Ain't nobody here but us chickens

Coming across these drawings of chickens a few days ago, my impulse was to bin them -

Second thought was "can they be a book?" - well, maybe, one day.... painted, glued to card, held together by a rivet so they can swivel out ... ah yes, when there's time!

Meanwhile some of the drawings have become hooked rugs, or rather, under-cup-ruglets (aka coasters) - for the Hooked in London chicken challenge -

Chickens seem to be a hot favourite for hooked rugs - so very "down home on the farm nostalgia"...

Hooking progress

Update on what I posted a week ago - the rug is looking rather like a dragon rampant at the moment:This was the state of it a week ago -
Written 11/01: Saturday was the first meeting, at Craft Central, of Hooked in London. I started a piece based on our usual car journeys, tracing them off maps in the A-Z. This little rug is a conglomerate of several bits of these maps, with roads outlined in strips of dark wool, to be filled in with light wool (I had to try that out here and there). Of course it would be fabulous as a room-sized rug with roads wide enough to drive a Dinky Toy down - but as this might be part of my "journey lines" project, it needs to be finished in months rather than years. So I'm sticking to bathmat-size.

Progress is always fastest at the start, and this is the result of a couple of nights' hooking while watching television. It's a weekend project, and I hope to have quite a lot of the white filled in by the time of the next meeting on 5 February.

Will the roads be neutral, or coloured ... that's a decision for later ...

Making rag rugs is a great way of recycling woollen garments, especially those attacked by moths (I have a fair few of those). But you must put the affected wool into the freezer first, to kill any remaining moths/larvae/eggs. Three days in the freezer (in a plastic bag), three days out, and another three days in. Then you can start cutting strips ... and get hooking!

Hooking of the rug sort

Making hooked rugs is a great way of recycling fabric. This one (about 90cm wide) is made of strips cut from old t-shirts, on a hessian backing.

One of my early hooked rugs was made of strips of yellow and orange wool, and was a sun based on an old woodcut - yellow and orange for the rays, and some black for his face. Very jolly, but no longer in my possession.

Perhaps it will reappear in another version... London now has a rug hooking group, and we'll be meeting, monthly on a Saturday afternoon, in central London. If you live nearby and would like to join us, have a look at the blog - http://hooked-in-london.blogspot.com - or contact me for more details.

Saturday in Islington

First to a craft fair, where we stocked up on Isolde Sommerfeldt's Estonian-style aprons and the wonderful warm hand knit socks and slippers she imports from Estonia (my family has a long history of hand-knit xmas prezzies and appreciates warm slippers) -

Along the Essex Road, this gorgeous clock -
and less-than-gorgeous crumbling lettering (Eagle Dining Rooms?)
next to a 1920s cinema inspired by the Tutankamun craze -
It was used as a bingo hall, but the smoking ban has diminished the appeal of bingo and closed many places down, badly affecting older people for whom bingo was central to their socialising.

These people - fabric lovers all -
are setting up a rug-hooking group in London - we plan to meet centrally every month on a Saturday afternoon, so if you'd like to join us, do contact me.