The Mermaid Rug -- finally!

Been talking about doing this one for ages..donkey's ages.. well ok, maybe three years. Ever since I signed up as a vendor at the P.E.I. Seaglass Festival held at Wood Islands Lighthouse 3 years ago. It was around then I had discovered the unknown-to-me pleasure of rug hooking, and I decided I liked it.

Now like most things I get into, I get a craze on for them, where I have to look at everything connected to it, and work on such craft 'til the wee hours of the morning. Which is what I did when I hooked two hot mats on a lap frame. These hot mats were around 9" x 9" . Upon completion I decided I was going to take on the task of hooking a large area rug ;-) I was ready!

Talking to my longtime close friend, Acadian artist, Roch Bourque on the phone one afternoon, he says to me, guess what I got you at the auction? a rug-hooking frame -- cool, I says. Guess what I want to do? A really large rug. So I'm thinking this frame would be about the size of the usual "Cheticamp" type frames, the size you would hook a fair size door mat on...not that much bigger than a "tv dinner tray" as we called them in the 70's ;-) Well...  a few days later, Roch shows up with this huge, honking frame I am sure you could make a carpet for a small bedroom on! I think I was scared of it at first...

I continued to look at mermaids. lots of  images of mermaids ( I have plenty) -- I looked at lots of hand hooked mermaids, boats, clouds, seas, dolphins, whales to get an idea of how I should proceed.

I made Paint sketches on the computer, I did watercolour drawings, I did pencil crayon drawings.. This thing percolated for quite a while... until...2 days ago

Yes, that's duct tape keeping the edges from fraying. My 50 year old sewing machine was being a beast ;-) Mayhaps I should have threaded up one of my 100 year old treadle machines instead ;-) 

Yesterday, I hooked the sand dollar, and today I got started on the snail shell. I am thinking I may have to tone down that pink inside ....