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Why do we sell?

 

Why sell the mug and rug?
The hot, hot, hot of summer’s giving way to the heat of roasted chiles and sunflowers. Fall’s coming. Are you ready?

It’s September, the time that many of us consider the real New Year. You know, when you get back on a more regular schedule, stop drinking (as many) margaritas, and think more serious thoughts, like am I freaking crazy trying to sell hooked rugs in this day and age? I mean, most people that show up at my booth don’t even know what the hell they’re looking at. Is that weaving? (We are in New Mexico.) Hey, I did that in the 70s… And rugs aren’t usually the cheapest item up for sale at the fair or market or wherever they’re being sold.

My summer sale season started out very well. Sold a big rug right out of the gate. First weekend at the Rail Yards was good too. Then there were a few weeks of…nothing. Didn’t happen that way last year. Fortunately, it’s picked up lately, and finally going the Instagram way has helped too. One of my rugs will soon be winging its way north to Washington all because someone saw a pic and looked up my website. Woohoo! Actually, I like Instagram. Lots of pretty pictures and little typing.

 

Sold rug!
“New Mexican Sun” (8″x8″; wool, alpaca, recycled clothing, ribbon, sari) will soon be on its way to Washington state.

So, why do we do it? Why do some of us try to sell our hooked rugs? In my case, the rugs were building up. They cost money to make, so I thought why not try to recoup some costs. To actually make money would be gravy. Of course, if one takes into account the TIME it takes to make a rug, I’m actually paying to make the damn things. But that’s okay. That’s the point, in fact. Whether I sell them or not, I’ll make them because hooking is a passion. And I really like making all kinds of rugs – even mug rugs – especially when I can switch it up all the time. One week it’ll be mug rugs, the next some larger, arsty-fartsy thing. It’s about the creativity.

Okay, and rug hooking lets me watch my television shows without falling asleep in my chair.

The reality is that I like hanging at art shows and markets. If I wasn’t a vendor, I’d be there buying things. At least manning the booth keeps my Visa bill down. Even better, I get to chat up all kinds of folks and spread the gospel of fiber arts. Sure, if I’m having a tough day and folks just aren’t stopping by, there’s a snarky inner monologue that starts going through my brain, but at least I have a purpose. And, hey, I feel just like all the other artists there.

And to that effect, for anyone who’s going to be in the Albuquerque general area (you know, within a couple hundred miles), besides my final two Sundays at the Rail Yards (September 24 and October 15), I’ve been accepted into three other fall shows.

  • Saturday, September 23 – Mama’s Minerals 12th Annual Arts and Crafts Show
    Did this one last year with friend and guildmate Cathy Kelly. Glad they moved it to the fall (from August). Lots of vendors and a big crowd are guaranteed. Albuquerque.
  • Sunday, October 1 – OffCenter Folk Art Festival
    Have shopped this one and really enjoyed it. Especially the giant puppet parade! (You’ll have to come see it yourself.) Robinson Park in Albuquerque.
  • Friday, November 16 – Sunday, November 18 – Fall Fiber Fiesta, 2017
    This is the one that I’m really quite proud to have been juried into. Sure, I’ve taught a class at EVFAC, which organizes the show, but you never know what with all the fab fiber artists who live in the area. It’s a big show, and it takes place in Santa Fe at the Scottish Rite Temple. Friday evening is a meet and greet with the artists; the show-proper runs Saturday and Sunday. Not sure how I’ll handle the commute yet, but that’s a question for another day.

    Dog with another rug to sell.
    Tynan presents “What’s on the frame” today. I can’t help but feel the season – even when it’s 90+ degrees in the desert. The leaves are already turning in the Bosque! Anyway, this is a double mug rug. The mugs have tree forms on them. That’s all. Why not a landscape rug hooked with all kinds of fibers? The trees are Ultrasuede!

 

 

 

 

Tell us, if you’re a hooked rug vendor (the rugs, not the raw materials), why do you pop a tent and try to sell your wares?

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When someone buys and then alters your art…

…not only alters your art, but improves it! What to think? Me, I decided that it was great.

WHen someone alters your art and makes it a pillow.
Before:  A close-up of the “altered art.”

I sold a small wall-hanging at the Sunflower Festival just over a week ago. Technically, it was of a poinsettia, though it didn’t scream Christmas. (I tend not to hook overtly holiday-ish items; they take so long to hook, I wouldn’t want to put them away after a month.) Indeed, the customer didn’t even recognize it as a poinsettia at first; to her it was an attractive, artsy rug that went well with the colors in her living room. Then she told me what she was going to do with it.

“It’ll make a great pillow to set on my fireplace.”

Very cool, I thought. “Would you send me a photo when you finish it?” 

“Of course!”

Nonetheless, I was concerned that when she finally made the pillow, she’d either forget or have lost my card with the email address.

