Red Jack Rugs is online in a different location

April has moved her blog over to her new website. It (so far as I could tell) contains all the posts from when she set up the blog in 2009. The links at the top of the page are easier to use, than they were on Blogspot. You can float over a topic and subtopics will dropdown. :)

She will be offering wool for sale, but due to some problems with a flood in her home while she was away at Sauder, that part of the site will not begin yet. She has put up a follower button, and is having a giveaway on September 6th, for people who have signed up. Whatever she is giving away will be a great prize! :)

Yoda Yoga - a creative way of celebrating a 30 year anniversary

My yoga days are over, sadly, due to a hip replacement. It is one of the few regrets I have. Especially wish I could try some of these poses! :)

Always love being chosen for a treasury! ♥ at Etsy

catnapinnprimitives an Etsy seller wrote to let me know my kat pattern called Sharing My Wool  has been included in her treasury called More Prim Treasures I Love. :) Hope you'll go check it out if you like Prim Handdids.

If you are not a hooker, but would like a custom rug of your own cat or dog, sleeping in a basket, or a rug and have a few good pictures of that pet, I invite custom orders. As a matter of fact, if you haven't been to Etsy in awhile, you might like to go check out its new look. Let my shop be your doorway!  Or you might click her link at the beginning of the post, for a different way to begin.

My New Favorite Breakfast Recipe --- Experimenting in the kitchen :)

Even though it is nearly 90 degrees outside, I made cooked oatmeal today. ? Puzzling?  As my dh and I continue to search for ways to lose weight and lower our cholesterol, breakfast is one of my hardest parts of the day.

Used to love bacon, eggs, and homefries for breakfast. drool   As a matter of fact, writing about them makes me wish I could dig in right now.... a thing I did with unhealthy abandon for years. Not every morning or even every week. Nope, worse yet, I frequently skipped breakfast and sometime even lunch on the same day. Was young, full of energy(and diet coke) so why worry? Returning home after a day of school ready to eat the linoleum off the floor. Big dinner couldn't possibly hurt... I'd skipped two meals already anyway. WELL, LIVE AND LEARN!

Now, twice the weight I should be, from years of overindulgence and a sedentary life, reforming my ways ain't all that easy. Not complaining...just putting it out there. Pretty sure no teenagers are reading my thoughts, but if you are, start eating right  ~ right this minute! It never gets easier to lose weight or reform bad habits.

Okay, off the soapbox!  This morning I made a pot of cooked oatmeal, something I've enjoyed since childhood. My dh had pointed out to me that oatmeal can be refrigerated for 3 to 5 days. I've bagged it up by servings and am trying whether most of the bowl can't be frozen. I'll let you know how it works next week. I can cook a pot up easier on the weekend, because I'm still getting up around 5:40 most weekdays, and out the door in less than an hour. Not that cooking it takes all that much time, but showering, taking meds and fasting bloodsugar, do leave me looking for something quick and easy.

I bagged up per bag
2/3 cup cooked oatmeal   about 27 g carbs (but low glycemic index)
6-8 raisins or Craisins per serving <10 g carbs guesstimated high
1 tsp brown sugar     4 g carbs
1 capful of almond flavoring (or another you prefer)  free?
Total carbs <40 g carbs    Our dietitian recommended hitting as close under 35 carbs as possible per meal, but I'm hoping that a good breakfast will give me a jumpstart for the day. This kind of thinking is my typical how can I bend the rules to my favor.

Especially, as adding 1/4 cup of  plain greek yogurt adds just 5 g carbs more to create an absolutely decadent and fairly large serving of oatmeal good enough to be a dessert flavor wise, although I shouldn't use it that way!

I'll be nuking the contents of the baggie,  and adding the yogurt this next week. Will try to remember to report back to all y'all whether it is worth trying. (with regard to the freezing) The actual results from freshly cooked oatmeal this morning were divine!

Have a great weekend... I'll be working in my dyepot this afternoon hoping to come up with some prim pumpkin tones...  Quite behind on photos, so won't even promise tomorrow!

Thank you Lord, for an answered set of prayers!

This has been a long week, after our daughter went to the doctor, and he found something to be concerned about. Her test was today, and the big C was NOT her diagnosis! I' ve prayed many times this week, for that result, and that we'd have the strength to live with whatever God's plan for her life was. Still WILL CONTINUE TO PRAY that the plan does NOT include Cancer for her or our Granddaughter.

I've said my prayers of Thanksgiving, but want to say to those of you who knew my worries...All is well, and God's Grace is just that~ :)

Hoping Everyone has a Wonderful School Year!

Tomorrow another school year begins for teachers and students in my old school district Humble ISD and many others across Texas. I wish everyone a wonderful school year filled with homework done and turned in on time. An understanding that learning things really is fun and essential for life.

My retirement rug was completed a couple of years ago. After 36 years as a public school teacher, thousands of wonderful kids, (the ones who weren't so wonderful were generally dealing with some mighty big issues), and the chance to be an American school teacher during a time that spanned the year preceding the first Moon landing until the year Barack Obama was elected our President. From chalkboards to Journey North and the Jason Project it was quite a wonderful career.

I do wonder if our country will ever put the proper value on things. The $$$ spent on kids education and health care can never be too much.

Finished my donation for Central City Co-Op auction in September....

This will be turned into a pillow shortly, but just finished hooking and steaming it this morning. It has a combination of upcycled wools, my TX palette red chilis, bluebonnets,and yellow rose  wools. Hope you like it and think it might be worth a bid.

