Rug Hooking at the Beach

Well...I guess we were at the beach...we never saw the ocean except from afar. It was TOO COLD! This weekend my hookin' buddy (HB) and I stayed with her mom in in a little town on the Crystal Coast so we could spend Saturday with the Piedmont Rug Hooking Guild at their retreat at Trinity Center. We had a blast. We arrived Friday evening in time to go with Mom and Aunt Sarah to the Bogue House for the best fried trout, collard greens and fried okra you can ever imagine. Mom and Aunt Sarah are too much fun to be around. We went back to the house and had a little show and tell. I think they liked our rugs but planned on sticking to quilting.

Saturday morning Mom fixed us breakfast and sent us on our way to the rug hooker's retreat. The Trinity Center is on the barrier island and sits back in the woods a bit, backing up on the sound. It is a beautiful place and very relaxing. Our fellow rug hookers were already hard at work.

One difference between a rug hooking retreat and a quilting retreat is you don't have as much junk to tote for rug hooking. A frame bag and a wool basket and you're done. It wakes several trips to the car to unload for a quilting retreat.

Here are a few of the rugs. This first on will have quilt blocks hooked in the borders.

The sun rays on this rooster are from one piece of wool that was dip dyed. I'm trying real hard not to get sucked into dying my own wool. It's hard to resist.

I thought this was incredible. It looks like the real painting, doesn't it?

This woman is reproducing an antique rug she saw.

This is a huge rug the lady sitting across from be was working on. If she wasn't such a sweet lady, I would have been very intimidated.

This is the woman that taught me and HB (and many of the other women in the group) how to rug hook. That's her little scrap rug on the floor. She dyes all her own wool and all her rugs are her original designs. Yep, she scares us.

Here is my favorite rug of the weekend.

Here's HB working on Good Dog. We joke that we get so zoned out when rug hooking that we're at risk of drooling. She's not, I assure you. I'd punch her if I caught her drooling in public. She'd do the same for me. That's what friends are for, right?

Here's the whole group at the end of the day. They had already cracked open the wine and cheese and we were about to go back to Mom's house.

Mom had homemade fried chicken and potato salad waiting on us when we got there. It was goooooood. We were spoiled rotten. It was difficult to leave this morning after being taken care of all weekend...but it had to be done. It was a nasty, cold, rainy drive home but with a stop for coffee in Beulaville (really) and lunch at the State Farmer's Market, we made it home in no time. I'm sure HB was settled in for a nap before I got back on the highway. I'm heading for my nap now. Shelby's waiting on me.