Winter Is Coming
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Winter is coming. What should we do with our time? Puzzles, quilting, reading, snow shoeing, snowmobiling, skating, knitting? Just not sure? Let me share some memories and ideas. One thing is for sure – don’t be bored!
Rug hooking (latch hook kits) would be one of my first choices. If you aren’t familiar with rug hooking, it’s having a hard piece of canvas/silicone type material with holes in it with a pre-stamped coloured design on it. The design can be very simple or quite intricate, there are hundreds of patterns to choose from. Then you have a special tool – a latch rug hook, referred to as a crochet hook, but it’s not a true crochet hook! Various packages of different coloured wool. Match the colour of wool to the colour on the canvas and away you go. Recommended age is 7 and up. Easy peasy! And it doesn’t take up much room so it’s easy to put away when you’re not working on it. And relatively inexpensive, depending on the design and the size you choose.
Now this is where my memory starts that I want to share with you and rug hooking. My Granny was very dear to my heart and my childhood. I have talked about her before, but anyways here is a new story. For those of you that may have purchased my cookbook /book “A Baker’s Dozen” I have referred to her before. Rug hooking – what is it? You take those little pieces of wool and match them to the pattern on the piece of canvas and hook them to the canvas. The rug would sometimes be 24×16. That’s a lot of little pieces of wool to hook into a rug that size.
Rug hooking was a fun filled time passer in the winter. The stories we shared and the laughter. I often spent a good part of my weekend or when I wasn’t in school at my grandparent’s house. We would start with some hot chocolate, some home-made cookies, maybe some chips and then the question – what would you like to do? As a child I loved doing some time of craft or learning how to make something. More often than not out would come the rug hooking kit that she was working on. Sometimes I had my own smaller kit – making it easier to finish a smaller project for a child. Rug hooking was easy as you didn’t have to be especially talented. Watch the colour pattern, take a piece of wool and latch it to the correct colour on the canvas. And then just laugh and visit – that was about it. These were always fun times when I was visiting with my Granny. She loved me unconditionally. I wish I had journalized my visits and my memories I had with my Granny growing up so I could remember them all today. (That’s another whole topic in itself – keeping a journal.)
