Thankful Thursday On Wednesday

I know this is only Wednesday, but I am so excited
I thought I would do my Thankful Thursday post on
Wednesday, and it is so good it would fit for the whole month
I think.

In the 1990s I came across the craft of rug hooking. I was smitten.
But then, I had very young children and no time to do things like that.
By, 2002 I thought I might have time, so I purchased a already drawn
rug on a piece of Monk's cloth. I also purchased a rug hook, but at time
the best wool to get would be at Good Will and Of course, I still didn't
have time and packed my stuff away.

In 2009, I started blogging. I found all of these ladies who did rug hooking,
and once more, I wanted to hook rugs. I needed a wool cutter though.
Money was tight and you can't eat wool or a wool cutter so being like
I am I thought up a way to get it. So I started saving a bit of money
here and there when the day came I had enough money to buy one.

But, what also happened was there was other needs that were more
important than the wool cutter. My husband was trying to make money
stretch and I felt the nudge of the Holy Spirit to give my husband the
wool cutter money. I put my spiritual fingers in my ears and hummed
real loud. But, you know how the Holy Spirit can just keep on, so
I took down the Clabber Girl baking powder can that I had been storing
my money in and took this bundle of money and handed to my husband.

"He looked and me and said," You know I would never ask you to do that."
I said, that I knew, but we were in this together and it would all work out."
It was a Sunday night and the next morning his phone was ringing and
he was going to be really busy. So he said, " Can you take it to the bank?"
I don't know why but that was something I didn't want to do. So I said
I would, but I cried the whole time I was in the shower, I cried all the
way to the bank, I had to sit in the car until I stopped crying long enough
to go inside. I handed the teller the money, and tears were running
down my face and I told the lady was allergies. I cried all the way home.
Of course, I had my pod cast going and Charles Stanley was talking about
complete obedience. Anything less is sin. I switched pod casts, and of course
he was talking about the same thing. I gave up.

I told the Lord that I didn't understand, because it didn't seem like a big
deal, but quietly, the Lord kept saying " Will you trust me."
I kept giving it over and over and finally I could look at rugs
again and I knew that I was finally over it and went on, I already
had all of the quilting things so I started quilting again, and I started
doing the old counted cross stitch patterns I had never done and
really I was happy and content.

Then my dear, dear Friend, Jacque at The Doodles of My Mind, Said
she was going to stop rug hooking and she felt let to give me some
of her stuff. Would I want it? I said yes, of course after I prayed about
it and asked the Lord if it was okay.
So yesterday, in the mail came this big box.

In this box was wool,


I pulled out bag after bag of already cut "worms"
in all colors.

There was a rug hooking book and patterns and
some more patterns.

There was the things you use to finish up the rugs,
even the great big needles.

She sent 3 primitive rug hooks, keys, which I am sort
of a nut job when it come to keys. I love them.


She even sent a lap stand.


Of course, in the bottom of the box was

A WOOL CUTTER!!!It has 4 cutter heads.

I sat down and wanted to cry, because God had given
to me over-flowing into my lap, way beyond anything
I ever thought of or dreamed or anything.
Me who threw such a hissy-fit God blessed me,
even me.

This is what my dining room table looked like.
I just find myself giggling and touching the wool and
telling God that I am so sorry I don't trust him like
I should.
I am reminded today of what C.S. Lewis said,

Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

That is how I feel today. I just had to share my very Thankful
Thursday post on Wednesday.
Thank you so much to Jacque to blessing my life with her friendship,
her love of God and for sending me such a wonderful gift.
Blessings today,
~Kim~

–C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Odds and Ends

 My goodness, I have been away for so long. I have a fixed computer now. I withstood, the buying a new computer temptation. I have been gone so long that Google forgot me and I had to figure out how to sign in again, plus try to remember how to access my pictures since they are now living in the cloud. Here is something I learned. When people talk about things being in the "cloud." I thought that all of those satellites was where our data went and was stored. I know, but it says, cloud right? My youngest son is taking classes to be able to work on cloud storage. I thought of course, it was in the sky. Nope, there are these huge places full of computers, on the ground that is where all of our stuff is stored.  I felt very sheepish. 

We are in the midst of winter here. After that long hot summer from last year, I am very happy,

prolonging the inevitable. I have been hooking a bit. I finished Hearts by Cammie Bruce.

 I was canning beets one morning. As I peeled the beets, I thought, these are so purple I wonder what kind of color I would get? So I put the skins in water and boiled them for awhile until I thought I got enough color and then treated it like I would commercial dyes. So the pretty pink color is what came out. I just loved the color, and I couldn't wait to hook it. The red though is what I had in my wool box. 

I might try to do a little more natural dyes this year. I have always wanted to dye wool that way. Here is a picture of my current rug. We are planning our trip this year and taking our travel trailer to see our kids and grandkids. I wanted a long rug in the trailer. I had this from when I first started hooking. It is Polly Minick. Its one of the first rugs I ever drew out. Its taken me so long to do that those squares and yesterday I finally got started on the background.

Its a very long rug. It doesn't look that long in the picture, but it is. So its fun to do chickens again. Of all of the things I miss since we moved, its my chickens. 

I had to make of course, some little heart things for Valentines Day. There is just something nice about hand sewing and stuffing pin keeps. 

This is an old picture, but I did plant lilacs here, they are just not close to budding yet. We were in the book of Hosea at Bible Study. Long ago, when I wanted more than anything to be a rug hooker. There was no way I had the money to get set up. (We had 4 kids in college and a downturn in the economy.)

