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AWAG pulls off another great Fiesta

 

Adobe Wool Arts Guild – AWAG – pulls off another great Fiesta booth. All photographs were taken by Gary Lamott. Thanks, man!

 

Hooked AWAG rug
Adobe Wool Arts Guild (AWAG) rug at Fiber Arts Fiesta 2019 in Albuquerque last week.

 

AWAG rug hooking booth at Fiber Arts Fiesta.
AWAG’s booth all gussied up.

 

AWAG friendship rugs.
“9×9”: AWAG’s friendship rug group project.

 

Rugs by AWAG members.
Rugs by AWAG members Cathy, Marcy, and Mary S.

 

Member Dagmar of Zia Woolz.
AWAG member Dagmar wearing her hand-dyed yarn and knitting guru hat. You should check out her Zia Woolz website. Very yummy yarns!

 

Member Catherine hooker extraordinaire.
Catherine hooks and hooks for the public. (In front of “Big Boucherouite.”)

 

AWAG members in front of hooked rugs.
Melinda and Cathy show friendship in front of the friendship rugs.

 

More rugs by AWAG members.
Ruth’s “Klimt” rug (pattern by Michelle Micarelli) on the far left won the Viewers’ Choice award. No one was surprised. Other rugs by Cathy, Mary R, Nancy P, Melinda, Betsy, and Nan.

 

More AWAG hooked rugs.
More rugs by AWAG members. There were 27 juried entries that all got in plus the nine friendship rugs. Rugs here hooked by: Betsy, Nan, Melinda, Catherine, Liz, Nancy H, Laura (me!), Kalea, Mary S, Cathy, Marcy, and Darlene.

 

AWAG friendship rug.
Melinda’s friendship rug. Can you tell which one I hooked? I might add that the t-shirt strips look just like everyone else’s wool strips. (Gary takes a nice shot of his wife’s rug, yes?)
Laura's friendship rug.
And here’s my friendship rug all nice and finished.
Melinda and Laura of AWAG pose with the rugs.
So, I’m not sure why Melinda and I don’t look very happy here. It was the start of Fiber Arts Fiesta 2019. A success story. Thanks again, Gary.

And just like that Fiber Arts Fiesta 2019 is a wrap. Thank goodness. There was a LOT of planning and hooking followed by four straight days of work. In a few days Tom and I will rest. Sort of. We’re off on vacation. More on that later. Perhaps WiFi will be good enough to allow for some Facebook and Instagram pics. If not, you’ll just have to withstand the suspense while you wait for my photos and tales. Be back in a couple of weeks. Enjoy your summer!

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Hanging and hooking with friends, a retreat

Ram hooked rug at retreat.
Melinda finished her ram – hurray! It’s based on a pic her photographer-husband Gary took when they were on vacation last year. She started it last spring when Cheryl Bollenbach was here for a workshop.

 

Thank goodness that the illness I wrote about last week abated enough for me to attend our guild’s three-day retreat Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I’d have hated to miss it; all the hooking and chatting and snacking with friends, that is. We try to hold a retreat three or four times each year now, and visitors are welcome should you be in the area. You don’t even have to be a hooker!

Luckily, we have a venue available to us at no cost. Yes, absolutely free. It is, ironically, a police substation in the Sandia foothills here in Albuquerque. Yes, the hookers have taken over the cops’ joint. Actually, it’s a rather inactive substation these days. Rarely any folks in uniform in residence. But it’s a fabulous room – plenty of tables and space, big windows letting in lots of natural light. This winter the heat’s even worked!

 

Enjoy some pics of Adobe Wool Arts Guild (AWAG) members at play with their rugs.

Bird rug hooking at retreat
Can you believe that Nan‘s been hooking for less than two years??? She designed this; it’ll be a chair pad.
Rug hooking retreat
At the same time Nan’s hooking her mom-in-law’s dog. He’ll be a pillow soon.

 

 

Working on rug at hooking retreat
Mary S. was doing penance whipping the edges of this original rug for her granddaughter. This is not her first rug for a granddaughter by any means. Check out those eyes!

 

 

Hooking at retreat
Liz has been using each retreat to get a lot of work done on a rug of her and her husband fishing. This time it was all about the water.
Working at ooking retreat
Nancy Pierce was hard at work on a piece that she’ll have ready for sale at next month’s Rio Grande Arts and Crafts Festival in Albuquerque. Find her rugs and other pieces at her website and in this prior post.

