Hooked "House Charms" Workshop May 9

A little more self promotion..... but if you are in the Santa Barbara-Ventura area I will be teaching a beginning rug hooking class at Artful Living, 310 E. Matilija St. Ojai, CA..
Please phone Barbara Beck at 805-640-0800 for more information.
We will be making fun little hooked houses from yarn and wool. This is a great way to try out rug hooking. I will be providing a house pattern, wooden frame, felt backing and have hooks to use for the day. Come join us May 9 on Saturday in the wonderful little town of Ojai!
Workshop is 10am to 3 pm with a lunch break.

Artfiberfest is coming soon!

If you have ever wanted to learn how to rug hook, come join us at Artfiberfest and learn this age old fiber art technique in a fun environment in Portland, Oregon. I will be teaching "Birds in Hats" (and high heels!) . This is a fun way to learn how to rug hook and you will leave with a colorful wool hooked bird to amaze your friends and family with.
The next day I will be teaching Fiber Collage. We will be using colorful pre-felt to create small collages and a felt scarf, too! There is still room, so we would love to have you join us as we felt with a little water and olive oil soap and some rolling of the wonderful wool fibers we will bring for you to play with. Above and below are a few samples of fiber collage using the pre-felts that we will be bringing for our kits.
Little houses and birds with some stitching after the collage dried.


The third day I will be teaching a Fiber Charm class called "Charm School"...we will be making fun little felt and fabric charms to create a Fiber Mobile or for Fiber Jewelry or Both! I will also provide fabric birds to paint and use on the mobile if you choose.
Artfiberfest is one of the highlights of my whole year! Over a hundred fiber loving artists come together to share and learn from each other in a warm and enriching environment. Hope you can come join us this year as we join with old friends and new. For more information go to :
www.teeshamoore.com or click on the Artfiberfest link on this blog under "where I'm teaching"...
Fiber necklaces....
Fiber pins....fun to make...

Dolls

Just starting to work on some fabric dolls. Painted more faces today. Fun to use up some the fabric that I've collected over the years...
And Sunday we drive down to Thousand Oaks to Katie's house for our quarterly Hook-in! We are going to be working on a Hooked Vessel similar to the one in the latest Rug Hooking Magazine. This will be a total experiment...will be interesting to hook on the metal mesh from the craft store...

Making progress...

I'm slowly making progress on my rug. Just a few more little houses to do and then I'll go to work on the flowers. The background will be greys, blacks and tweeds to give it a nice primitive look.
Close up of a few houses....
And here is Henry sitting in my Bird grocery tote. He loves to explore and climb into bags and boxes of every sort. We live in a very old house and that is my very old kitchen floor!
Earlier this week it was warm and sunny....today cold and drizzly....but I got in a Spring cleaning mood and put this fun bird and butterfly quilt out to air in the sunshine. Found it at Anthropologie on sale a few months ago and love the soft cotton and cheerful print.

Painting and hooking....

I got in a "painting" mood yesterday and did this little bird piece...very tiny....2" x 2"!
My friend, Maren gave me this wonderful Primitive Spirit pattern a few years ago. I finally pulled it out of its basket and am working on it again. I figured if I just do a house or two each night I can get it done. It's larger than my usual pieces so it may take while...23" x 36"!
Another piece I painted yesterday......makes me want to go to Mexico again!
and this funny bird.....
Painted some faces on muslin for possible fabric dolls......thinking of Artfiberfest and vendor night!

Hooked doll and Art show...

Got my latest hooked doll sewn up finally....
and a photo at the "lost and found" show at the Elverhoj Gallery on Saturday night. I made the two dolls on the wall in Michael De Meng's class at Artfest a few years ago. The one on the left sold!
And here is Justin with his Wingtip Shoe Shrine. I supplied the parts and he did most of the hard work. Inspired by Michael De Meng's Shoe Shrines.

Funny Bird and Art Reception for "Lost and Found"

Made this funny little bird from felted wool sweaters, felt and a bit of flannel last night.
And today we have the opening reception for the "Lost and Found" collage and assemblage show at the Elverhoj Museum in Solvang. I have 3 pieces in the show- two assemblage dolls and a shoe shrine that Justin and I worked on together. Come for refreshments= 4 to 7 pm and see all the cool stuff from local artists....