The design is by T J JohnMartin, and has things TX Women say....such as Love your hair!, How's your momma? and Bless Your ♥ It came with 3 other designs in TX Rounders.

6 of one, half a dozen of the other? Grateful to have achieved Half Way!

Half way through my personal palette of wool colors. Have the 3 primaries, Bluebonnets, Yellow Rose, and Chili Red, and now the three secondary colors! Hill Country Herb Garden, Red River(oranges), and soon to be debuted Wine Cup! That is half way to the development of my own palette, and although I've been looking at the color wheel lots more in the last 6 months than probably ever in any other 6 month period, surprised me that there are as many tertiary colors still left to dye. I'll most likely do Yellow Orange next as April suggested it for great pumpkin tones.

I love plants especially wild flowers, so I'm naming as many of the colors in My TX Palette as possible after one or another of our wonderful wild flowers! Red River would really work for Paint Brush, so if I hook a field of wild flowers next spring.... :)

Got a bit distracted when finishing up on these. The first four jars had absorbed all the dye, and the "jam jar" and 4 darker values needed to still absorb some dye. I'll finish them in the morning. :)

I call it a "jam jar" because I basically jam as much wool, yarn, this time yards of cotton triple knotted fringe from a chenille bedspread, upcycled scraps... and what comes out is very mottled and incredibly great to me! You can see an example of what jam jar wool can do by looking at the sky in the Waterlilies rug.

Knocked My Socks Off! :)

I just received my copy of April Deconick's book describing her methods.
The Wool Palette
click above :)

Pretty sure I'd never have been tempted to try the graduated strip process on my own. It is a bit time consuming, but very doable. I've been very delighted, and gotten good feedback from other hookers on the colors that I've created. She shares her technique for dyeing yardage using the formula as well.

Even though I've begun my adventure into palette dyeing, I didn't really understand how simple it was to have an organized (by April) method for creating not just the 12 shades of the color wheel in 8 value swatches which would be 96 individual colors.  But by following her method for extended colors and combinations from the color wheel there are 976 possibilities. This was the part that knocked my socks off! Not that doing this would be extremely difficult. For years I wanted to dye wool, and whined online while doing just a little experimenting with koolaid dyeing. My whining was just that the whole possibility of poisoning my family by improper handling was a big STOP sign. After meeting April, seeing her beautiful wools, and even "consulting her" on how to avoid having our granddaughter be harmed, it was not only doable, but compelling!

April has a link to her book on her blog, Red Jack Rugs, but I so strongly recommend you get this book I'm putting a link in this post to make it easy for you to do so. Haven't asked April's permission, getting nothing in commission, just want you to have a chance to transform your hooking. I've had fun experimenting with my own dye formulas. I've only gotten one color I didn't want, at the time, and yet used already in my Waterlilies Rug, recently shown. LOL because these wools work together, even the  shades of that Unwanted color worked, and in fact added(in my opinion) some spark to the finished rug.

There is a place in the back of the book for putting samples, plenty of room to write down the formulas you use, and some lovely pictures of rugs I've watched April working on over the past year. She is a phenomenal artist, and I believe this book will become a new have to have for rughookers who dye their own wool.

 A hibiscus blossom in the outstretched hand of our granddaughter might not ever win a prize in a photo contest but seemed perfect for use on the blog. Much of this summer has been spent in our pool, staying cool and watching as she has improved her swimming skills. She is on the brink of a great dog paddle, and with two more months of pool time left that should be a lock by the time it takes Vikings to get into the water.

My dh loves to float hibiscus blossoms in the pool, and I've been known to tuck one behind an ear, silly ole bear that I am. She loves it when grandpa tosses them in. Here is a chance to offer a lovely blossom to you!

Redeux is under way

Redeux (my nonsense Frenchified spelling of redo) is underway. I don't like making mistakes ~ who does? But reverse hooking is kinda fun by comparision with this. :(  Pull a wool strip and toss it like confetti!

LOL, didn't know the camera was in catepillar pic mode. So the metamorphosis shot is rather fuzzy in two ways. Snips of floss and out of focus! Almost ready to go forward to finishing that last row. Life is good!

Oops! Grrrrr

Some people are able to concentrate and work on complicated charts to produce wonderful heirloom quality cross stitching. That group would not include me. But, none the less, I love Prairie Schooler charts, as well as Blackbird Designs.

This shows the progress I've made on a sampler I'm stitching for our Anniversary Swap(2nd) in AAPG. If you are my swap partner, I want you to see this, because when you receive the sampler it will be redone correctly. :) I was stitching the L, M, N this afternoon and having a heck of a time with the chart/sampler matching for M. I'm not really the ideal type of stitcher for counted cross stitch. I've yet to make one without a major error. At least most of the time, I've learned not to adjust....find the mistake and fix it!  Well, today, I kept comparing the pattern and the chart, knew it was wrong, and "adjusted", because I couldn't spot my mistake Know better, and should have set it down for awhile. Ah duh! Slapping forehead once the light finally came on. An afternoon's work that has to be picked out and redone. My recipient does absolutely perfect work. She deserves my best efforts. I'm hoping to still make the mid August mailing guideline. Especially as Patijane and I are sharing the job of Swap Mamas.

It is humbling to realize I spent the afternoon stitching this very area, looking so hard, and yet missed the forest for the trees! In case you are having the same difficulty I did, notice the pattern of double green bars separating the letters is missing for M and N. sigh.... now why did I start stitching the letters without finishing the grids?  Had red thread in my needle....