Is that weird?  Does anyone else do that?  I don't cut any of my tails until the very end.  I think it bothers my mom, which probably makes me want to do it more :)

I have finished my second rug!  This one took a lot longer to finish because we had a little event in the middle called Rug School 2015!

Rug School 2015 was, in my humble opinion, a raging success!  This was the first year at our new venue and I think everyone really enjoyed it.  The beds were comfy, the walks were shorter and the air was more conditioned.  Our teacher line up this year couldn’t have been better.  I can’t say thank you enough to those who taught, Stephanie Allen-Krauss, Nancy Blood, Bea Brock, Jon Ciemiewicz, Bev Conway, Donna Hrkman, Rachelle LeBlanc, Lisanne Miller and Karen Schellinger. 

Every new endeavor has its kinks and Rug School 2015 was no different.  There are certainly things we need to work on for 2016, but rest assured, we are already on top of it and 2016 will be even better.  I am personally committed to that goal.  They say you can’t please all the people all the time… my response… challenge accepted!    

Anyhoo, back to my rug.  What a fun pattern!  I learned a lot about shading while hooking this one.  I started with a simple technique of hooking in the lightest and darkest colors and then filling the other colors in between.  I though this plan was going swimmingly until one night when Mariah was looking at my rug for the first time.  She was silently staring, for a long time, and then she finally asked “where is your light source?”  I had no idea what she was talking about.  She explained that when you shade you generally decide at the beginning where the light is coming from.  Well that makes a lot of sense and probably would have been helpful knowledge before I stared.  Oh well!  I decided not to break my number one rule – don’t pull anything out, and I forged on.

A special shout out to Sue Girouard on this rug.  I was having trouble deciding what to do with the boarder.  One night during Rug School, I was playing around with different colors.  Sue had the idea to do a single strand boarder and then finish with the navy.  Success!  I loved the idea and could finally finish my rug.  My completed “Paisley Posies” is below. 

Now, what to hook next…