hookin'

Normally, the next step after cleaning the fleece would be to card and spin it. However...I've been wanting to make a nice fluffy rug for the office-one that feels good on your bare toes...So, I picked up some burlap the other day and decided to give rug hooking a whirl. I really tend to have no idea what I'm doing when I start out on these projects, so it's been an experiment. So far, it's been fairly successful. Last night I started sorting out the wool I'd already washed and pulled apart little segments. Smoothing each tiny segment out between my fingers, I then used a crochet hook to reach through the burlap and pull one end of the wool through the cloth. Then I sent the hook through a second time (one or two stiches away) to catch the other end of the wool and pull that through. The result is that all the ends of the fluffy wool are exposed at the top of the burlap. It's pretty exciting, I must admit. Though, it will probably take me till October to finish it. The fleece I got has so many variations in color, it really has the potential to be interesting. So far, I've divided the coloring into two groups-lighter and darker. The lighter wool, I will use to outline the entire rug. Then I will intersperse what's left of the light with the dark in the middle. The toughest thing about it is estimating how large a rug I can make with this one fleece. Ideally it would be 5'x7', but I'm doubtful that I have enough wool for that. Maybe 4'x6'...3'x5'...who knows. Here's a picture of the beginning of the rug...Ah, the birth of a new project...