on Zoom. I started a new novel and am almost halfway through it. I’ll finish the second sleeve on the sweater tonight. The Sketchbook Revival workshop I was most looking forward to didn’t involve a sketchbook at all but was about stitching! Emma Freeman presented MAKE SLOW STITCHED WABI SABI FABRIC SCROLLS. Most happily, mark-making comes in many forms as does experimentation.

No hooking’s happened in two weeks, but not just because of Covid. The reality is that I was bogged down on a project that wasn’t working the way I anticipated, so it’s back to the drawing board to rethink it or another design.

Scroll from Sketchbook Revival — Although I’m still finishing up with some beads and maybe more stitching, here’s the wabi sabi scroll I started in Sketchbook Revival 2023.

Meanwhile tomorrow is Earth Day, something I always try to celebrate in some fashion or another. Taking environmental care is one of the main bases of my artwork be it upcycling all kinds of textiles for hooking or scavenging the news for stories to represent in the YESP. What I find saddest about our troubled natural environment is that we have the technology to do something about it; we just lack the communal and political will. And for that coming generations will suffer. USA Today had a article about what 2050 could be like. Sadly, I fear it’s more of a pipedream than anything else.

Nonetheless, a girl can hope even if she lives in the desert during a prolonged, 30-year drought. In the meantime, I’ll try to take shorter showers and use less paper towels. Some habits are difficult to break, I know. But till this Covid thing exits my house, I guarantee that the tissues will keep piling up .

Keep yourself and our shared environment healthy!

March 20, 2023

First day of spring and the rest of 2023!

Welcome to the first day of spring! Not that it’s felt that way here in Albuquerque. It’s been in the 40s and raw the past few days. Very unusual, though we have had some warmer, blustery days for sure this month. And the rain (and snow last week) is always welcome given our drought situation.

You might’ve seen on the WELCOME page of my website, I’ve had a crazy, busy winter. My plan in January had been to extract myself from some of my “busy-ness” so that I could spend more time on my own art and explore the various ideas rolling around my head. I come up with so many plans in the shower (where I think best); then my day starts and the plans are lost. Now winter has come and gone. I refuse to lose the spring too.

Fortunately for me on this first day of spring, of renewal, I get a helping hand. Sketchbook Revival starts today. It’s a FREE, almost two-week long, online program of workshops designed to “help you feel inspired, energized, and revived.” Founder Karen Abend invites artists from all over the world to teach each workshop. Two are offered each day. You can do all of them or skip one here and there as you choose. If like me, you find life interrupts and you miss a class, you can access everything for a couple of weeks after the last workshops are published. That also means that you can join the program after it begins. And if you don’t have all the recommended supplies, no worries. You can wait a day or just use whatever you have on hand. If you’re interested, find info HERE.

By the way, I’ve written about Sketchbook Revival before. Find that post HERE. And it goes without saying, the more I play in my sketchbooks, the more likely I am to come up with interesting hooked art.

Two dogs with hooked art wish you happy spring — Tynan and Bowyn present WHAT’S ON THE FRAME this week. And they wish you HAPPY SPRING!

In that vein, I started a new piece the other day. It’s small, as I’m not sure how well it’ll look on the monk’s cloth. Hell, I don’t even have a good picture of it in my head! But it’s all about experimenting and process for me. Well, mostly. Like everyone, I like to like what I create. LOL. Tynan and Bowyn present it in the photo.

A word about Tynan. He’s really slowed down this past fall and winter. His deafness is profound, and he’s rather wobbly, but he’s still enthusiastic about his food, any food really. Thank goodness for doggie diapers, though in his presence they are “man wraps.” The good thing is that next week he celebrates his 15th birthday. Watch for him and his celebration on our social media.

How are you celebrating spring?