 

Hooking retreat.
Linda’s got the Celtic thing going on in  this rug. Check out the matching ring!
Rug hooking retreat
Meanwhile Ruth’s playing with all the colors in the crayon box. See the gold? It’s sexy jersey from Deanne Fitzpatrick. I really wanted to steal it from her.

 

At the hooking retreat.
Nancy made this little bag to carry her scissors and things. Like very much!
Hooked rug retreat.
And I think that I finally finished hooking the mystery rug. I say “I think” because I need to look at it some more to determine if it needs editing. Then there’s the framing. But I’m glad to be moving back to real fibers this week.
Hooked rug retreat.
Lastly, I share a modified Deanne Fitzpatrick pattern hooked by Cathy. I LOVE this little rug. The colors are so vibrant. Of course, because Cathy dyed the wool!

 

 

 

 

If you’re in the area, AWAG’s next retreat will be May 9-11.

Hope you can make it!

 

 

 

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Damn, you found me…spreading the gospel…of hooking

CHeryl Bollenbach's workshop where she shared the gospel of hooking.
Me presenting my piece at the end of our workshop with Cheryl Bollenbach. Those with sharp eyes and a Rug Hooking Magazine subscription will recognize the pattern I used. Thank you for sharing this with the hooking world, Brigitte Webb! I hope to do it justice.

 

It’s been almost a month, and I’m a day or two late, but I had to come back sometime. Not going to apologize for loving time off from the blog, but logging into WordPress for the first time in weeks, I realize how much updating I have to do on the entire freakin’ site. Along with some other electronic “toilette.” Sigh. Work is never done.

Note, I may not have been blogging, but I have been hooking. That is rarely a chore. Oh, maybe it is for those of you who whip-stitch. Yeah, I hardly ever do that crap.

What have I been doing? Funny you should ask.

 

  • May started with a bang. The Adobe Wool Arts Guild (AWAG) invited Cheryl Bollenbach back to conduct a three-day workshop. As usual we learned a lot and bought even more…wool. My project was unusual, though only for me. It’s very…traditional. I’m working with wool strips – no t-shirts! I’m trying out linen for the first time. And see in the picture – no rug binding sewn on before hooking commenced. Don’t get too excited. There will be no whip-stitching. I’ll have it framed when I’m done. A girl can only go so traditional. Grimace
AWAG's booth at Fiesta 2017 where we share the gospel of rug hooking.
A view of our guild booth at Fiber Arts Fiesta.
  • Albuquerque Fiber Arts Fiesta went down May 19-21. Of course, there was A LOT of work to be done before that. AWAG ran a successful booth. We had many visitors and several ladies who signed up for more information. In fact, I just gave a lesson this week to one of them. Ah, to spread the gospel of hooking. Below is a montage of pics taken by Melinda’s husband Gary of Gary Lamott Photography. Enjoy! And thank you again, Gary!!!
  • https://garylamott.smugmug.com/Fiber-Arts-517/n-phKqGb/#
  • Albuquerque's Rail Yards Market where we share the gospel of hooking.
    Our “shop” at the Rail Yards is open. Here we share the gospel of hooking with folks who have never seen the art form. Others tell me tales of parents and grandparents who hooked. Come on down! Great fruits and veggies, plus arts, music, and yummy food.

    High on Hooking started our selling season at Albuquerque’s Rail Yards. Despite it being Memorial Day weekend (holidays are notorious for slow sales) and thanks to a woman visiting from Las Cruces who loves textiles, we had a good day. Come visit; we’re there every other weekend till mid-October.

 

  • Sadly, those of us from AWAG who do demos at the Biopark’s Botanical Garden gave our last spiel till August. We had over a hundred kids in talking about what we do and trying their little hands at hooking. The park kicks us out for two months to use the Heritage farmhouse for summer camp programs. I guess it’s a good enough reason. In the meantime, in addition to our guild meetings, we’re meeting at members’ homes because we refuse to give up that whole social thing.

 

  • Finally had the chance to do all the planting and potting that I’d been putting off till after Fiesta. Now I’m just waiting for my first crop of basil. I make A LOT of pesto to freeze for winter, but there’s nothing that says summer’s arrived like the aroma of basil.

    Summertime and the living is easy. If you have a floatie. And a big rubber duckie.