Rug hooking was not an option. One morning I was walking and in my mind I was thinking about all of the ways I could by hook or by crook get what I wanted. I happened to be listening to Hosea on headphone when this verse came up about Gomer. If you remember she was the prostitute married to Hosea. "She said, I will go after my lovers that give me my food and my water, and my wool and my flax..." I stopped in mid stride. I thought, no way does it say that! I ran it back and listened to it again.

Sure enough, it said that. I stopped right there went in to the house and looked it up in my Bible. Hosea 2:5. I realized how indeed how much I was like Gomer and wanting my wool and wool cutters that bad. I told this in my Bible Study one morning, I said, " I am a hooker...A rug hooker. They don't know me very well and I wish I had a camera to take a picture of all of the shocked faces. It was great! 

At that moment in time. I told the Lord, I won't be like Gomer, I will only be a rug hooker if you want me to be one. I shut that desire down in my mind and I just focused on counted cross stitch because at the time, embroidery thread was 23 cents a skein. A few months later, Jacque, from Doodles of my Mind came to the rescue. There is a whole lot more on this particular blog post. She sent me a box of everything and got me all set up. Now when I am at Bible Study, ladies walk by and whisper out of the corner of their mouths, " Hey there hooker, working on any rugs." I even have a lady who wants to come learn how. Its so weird that in California, people just don't know what it is, unless you find someone who's Mom or grandmother hooked rugs. 

So needless to say, every time I pick up my hook, use my wool cutter or start a new rug. I am so thankful that I get to do what I love. Nothing calms my heart and my spirit like hooking rugs. 

I hope that you have all been well and you have all been in my thoughts. Its so nice to have a working computer. I just can't write a blog on my phone. I do not want a laptop either. Though I am really having to jump through hoops now to find pictures. To get the pictures off my phone and from the cloud. I have been gone so long, I even had to jump through hoops to get back to my blog and not sign into your blogs as anonymous. 

Happy Febuary.

~Kim~

 

 “Probably more pests can be controlled in an armchair in front of a February fire with a garden notebook and a seed catalog that can ever be knocked out in hand-to-hand combat in the garden.”  ― Neely Turner

 

 

 

Friday...Part Two?

This week has been all messed up for me. My husband was on vacation Monday and Tuesday. The Fourth was on Wednesday, which felt like Saturday, but then my husband went back to work on Thursday which felt like Monday and now today, Friday feels like well, not Friday, Tuesday???

I thought I would have some finished rugs to show you this week. I am going to go ahead and show you what I have. We are going into 100+ temps for the next week so I hope to be able to get some hooking done as I won't be outside as much.

My stacks of rugs are growing and I need to just pony up and get it done. I have been weeding so much that when I hook for long periods of time I can't do simple things like open doors or carry things. I have tried to rest my hand so that I can start hooking again.

Okay here are some of my projects, now that it is past Fourth of July, I can hook pumpkins again. :)

I love this little rug, but I stopped as I felt I didn't have enough skill to hook it the way it should be hooked. I had never used a size three piece of wool when I started hooking so I put this aside until I had hooked more rugs and I needed to teach myself to dye wool. I have done those things now, so I am ready to finish this. This pattern came from a very old issue of Rug Hooking magazine.

I was dreaming of fall things the other day and I thought to myself, I wonder if I could free hand some pumpkins, stars and a crow. I did so even though it looks a bit funky, I thought it looks okay so I will be working on this one too. Now that I know how to get orange for pumpkins out of  Kool aid.

My Whale-is-huge!! When I first started to look into rug hooking it was in the 1990s but my children were small and I had so much going on even though I dreamed of being a rug hooker life wasn't set up for me to do that. In 2006 I bought a magazine called Country Home and in it they had pictures of  Polly Minick's house and her rugs. I knew then I wanted to hook a whale rug. When they published the book American Summer and the pattern of the whale was in there I knew of course I would be hooking that.  Of course though, in 2006, my Dad had just died, and my two oldest children were getting married and I was planning weddings. No time for rugs.

By 2008 my husband had left his position and started on a new path and I was trying to keep life together the best way I knew how, and having grand children  and watching as my Mom's life drew to a close, I still had no time for rugs.

In 2009 a lovely lady gave me everything I would need to get started in rug hooking. She was making quilts and sent me a box filled with everything I had dreamed about through the years. Jacque is such a giver.

So I have read everything I could, I have yet to see anyone besides myself hook a rug. I have watched videos on You Tube on how to hook. I stare at blogs with rugs on them while I continue to teach myself by what I read.

I do love rug hooking because every time I pick up a hook I am reminded of how long it took to get here and how thankful I am that even though sometimes you have to wait, the more special things become when you are given the chance to live that dream.

The rug I am currently working on I love. I showed my daughter a pot holder I had and she drew this pattern out on the backing for me. It almost feels like a new baby to me as it is something that I have stared at and now to see it becoming a rug is wonderful.

I went to the library once and there was a lady who had passed away and left the library more books than you can imagine. The librarian took me back and let me browse the books. Stacks and stacks on everything you could possibly ever dream of doing. That day I picked up books on raising chickens, growing gardens,
hooking rugs. I came home and started reading and always in the back of my mind was, " I am tired of reading about life, I want to start living it." Life until that point in time had been too filled with grief and I was numb from life.
I started blogging at this time too, and bit by bit I have come back to life. I am thankful for all of it, because as the saying goes," without rain there is no rainbow."   
This will be my fourth year blogging soon, I don't think I would be so happy as I am now, because I have had someone to share it with, so thank you for reading and allowing me to learn to walk again, down this path we call life.
Have a wonderful weekend,
~Kim~