February and March Meeting of the Yarra Valley Rug Makers

I have been quite amiss lately in keeping you, our rugging friends up to date. Life seems to have gotten in the way. I will therefore include some photos of our February meeting also- well, two anyway.

 Only three members were present in February, and three plus a lovely young guest in March.

 As I said, life has gotten in the way with some of us having other appointments for the day and a trip to the Philippines for myself at short notice.

During this time Anne finished her Santa rug, ready to be bound, and continued with her still life 'pear' rug. Joy started an ambitious staircase runner. She will be doing a different scene for each individual tread of her timber staircase at home. She started her first rug with an idyllic 'He makes me lie down in green pastures' scene of sheep doing just that- lying in green pastures in the English country side. A bit hard to see in the photo- sorry about that. The only thing we pondered about this rug was...how are people supposed to get upstairs with such beautiful looking treads...hmmm, you wouldn't walk on them would you? Maybe put in a stair lift so the staircase rugs can be viewed and telling the story, while slowly being lifted up [or down], stopping every now and then along the way to study a particular rug in detail? Anyway, I'm dreaming.

I- Chris, had a spot of bother with the border of my 'Tehran' oriental rug. You know how it is, you get so far and all of a sudden you are stuck, a mind block? I had tried several colour combinations, but needed the combined creative talents of my rug hooking friends. Luckily Joy and Anne came to the party. Joy had me trace the relevant area and colour it in with coloured pencils in the suggested colour combinations already used in other parts of the rug. This worked perfectly. I now have a 9" x 6" area of the border completed and I am quite happy with the result. I feel that this will work well all the way around the rug and fit in with the central area. I highly recommend anyone hooking a large rug to do this exercise. It certainly beats pulling out and re-hooking until you have it right.

Joy brought her daughter Rachel to our meeting on Saturday as well. It was lovely to meet her and she soon got stuck into her embroidery that she had brought along to work on. Maybe another future hooker? Rachel however has other plans for the near future that does not include hooking.

Plans are being made for the Yarra Valley Rug makers to show and tell at a craft fair on the Mornington Peninsula in April. One of our members- Sandra is involved with the planning of this event and asked if we would be interested. As some of us will be away at this time, the others will go and do demonstrations of rug hooking. Hopefully this exposure will make Rug Hooking in Australia a little more known.
We also discussed booking a stall at the Stitches and Craft Show in October at Jeff's Shed in Melbourne, but in the meantime there are lots of other things to do.
Well, my friends, before we knew it, it was time to leave again, although it was hard, as we had a lot of catching up to do.
I promise to come back soon and add to the Blog. Cheers :)