Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The show is over ... for this year

The Carolina Designer Craftsmen Show is over for this year.  It was a great show.  Beautiful things by talented, creative people.  It was a busy time for me and I was able to send several of my pieces to new homes. "Shadow", my white horse, has a new home as well as "Billy", my handsome goat.  I know they are in good hands. I also parted with several still life pieces.

Shadow   11" x 14"  SOLD!

Billy   11"x 14"  SOLD 


At the show I also met up with a good friend I haven't seen in quite a while.  Lori was my very first student when I started teaching rug hooking 15 years ago.  She was and is a natural.  She uses traditional rug hooking to create abstractions of what she sees in nature whereas I focus on realism with an impressionistic approach.
This is what I love about this art form.  It is SO versatile. 

So now it is time to pack away my booth for the year and get ready for the holidays! 

Saturday, November 26, 2011

It's here!

The 42nd Annual Carolina Designer Craftsmen Show is now in progress.  Today's hours are:  10:00 - 6:00, tomorrow 11:00 - 5:00.  Avoid all the madness at the malls and by a one of a kind, hand crafted in America original piece of art. Hope to see you there!

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

The Carolina Designer Craftsmen Show is just TWO days away...

It's almost here!  I've been busy, busy, busy!  I hope you can join me at this year's 42nd annual Carolina Designer Craftsmen Show.  Setup is Friday morning with the show opening Friday evening.  I've got a lot of new work I'm really excited about.  See you there!

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

A Landscape Vignette

I love digging into my leftovers and doing small vignettes and this week I did just that.

This piece was inspired on a walk in my neighborhood.  We have a walking trail that circles around a pond where there are several flowering cherry trees.  The trees now are barren as the cold winds have blown all the dead leaves off.  What I find interesting is the stockiness of these trees and the wide spread of the branches.
The wind was so cold the day I was out it made me think the snow will be here soon hence, I made this a wintery scene.


One of the things I love doing with a landscape is the gradation in the sky.  Skies start lighter on the horizon and darken as they go up.  This simple, gradual shift in value can make a big impact on a piece.  Imagine if I had simply hooked one value in the background.  Rather boring.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Playing with tesselations

I bought some design software a while back and haven't really had time to experiment with it.  I have always done my designs the old fashioned way with pencil and paper.  For my geometrics I have employed graph paper. After drawing up the designs I would get out my colored pencils and work out a color plan. Recently my husband was looking for something to do so I pulled out some tesselation designs I had done on graph paper and gave them to him to translated into this software program. He succeeded in learn the nuances of this finicky software (so maybe now I won't have to) and was able to translate a lot of my designs.

I needed a break from the small pieces I'd been working on and decided to put one of the simple tesselation designs on my frame and have at it.  Though this is not really an original tesselation, it has been seen in Roman ruins and then quilts and probably elsewhere as well,  it is a simple but interesting one.

This is what I have gotten done so far...

Tesselation 1





To see some really cool tesselations go to the M. C. Escher website and click on Picture Gallery at the bottom of the left sidebar and then click on Symmetry.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Getting show ready

I have been SO busy trying to get things ready for the Carolina Designer Craftsmen Fine Craft and Design Show on Thanksgiving Weekend I just haven't had time to post anything.  Please come by and see me at the show.

A bit of new news ...I was recently featured in an article in the News and Observer about my journey into rug hooking.  I've heard from people I haven't seen in 25+ years.  Thanks to all of  you who have sent good wishes my way!