Gene’s Rug Hooking Blog

All systems seem to be go for the launch of the Internet Rug Camp, one week from today, January 11.  Later this week, I will give you some more specifics, but next Monday should be the day.  Be watching for details in all of this week’s posts.

Over the weekend, I attended my first rug hooking event of the New Year – First Saturday at the Harbor House.  A large crowd of 21 rug hookers braved the chilly 78 degree  Southern California winter weather to join me for a very exciting day of hooking.  The Beauport restoration rug showed up with one hooker and left the party with another.  It has been just a little over one year since our local ATHA Guild started re-creating this historic rug.  (President Sally Coon has a great article about the project in the most recent issue of the ATHA magazine.   Of course, it has also been documented in the archive section of this blog under Antique Rugs.)

The day was full of activity at every spot in the room.  There was so much work being done at the cutter table, I thought we were going to have to ice down the cutter heads to keep them from melting!

While I normally take photos of all the projects being worked on at First Saturday so I can report on them here, at this month’s session I only shot photos of a large group of rugs brought in for show and tell by Jane Barkdull.  They are all rugs hooked by her aunt, Eunice Turgeon from East Orleans, Massachusetts.  Although Jane knew her aunt had a covered hooking frame in the corner of her house, none of her rugs were displayed anywhere in the home.  In addition, her aunt really did not talk about her hooking, so her hobby was never discussed.  It was only after Ms. Turgeon passed away that a treasure trove of partially finished rugs were found carefully packed with the wool needed to finish them.  Perhaps the reason the aunt did not talk too much about the rugs is due to the fact that she seemed to like hooking design motifs … but not the background!  (Sound familiar?)  Therefore, none of these rugs (probably all started in the 70′s and 80′s, or a little before) are finished.  However, what Miss Turgeon did hook was quite fine!  Now that Jane has them, she intends to complete all of her aunt’s work, which is no small job as everything is hooked in a #3 or #4.

This is the first one she has finished … or almost finished.  While she has enough wool to do one more row of green around the outside edge, there is not enough to complete the additional 1/2 inch of border as the pattern is drawn.   My suggestion: Stop with one more row instead of trying to match the old wool with new.  If the right whipping yarn is used, no one would ever know that the pattern had been tweaked just a bit.

When Jane reported that her aunt had carefully packed everything away, she was not overstating the truth.   Take note of the swatch sorter that Eunice fashioned out of a large plastic coffee can lid.  Isn’t this a great idea?

This rug is my favorite of all the ones which Ms. Turgeon started.

She had a real sense for color and the use of textured wool, as illustrated by this detailed shot.  Tomorrow, I will show you several more rugs out of this treasure trove of hooked rugs by Eunice Turgeon.

Follow Up on the Rose Parade

Since the City of Hope Float went by pretty fast, here is a close up of Karina (left of another cancer survivor) as she smiled and waved at the crowds in Pasadena on New Year’s Day.  She is such a courageous young lady.  We are so proud of her and her family.  She was quite pleased to know that so many rug hookers were looking for her on New Year’s Day.