Lieing like a rug

Okay, so first, I did not quilt this weekend. I wanted to quilt this weekend. I even planned and scheduled to quilt this weekend. But, I did not actually do any quilting. In fact, the closest I got was putting my sewing machine cover on my piecing machine and threading my quilting machine. But, not a stitch was sewn. Instead, I played in the water. And, I played with rug yarn. Lots and lots of rug yarn.

First, remember this little rug? I picked it up for nothing in an antique shop on vacation. Did not know the colors were so vivid. You would have had to see the water to know what I washed out of this rug. First, I did not know that the center was gray. I thought it was beige. But, it's not.

And, luckily, the animals are no longer interested in smelling and rolling on it.

Next, remember this rug?



Well, it grew up to be this rug. And, while the dye pot was out with the golden yellow dye in it, I also dyed my apron. These are going to look great when I get the kitchen finished. If I get the kitchen finished before they're both worn out.

I also wound up some leftover white yarn and threw it in the dye pot, too. The two lighter skeins are leftover cotton that I'm going to make dishcloths out of and the darker skein with the water bottle hanging in it is a skein of wool for a scarf for Rob. Except now all this wool yarn is making him itch, so we'll have to see how that goes. This particular skein is so soft. It can't be what's bothering him...I hope. I'm hoping it's the dust in the rest of the yarn and that it will all resolve itself after a good washing.



And, this one is the big rug project. It's a shame that I learned to make rugs and don't really plan to make any more rugs. This is my big "one" that I've been building up to. It's wool weight rug yarn and it is beautiful, even if it's not perfect. I still have a few more rounds to go.

I bought the yarn off ebay. Someone bought it and then she couldn't crochet rugs and she was selling a huge supply of these good yarns for a really cheap price. She'd divided it into lots and this was the "gold" lot, even though it's as much green as gold. The yarn is heavy and it is hard to crochet with, but it's just so fast. I've taken out as much as I've put in, just learning to use it.

Sydney freaked out the other day. I was half through and we started pulling it all out so I could start again. She just doesn't get that I don't plan to make another one, so I want this one to be as good as I can do. And, she doesn't understand that all the work we pulled out amounted to about 4 hours of sitting around, watching TV, so it wasn't really a very big time investment.

This work is dustier than I would have expected (based on the sellers description) and the rug is a pain to heave around because it's very heavy. Right now, the size is about 2ft by 2.5ft and there is still a considerable amount of yarn left to go.

I bought the yarn as two different weights of yarn, thinking I'd use one weight in one project and the little bit of lighter weight yarn in another project. In all actuality, there are about 4 weights, some of which are similar enough to mix and some of which are not. I ended up pulling out my spindle and spinning some of those lighter weight yarns into a single yarn. And, that turned out to be too big, so this morning, I untwisted all of that and tonight, I'll try to twist it again with less strands in the twist.

I'm pushing to finish this as quick as I can because I feel myself losing interest. Obsessively, I haven't been able to stop working on this for several days. Compulsively, I can't stop until I finish and the last couple of setbacks to that finish have left me feeling stressed about something that's supposed to be relaxing and fun. But, that's how I do roll.

Take care and have a great Tuesday.

Lane