Vintage cotton yarn

I found this wonderful vintage cotton yarn when I went to sign up today for the 8th annual Assemblage Art Show and Silent Auction. The theme this year is "Circle"...interesting because the theme for Artfiberfest is "Orb" or "Circle" too....When I took my morning walk at the beach today I got some ideas for my piece....fiber related, of course. Now to see if I can do what I saw in my imagination!

Little hooked house

I hooked a few more borders around the house and it now has a black felt backing which I need to sew on tonight. Then some kind of hanger....could be wire or felted cording...will figure that out tomorrow.

Back to hooking...

Susan asked me about this fun little rabbit tile. I found it last December at the San Luis Obispo Art Center Co-op gift store. It isn't signed on the back so I don't know who the artist is, but I loved the folk art quality and thought it might make a good hooked rug design!
And this funny plastic crow was purchased on our road trip in Sausalito at the Pine St. Papery... I could not resist...and only $8.! I seem to have a small crow collection started....and we seem to have more in our neighborhood too....
And last night I finally got back to some rug hooking. I made this funny little crooked house. I may add another row or two around it and make it into a House Charm, we'll see!

Happy Easter to All!

Hope you all have a Wonderful Easter Holiday! Or Passover or lovely Spring day!

The boys are teenagers but still want Easter baskets and Justin says he wants to go on the Easter egg hunt, so Dennis and I will be busy hiding eggs in the morning. The boys requested enchiladas for dinner so we will be having an untraditional family supper, but I like to mix things up a bit and may make chili rellenos too! Now if I can just get that table cleared off we'll be ready to celebrate.


I couldn't resist this little mushroom box from "Prize" in Ashland, Oregon.
And a lone tulip in the garden that has gotten a bit windblown but still pretty.

On the way to Artfest..

Colleen and I headed off early Sunday morning on our way to Artfest. First stop, Fourth Street in Berkeley, CA. We checked out several shops and then had fun shopping and looking for new things at the "Castle in the Air". We were so lucky to have Shari as our guide. We got to meet at Artfiberfest when she and her friend, Caron were in my hooking and nuno felt classes. Shari took us upstairs where a wonderful beeswax collage class was going on and helped us with the wonderful felt cording that I wanted for an upcoming class at Artfiberfest in June. We also got to see the needle felted creations of Caron Dunn, who teaches at the Castle...just wonderful...the best needle felting I have ever seen. I'd love to take a class from her! The picture above shows some of the fun things I found at the Castle.
After shopping we were hungry and so we went next door to Bette's Oceanview Diner. We had a delicious lunch there from their great menu and after a quick stop at The Paper Source we were on our way.
We slept in Redding and headed off to Ashland for breakfast-lunch at one of our favorite stops~ the Morning Glory. I had to take a photo of the wonderful tree house that had been built in the neighborhood where we parked our car and walked to the restaurant. I've always loved tree houses, my brothers built one with a trap door in our big old oak tree when I was growing up.
Best breakfast spot in town!
Once fed, we were ready to visit "Websters" one of the best yarn, roving, and wearable art places on our trip. We spent at least an hour looking at all the beautiful yarns and wool. I bought a new crochet hook and a bag of colorful yarn to play with and use at Artfiberfest.
The top skeins of yarn had beads in the wool so you could make a sparkly scarf with them....
Just some of the many buttons available...
Noro yarns from Japan...some of my favs.....
Colleen doing a little damage at Websters....
After Websters we walked on down the street to Mix to get a mocha and cookie for the road...they had these cute tissue flowers in the window.....
and look how sweet my mocha arrived!
Next stop was to Arch Cape near Cannon Beach in Oregon where my brother built a beach house. We drove over to Hwy. 101 and finally got there by 10 pm, a little late for dinner. We got to visit with my brother, Larry until midnight and then got up and took a walk on the foggy coast before a nice breakfast in Cannon Beach. Larry led us back towards Portland where we had some nice visits to Fibers In Motion, Northwest Wools and Switch, a cool shoe store in Multnomah Village.
Our beach walk...
My brother built his house in the forest a few years ago and he and his sons go down to surf and relax whenever possible.
The forest behind his house.
Heart shaped stepping stone near the beach.
After Portland we decided to drive all the way to PortTownsend and get there a day before the festivities. We found a nice place to stay for the night and went into town to check out some of our favorite places. We were sad to see that "Edge to Edge" was gone but still had fun visiting all the cool stores and restaurants in Port Townsend.