I needn’t have worried. That was Saturday. I think it was Tuesday afternoon when I saw an email with an unfamiliar address pop into my box. The message:

Hi Laura,

 

I bought your poinsettia at the sunflower festival on Saturday.  I turned it into a pillow, stitching a backing from a green fabric remnant I had and stuffing it with poly filling.  Here it is in front of our kiva.  You can see it has a good home.  It is nestled on an afghan my grandmother crocheted about 50 years ago.  Thanks for your artistry.

Ada

Someone alters your art and makes it a pillow.
After:  The Poinsettia’s become a Poinsettia pillow. Looks nice on the kiva, doesn’t it. Ada told me, too, that the afghan on the right was made by her grandmother 50 years ago. My rug’s in fine company.

Leonard Cohen once stated that “Artists’ intentions mean nothing.” And I agree. Especially if you’re selling your art. Sure, the poinsettia made a nifty wall-hanging or table-topper, but Ada saw it as a colorful pillow perfect for her living room. I’m happy that she was able to take a piece of my art and make it her own as well. And I’m grateful to her for sharing it with me.

 

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The Sunflower Festival and one damn rug to finish…

 

Tynan and this week’s rug on the frame, which has been the rug on the frame for a few weeks. So close… Gotta finish it for Saturday’s Sunflower Festival.

 

As you can tell by the look in Tynan’s eyes, I have NOT finished the Boucherouite-esque rug yet. Yes, I am very close, but here’s the thing: I need it completely done for Friday evening when I pack the car for Saturday’s vending gig. That gig would be the Sunflower Festival in Mountainair, about an hour and a half southeast of Albuquerque.

The Sunflower Festival is supposed to be a fun time, and I’m looking forward to it. But I’d feel a hell of a lot better if the rug was done NOW! See, I have a few other things to do this week. Ironically, they’re all hooking related. Thursday, I’m hooking with friends. I considered staying home, hopefully, sewing up sed rug, but then they pressured me, told me they were making gluten-free items for lunch. Who blows off friends like that? (Or the GF food?)

 

Friday, Cathy Kelly is teaching some of us in the guild  a yarn-dyeing method that’s done with a microwave oven. We’re dyeing yarn rather than wool fabric, so it really appeals to me. Check out the yarn she brought in to entice us into learning the technique. Yum!

yarn
Yarn dyed by Cathy Kelly. Not sure if I’ll hook with mine or use it in some crocheting project.

So, somewhere during the next two or three days, I need to finish hooking the rug, steam it, and hem it. Then price and tag it and enter it into the inventory log. Agh! Oh, and pack the mobile store into the car, adding a tent and leaving room for Tynan. Since we’ll be gone all day Saturday, he gets to go. While I love his company in the booth, he does have a habit of upstaging the merchandise. Maybe I can get him to demo the “Woof” rug while he schmoozes with potential customers.

Gotta run now, have to hook!

PS:  Check out the home page; we’ve added two other shows to the vending line-up.

Sunflower Festival poster
If you’re local or happen to be in New Mexico Saturday, come on down to Mountainair’s Sunflower Festival. Mention this blog article and get 10% off the rug of your choice!

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Studio construction!

Studio construction ahead
Studio construction ahead! (Photo by Jason Smith at freeimages.com.)

Studio construction ahead!

 

It looks like it’s finally going to happen. I’m getting a studio. Woohoo! It’s been five months since the child moved out, leaving an empty bedroom. Tom repainted the room last week while I was at my guild’s retreat (what a great husband I have!). So, we should be a go.

 

The two pics below show what we’re starting with:

Studio construction zone. (That's part of my mobile shop on the right.)
Studio construction zone. That mess on the right is part of my mobile shop.

 

Studio construction zone.
The soon-to-be studio, otherwise known as a bedroom. Yes, those are t-shirts that were donated to my cause sitting in that laundry basket.

Okay, it’s not a completely empty bedroom. Some of the child’s clothing and her dresser remain here, as her apartment situation is not good for storage. Not a problem. I still have my kick-ass closet.

For those not familiar with my kick-ass closet and laundry room, they’re where I currently store all my fibers (t-shirts, wool, bed sheets, ribbons, etc.) and other rug hooking paraphernalia. I wrote about it here not long after we moved into this house almost two years ago. If you look at those pics, I can tell you that the real estate, while still fabulous, does NOT look like that these days. Between all the hooking I’ve been doing for various sales opportunities and the fact that my RA has been kicking my ass all summer long (thank goodness that my hands don’t take the brunt of it), continued organization has not been taking place. And, frankly, I’ve just got too much stuff. When people hear that you can make art with their old t-shirts, their kids’ and husbands’ old t-shirts, you get gifted a lot. Not that I’m complaining. At all.

 

Fortunately, we’ve got a room I can use. The closet can take back any overflow. And I can move linens I regularly use to a spot not requiring a stepstool. In the meantime, I need to do some second-hand shopping for furniture and storage units of some kind. A daybed (or a single bed overflowing with comfy pillows) will give me guest room if I need it. I’m really missing the big Ikea shelving units we had in our house in Massachusetts. Of course, Ikea has no presence anywhere in New Mexico. Boo! Now if I can only muster up the energy to head to the many thrift stores here in Albuquerque.

