A super long and weird stop light

This is a wall in my kitchen. I had become so accustomed to looking at it, I didn't notice how much these hoses needed some serious 'covering up.' I had made a mild attempt at doing so by taping the above circular pieces of funky well wishes (on a job interview) to the wall. It worked - I quickly didn't notice the hoses anymore. One day when Taya was downstairs in my kitchen she looked at the said display and mentioned that a 'wall covering' would like nice (perhaps better than the circular pieces of paper!). I thought, "I can make that." I decided to simply hook a rug - that I would hang on the wall. So I got busy.

The first thing I had to do was cut out - or rather measure a piece of burlap to adequately cover the wall in question. Luckily enough, I had some burlap on hand that had been given to me by my cousin Erica, which had been left over from her wedding decorations.

Next, I had to come up with a design for the rug. Looking through 5 or so issues of my Rug Hooking Magazine, I came up with a design pretty quickly. I am partial to geometric designs, maybe becasue my grandmother had also loved them and I grew up looking at such designs. As this was my first rug to "design," however, I decided I had better keep it simple. I outlined the rug in black. In Hook Me A Story by Deanne Fitzpatrick, I discovered the following:

"She discovered that inexplicably, many Island women hooked geometrics...Virtually everyone finished their mat with a thin black binding, and all outling done in the mat was done in black."

Evident is the fact that I had trouble mastering the circles, which I am happy to say look more circle-like on a subsequent mat. My friend Adam was over a visit the day I took these pictures and I asked him to choose the color for the final circle/hexagon. He choose lavendar - which is the same color I had in mind. Knowing he is partially colour blind, I then had a ton of fun having him identify all the colours on the mat. I know, I am cruel.

It was actually tricky getting the lines to match up exactly. Some of the yarn was 2ply and some was 3ply (all from MacAusland's Woolen Mill on PEI), so spacing was tricky. In the end - after a bit of ripping and re-doing - everything lined up. I think.

Then came the time for the officially hanging. Until that point, I had forgot that a curtain rod would be involved. Hanging the darn curtain rod was probably the most difficult and frustrating aspect of this process. I cursed, I swore, and I might have even shed a tear or two. But that damn thing was going up hell or high water.

Wholla. Well, the rug doesn't cover all the outlets and hoses. My hope is that the colous will be so mesmerizing that it will simply distract visiting folk from the other distractions. It is all about distraction isn't it?

In the end, I am a firm believer that hooked rugs belong on the floor - not hanging on the wall. It just looks more normal. My next abode will feature this rug - what one of my friends called "a super long and weird stop light" where it should - on the floor.