Learning New Skills

I’m going to deviate a little bit on this post today because… I haven’t done any creative writing since the beginning of April.

Yikes.

Okay, yes I have been busy for the past couple of weeks (everything’s calmed down again now) but I really, really have not felt the urge to pick up a pen/sit down at the keyboard.

Instead, I’ve been doing a lot of reading and trying different creative projects.

For example, today I learned how to make a Hooky Rug.

It has a funny name but, it’s surprisingly easy and fun once you learn how to do it. Louise saw it demonstrated on the BBC program MAKE! Craft Britain a few weeks ago and after trying it herself she encouraged all of us to give it a go. Using the technique, here is a picture of a completed seat cushion that was made by Louise (really surprisingly comfy):

I love going to the Darlington Arts Community Café that is run by Louise because it’s nice to do something creative when you’re surrounded by like-minded people but, I also love our occasional sessions where I get to learn a brand new skill.

For our hooky rugs we used some old t-shirts that we cut into strips (this is the part where you really need to use patience) and once we had our hessian and a hook we just pushed the hook through one of the gaps in the hessian, grabbed the t-shirt material and pulled a small piece of it through to the front.

Of course we started with a small test piece and as you can see from this next photo Louise was more practised. She had much smaller gaps between her material than I did, haha (you can see the hooks we were using in the photo as well):

Then we moved onto drawing our designs and this photo was my initial design:

Then it was just a case of following the pattern and adding the t-shirt material. I started with two shades of green. It’s not completely finished yet but I’m pretty happy about everything I did while I was sitting in the café at the local bookshop.

It was great to spend an afternoon learning a new skill and I was constantly seeing the results as I was working on it.

I got a little bit stuck once I’d finished the outline that I wanted because I changed my mind about the colours I was going to use in the rest of the space. After a few suggestions, I like the idea of adding some bright colours and turning it into some sort of abstract garden so I’m looking forward to finishing it.