Still working on plenty of hooking, though. Below is the friendship rug I drew up Saturday. Ostensibly, tomorrow I will turn it over to a member of my guild and not see it till sometime next year. Nine of us are participating in the project. We’ll all hook about 64 square inches (8″x8″ or some similar permutation…) of each other’s rugs. The plan is to have a rug for one month and then switch. We’ll see how that goes.

hooked rug pattern
“Wild flowers…for wild women,” reads my friendship rug. (Because we all know how wild hookers can be. Drinking all that tea, listening to all that folk music.) Can’t wait to fill in all that background. Oh, and the letters too, of course.

Last, but not least, I did not forget Tynan or the Boucherouite-esque rug that’s still on the frame. (The friendship rug’s gotten in the way of my hooking.) I’m hoping to finish it by next week.

Dog on hooked rug
I’m loving this “bedsheet Boucherouite” rug. Check out how the orange goes with the other colors. Very fun this one is.

How do you deal with or without a studio? Work strewn all about the house? A hooker’s hide-away (you know, like a man-cave). Share your pics here or on the High on Hooking facebook page.

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The Stolen pattern

Close-up of “Stolen,” hooked by Catherine Kelly. Beautiful, isn’t it? Love the colors, all the tones.

 

“Wait till you see my new rug, “Stolen,” guild-mate Cathy Kelly e-mailed me. She also said that I had to wait till it was finished before that happened. Okay. Really, I didn’t think too much about it other than I like to see what Cathy comes up with. She’s very creative, that one. In fact, since I’ve moved to New Mexico and joined the Adobe Wool Arts guild, she’s one of the folks who’s really pushed me to go beyond my own comfort level. And she’s done that just by modeling good, artistic experimentation and enthusiasm and encouraging us all to look beyond rug hooking to: 1) influence our rug hooking and 2) try new things.

Cathy also somehow convinced me to act as the guild rep to Albuquerque’s Fiber Arts Council. Sure, sometimes meetings can be a little tedious, but it’s let me meet a whole bunch of people I never would’ve otherwise come to know. Which further led to my joining the board of Susan’s Legacy, a non-profit helping women who suffer co-occurring mental illness and addiction.

So, you see, Cathy’s not just a great artist, but a class-A person and friend. But did that change yesterday when she shared “Stolen” with us at the guild’s usual demo gig at the BioPark? You be the judge. See the pic above of “Stolen.” Definitely an appealing rug.

You might be interested in one of my rugs, hooked years ago (despite the 2014 date); it happens to be hanging in the East Mountain Library in Tijeras, NM. It’s in an exhibit that was offered to Cathy for her work. She generously proposed to hang a couple of my rugs too. Here’s the rug I mentioned:

Stolen patttern
Here’s a close-up of my rug. I designed it as a table runner, and if I gave it a name, for the life of me, I can’t remember it. Guess I’ll call it “Stolen.”

Oh, and did I mention this one that I hooked in 2015, after I arrived in Albuquerque. I think that I was sewing rug binding on it at my very first guild meeting.

Stolen pattern
“Paging Party of Gray” is another table runner, just a little smaller, and it’s definitely not hooked in wool. But perhaps you’re noticing a pattern here? Like it should be called “Stolen”?

Okay, maybe I should mention that several months ago Cathy asked about purchasing the original rug – I use it to cover a small bench in my house. I had to tell her that it’s one of maybe three rugs that I won’t sell, that I actually use in my own house. Then she asked me if I’d draw out the pattern; she’d even try to sell it for me through her own hooking business. I said, “Sure, great idea!” And then I did absolutely NOTHING about it. Even when she reminded me. MY BIG BAD! So, I was thrilled when she hauled out “Stolen” yesterday morning. Laughed my ass off, in fact. Then we fantasized about how rich we could become if we started selling the “Stolen” pattern. Because you all know what a lucrative business rug hooking is. NOT!

That was yesterday’s fun. Regarding the RUG ON THE FRAME this week. I learned a little more about Boucherouite rugs after reading Liz Alpert Fay’s current Textile Art News. In the newsletter she had a story about Kea Carpet and Kilims (New York). The gallery’s Hudson location recently held an exhibit of rugs hooked/tufted by members of the Creative Growth Art Center (Oakland, California). Curious, I clicked on the gallery’s homepage and found…Berber rugs! Including Boucherouites! I learned that these rag rugs only started being made in the mid-20th century, so they’re a new thing. Check them out.

Dog on rug
Tynan presents this week’s RUG ON THE FRAME. I’m enjoying the wanna-be Boucherouite. There is no way I am capable of being blind to colors and throwing anything in, but it is, after all, a Boucherouite- influenced rug, not an actual Boucherouite. WHAT’S ON YOUR FRAME TODAY? STOLEN ANY PATTERNS LATELY? 🙂

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