Even if you have absolutely no interest in crafts at all, this book can help you get a lot more out of your flock's wool. How can that be? Let me explain:
Rug hooking-- a traditional method for making rugs that I knew nothing about before reading this book-- is a time-honored method of producing very attractive home furnishings and works of art, while using up a lot of wool.
While hooking with fabric strips might be better known than using yarn, the yarn method allows more leeway in choosing colors, and in choosing wool from the breeds that produce the more durable wools.
The end products of this craft (rugs and useful home decor) are often worth many hundreds of dollars, and usually last more than a lifetime under ordinary service. Unlike many other wool-consuming crafts, rug hooking requires neither endless patience, nor extreme nimbleness of fingers. But again, it uses a lot of wool.
Best of all, this craft really isn't suited to plastic yarns-- wool is best. It's springier, holds together better, insulates better, lasts much longer and it doesn't represent the fire hazard of either plastics or vegetable fibers. It's one place where the stout-fibered wools are definitely king.
The author covers every step in this craft, from fleece to floor covering. She begins with a brief history of the craft. I say "brief" because she doesn't waste a lot of time on flowery prose; she' direct, yet upbeat, always getting right to the point.
She tells about the best breeds of sheep and goats and how their wool can be blended. Then onward to the making and/or buying of yarn. Her explanations of handspinning enable a beginner to learn to spin yarns needed for making high-value hooked rugs even using very low-cost equipment: drop spindles.
Even to me, who knew nothing of rug hooking, the introduction and progression of the text was easy, and enticing enough to coax confidence from the very start.
The book is a fairly large format, with a great deal of very excellent color photos that completely match the text. There are also a lot of very clear drawings that make the more complicated aspects quite plain, like the one shown below.
The book has a wire-bound spine to allow it to lie flat so you can refer to it while using both hands for the work. The wire is shielded by the cover though, so it won't snag.
It shows samples of the wool yarns used for the craft-- plus how to make or buy them-- the finished goods are also well-shown, together with instructions for how to estimate how much wool will be needed for any project.
All descriptions of the hooking techniques are very understandable and precise. It has excellent suggestions on how to make your own designs-- and it's simply put-- so it's never confusing.
The author describes the tools she and others use for this craft--along with how they're made, or where they can be bought. But in truth, very few tools are required. And even those are pretty cheap.
The types of non-woolen materials that go into a wool-hooked rug are laid out one by one, telling the pros and cons of natural textiles such as jute (burlap), linen and cotton.
The book has a comprehensive explanation of how to use dyestuffs and dyeing, including special effects such as multiple colors, double-dyeing, and re-dyeing (over dyeing).
The book has a chapter on care, cleaning and repair of rugs. This type of rug-- even an ancient heirloom-- is quite easily repaired.
One of the beauties of wool for this craft is that the end user gets a product that will last for generations, and its materials are not commonly available except to large flock masters. This helps encourage commercial handcrafts experts to buy breed-specific wool directly from the grower. It gives them the ability to assure their buyers that the finished goods are of a quality they can't buy anywhere else at any price.
That last consideration is extremely important: In our time, the only way to have a product that can't be matched by mechanized mills-- either in materials or workmanship.
The book also contains ideas for methods of using rug-hooking techniques to make many attractive items other than rugs, like pillows, toys, figurines, etc.
It even has a source list for where to get dyes, patterns, yarns, spindles, frames, hooks, etc.
What's perhaps best is that it has been cheerfully and enthusiastically written. It is so compelling that it will make you want to get busy making your own items.
I was informed that if you buy multiple copies of this book, quantity discounts may apply. This is a good way for flock masters to buy, so that copies can be resold at a profit, or given as a premium to large-volume buyers of your fleeces.
Reprinted with permission from Sheep!Magazine, July/August 2003. The review was written by Eva Griffith.
