Heirloom Workshop Tomorrow

 Heirloom Rug Workshop starts tomorrow here at The Rug Hooking Store at Black Horse Antiques.

For 3 days, eight brave souls will work with me to make their own rug, 'so homely, that only a mother could love it'.  I wrote a workbook for this class and each student receives a copy of the book.  It describes 15 different ways to make your own rug look 100 years old from the very minute it is finished.

These rugs will look old and faded and worn.  It may look like their maker ran out of the right color wool in the process and had to borrow from the neighbor.   Or perhaps they had to tear up their husband's worn wool work shirt and dye it with walnuts to get the right color.  But what if walnuts were out of season?  The problems of the prairie hooker will be addressed and SOLVED in this class.  Of course, I have been dyeing wool for weeks, to get the right look.  Unfortunately for the prairie hooker, she did not have my store near by!

I have dyed hundreds (thousands really, but it sounds like a disease when I admit that) of pieces of wool to make those old, vintage looks.  We will use some as-is wool, but most of what we will use has been over-dyed and is wonderfully mottled  and looks faded, worn and old, old, old.

I have pictured a rug I just started to have that old homely look.  I have 2 dogs, Torrey and Biscuit.  I have made many rugs of Biscuit, a black labrador, but only one of Torrey, who is a Blue Heeler or Australian Cattle Dog.  Both these girls are getting old, so I decided it was time to put them both in a rug.  They live in my kitchen and are underfoot for all my projects.  I have never dyed a batch of wool that Torrey was not directly under foot for.  "Torrey, move" is the most often heard phrase in our house.  She is a little blind now and a little deaf.  However, even at 11 years of age, she has a vertical leap that would be admired in any sports program.  That little fat Blue Heeler can steal a bunch of bananas off the counter, peel them and eat them, leaving only the blackened peels on the floor for evidence. If she was smart enough to put the peels in the trash, Carl would never know about the theft at all.   Once on Easter Sunday, I was putting the food out for a large crowd who had come for dinner.  I set the plate of deviled eggs on the dining room table, and fortunately looked back, just in time to see Torrey headed down the center of the table, winding her way between the salt shakers and butter dish.......headed straight for those deviled eggs.  Under these conditions....what to do? what to do?   Do you yell loudly at the dog to stop the action and let the entire house full of company know the dog was on the table.  Then they think....Good GAWD what else has that dog been into.  In one of those split second moments that we all have, I hissed "Torrrrrreeeeeeyy" in my softest, yet most menacing whisper.  She was not so deaf at that point, nor blind enough  NOT to see the look on my face, and jumped off the table, like nothing had happened, she was a completely innocent bystander and really had been on the table to make sure the silver had been place correctly one inch from table's edge.

Carl considers Biscuit his dog, so I consider Torrey mine.  I am constantly running interference between her and Carl.  He just gets so Italian when she eats all the hamburger buns right before a large holiday cook out.  It is just best for him to think that I ran out of mustard and had to make an emergency trip to the Quik Shop.  He, of course, forgives my every lapse.  Torrey, not so much.  Of course, she has no little lapses.  Her thefts are major and always untimely.

Oh my, I better go see what she is into now....more tomorrow
Janice