 

  • And the pool’s up! I’ve even had a chance to chill in it on my floatie. Which pretty much takes up most of the pool when you add in my bulk-ritude. It is only 10 feet in diameter. But it works, especially for the hot flashes.

 

Then there were visits from family members back east. And this and that. You know, the usual life “stuff.” You remember John Lennon saying how life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. (Actually, any number of people may have said that. You can read all about that here.) Actually, I’m already planning another week off from the blog in a few weeks when Tom and I and the dog motor up to Pagosa Springs, Colorado, for some R&R (read: hiking and hanging on the patio with a beverage or three and a book or five).

 

What are your plans this summer? Do they involve hooking or other kinds of fun? Some form of escape? Travel? Getting together with friends? Share what you’re up to and make me jealous!

 

Sharing the gospel of hooking with a winning rug.
Congratulations, Melinda Lamott on receiving the Peoples’ Choice Award for rug hooking at Fiesta 2017!
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New England chicks conquer their first East Mountain Fiber Tour

This wooly one welcomed us to Maple Winds Farm. Baa!
This wooly one welcomed us to Maple Winds Farm and the East Mountain Fiber Tour. Baa!

Last Sunday Melinda and I successfully conquered our first East Mountain Fiber Farm and Studio Tour! Not bad for two New England rug hooking broads interested in discovering more of New Mexico’s fiber art scene. About the same time that I moved out here from Massachusetts, Melinda and husband Gary, a photographer, were trekking from New Hampshire. Though they already had a place to live, having purchased a condo decades ago, so they got to skip the whole house-hunting exercise.

Anyway, last fall Melinda stumbled upon the Adobe Wool Arts guild doing our monthly thing at the Albuquerque Biopark. Oh, she tried to cut and run, but she was busted. Now, of course, she’s a guild member doing demos at the botanical garden with the rest of us. And looking for more fiber art. Which we found on the East Mountain Fiber Tour.

 

Yarns and Cathy Kelly's rugs available on our first stop on the tour.
Yarns and Cathy Kelly’s rugs available on our first stop on the tour.

 

The farms, shops, and studios on the tour are located in the area east of Albuquerque and her Sandia Mountains. It’s horse country – and sheep and goat and alpapca country. I’m sure there are more animals, but we weren’t there for them this time. Six stops made up the loop. Thank goodness Melinda was driving her SUV thingie; my little Honda Fit might’ve gotten stuck in a couple of rutted roads or driveways.

FIrst up:  SandraSilk by Sandra Holzman. It was her studio, but with her were Robin Pascal of Perfect Buttons and Cathy Kelly with her hand-hooked rugs. Before you ask, yes, Kathy is a guild-mate of ours. Check out the pics.

Some of Sandra Holzman's beautiful handpainted garments.
Some of Sandra Holzman’s beautiful handpainted garments.
Melinda caught me perusing some of Robin Pascal's woven items.
Melinda caught me perusing some of Robin Pascal’s woven items.

At Edgewood Yarns and Fibers, I couldn’t help myself despite my plans (and Tom’s back home) not to buy anything. A gorgeous blue skein of yarn jumped into my bag and begged to come home with me. “Hook me, hook me,” it called.

My precious...
My precious…

After that it was farm time – sheep! We headed to Garcia’s Shaggy Wagon and Baa-Baa shop and then the Wool Shed at Maple Winds Farm. (Walking around the windswept farms, Melinda and I kept a good eye out for snakes. Didn’t see one, but then, we never saw a maple tree either.)

Someone might've been a little warm in the 90-plus degree temperatures.
Someone might’ve been a little warm in the 90-plus degree temperatures.

Last, but first in many hearts, were the alpacas of Hollywick and Whispering Spirit Alpacas farms. Whispering Spirit even had a newborn for us to ooh and ah at.

For those in the area, Melinda and I have vowed to do it all over again next year. (Maybe we’ll win the grand prize goodie basket we didn’t win this year.) I think I heard someone mention that the East Mountain Fiber Tour 2017 is planned for June 10 and 11. Be there!

Is there anything cuter than this baby from Whispering Spirit Alpacas. (Angela, we could've easily put her in the Fit.)
Is there anything cuter than this baby from Whispering Spirit Alpacas. (Angela, we could’ve easily put her in the Fit.)

 

 

What are your fiber plans this summer? 

 

 

 

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