A whole week of hooking

My annual trip to the Southern McGown Teacher Training started with a two day drive down to Ripley, West Virginia, loaded with the supplies for both Jennifer and I to teach classes. Jennifer was teaching the juniors dying class, unpaid, as the Mcgown teachers philosophy is to give back and teach each other for free. I was doing the teaching required for my accreditation.
I was lucky and taught on the Monday, so I could relax and enjoy the rest of the week. My class went well, I passed, and actually enjoyed it once I had got over the "stage fright" I had experienced all the previous week.
Tuesday we had classes that focused on the colour wheel and the variety of colour plans available. I took the course offered by Claudia Hester Lampley, another senior working towards her accreditation.

Claudia bought plenty of resources,

some luscious dyed wool,

 we painted our own colour wheel and with wool in hand created a living colour wheel and experimented stepping in and out of the human circle to create different colour plans (complimentary, split complimentary etc etc) in a colour version of country dancing.

In the afternoon, while we hooked, Claudia demonstrated the Woolly Mason Jar technique of creating dyes for a colour wheel.

Wednesday I was happy to be able to get into Steve Naftel's class on "Jack in the Green".

According to Steve, Jack is a character from MayDay parades in the UK where participants, usually chimney sweeps for some reason, dressed as trees. Steve had us start with the leaves to get us into the hooking before starting on the, more difficult, face.

He had dyed 3 different dip dyes for the close, middle and far leaves.

In the afternoon we started on the face. Steve's version was a more realistic old man rather than the mask like face on the pattern.

The opportunity to hook a face was the reason I wanted this class and Steve provided instruction and resources to help. I was going for a more androgynous look and younger. It didn't turn out quite how I had envisioned it but I was happy it still looked like a face. The lips were the hardest part and I'm still not sure about the nostrils.

After that intense concentration on Wednesday it was a relief, on Thursday, to work on this whimsical piece.

Melissa Pattacini, who taught the class, had used a variety of techniques to create the sheep. This one used quillies,

this one, buttons and

this one, a fancy stitch pattern from Ingrid Heronimous's book. She also used parachute cord (the vine) and silver fabric (stars) in the piece.

So many buttons .... I just couldn't resist ......

so one of mine is covered with buttons and the other is hooked with quilt batting.

We drove home on Friday and I unpacked, packed and was up to Apps for the J.J. Ruggers Retreat on Saturday morning. I worked on my "Tree Spirit" (Jack in the Green renamed) with the other "fifiers".

Cheryl Krug-Wiltse taught her "Rug on a Rug",

so called because she hooks the rectangles as if they are rugs lying on top of each other.

She helped everyone design and colour plan their own version.

In the other room Susan Clarke bought some magnificent rugs to help her teach how to hook animals.

With a photograph as a guide, Pam was hooking a moose.

As always it was a great weekend of learning, hooking, catching up with friends, snacking and eating (with the addition this year of Cindy's fabulous desserts).

Reflections on Ireland

We have been back home for about 3 weeks now and I usually do a wrap up on my trips. "Busy" is my only excuse with a little bit of "lazy" thrown in.
First off, Nicola and I proved we could travel together. We have been hiking together for the last couple of years but that only amounts to a couple of days at a time, so it was lovely to find that we are quite compatible as travel companions. We would both prefer to be in the countryside than in the cities, prefer to see sheep and cows to seeing bus loads of people. We both need our coffee in the morning and like our glass of wine in the evening. We dealt with our controlling natures by me driving and Nicky navigating. Made for some amusing times in the car! (Usually something to do with narrow roads).
From the day we arrived to the day we left, we kept commenting on the greenness. We hadn't really believed all the "Emerald Isle" hype but it truly is a constant array of greens, even though there had been a drought and the locals kept telling us it had effected the colours.

Road, field and moors on the Ring of Kerry.

 The other surprise was the colour. Hedgerows of Fuchsia, roadside Aubrecia, moors covered in Gorse and magnificent, multicoloured Hydrangeas in the gardens. We must have been there at the perfect time of year for flowering plants.

Even the rocks sustained flowers.

The food also surprised us. We didn't do any fine dining, always ate in pubs or cafes and the meals were consistently exemplary. The focus was on fresh, local products and they made a point of listing on the menu where the smoked salmon came from and that it was Irish butter that was served. Even more useful, as Nicola eats Gluten Free, was their attention to allergies and sensitivities. All the menus had a code at the bottom with numbers attached to different foods. So if Gluten was number 1, Nicola just had to avoid every menu item with a 1 next to it. In addition the servers all knew why that number was there and sometimes Nicola was offered a gluten free alternative ie gluten free bread rather than Irish soda bread. We thought it was just luck when the first place we stopped had gluten free scones to go with the jam and whipped cream but it was standard everywhere.
When we talked, before we left, about what we wanted from the trip, for Nicola it was rugged coast, crashing waves and castles, and for me it was exploring a different country and hiking. We were able to fulfill all of that although we discovered that castles in that part of Ireland (the south west coast) , although numerous, were single towers built by local clan chiefs and mostly in ruins.

However the one we had to ourselves, after hiking over the moors, made up for that.

The high point for me was the trip out to Skellig Michael

followed closely by the evenings we spent sitting by Finians Bay with our wine and cheese after days of exploring.

We were there for 2 weeks. We didn't see everything we wanted to around the 4 southwest peninsulas that we explored. We want to continue up the coast and see more of "The Wild Atlantic Way"  (Galway Bay, the Cliffs of Moher etc etc)and I'm sure there are lots of lovely areas on the other coast too.

Ireland - drive to Dublin, Rock of Cashel

Up to an alarm and breakfasted, packed and out the door by 9. We relied on the GPS to get us on the right roads to get to Dublin and it didn't let us down. We had clear sailing, not too much traffic through the countryside and then on to the M8. We stopped once to get coffee, getting all turned around in a confusing array of one-way streets, in a small town, but the GPS got us back on track.

Our half way point, to stretch our legs, was The Rock of Cashel

The Rock of Cashel was the traditional seat of the kings of Munster for several hundred years prior to the Norman invasion. In 1101, the King of Munster, Muirchertach Ua Briain, donated his fortress on the Rock to the Church. The picturesque complex has a character of its own and is one of the most remarkable collections of Celtic art and medieval architecture to be found anywhere in Europe.^[2] Few remnants of the early structures survive; the majority of buildings on the current site date from the 12th and 13th centuries. from Wikipedia

We really didn't do it justice, wandering around, snapping pictures and listening in on tour guides occasionally.

It wasn't difficult to imagine how magnificent it would have been, for its time, with the wooden, beamed roof and translucent animal skins over the windows.

Most surprising

were the carved elements on the walls

and tombs, that survived.

In the cemetary

masses of

celtic crosses with ancient and recent dates engraved.

The swirling  flocks of crows, jackdaws and pigeons add to the site.

We reached our hotel in decent time, through varied weather (typical of Ireland, we started in sun, it got grey, started raining as we came off the Rock of Cashel and drizzled off and on for the rest of the drive)
Relaxed with drinks and dinner in the hotel bar while being entertained by a wedding reception.

Ireland - narrow roads and tiny coves.

As we have a long travel day tomorrow, from Baltimore to Dublin, we took it easy today. With the Wild Atlantic Way Route Atlas in hand we decided to "potter" along the coast East of here. There were lots of "L" roads and some with the hatched lines that indicated they were Atlantic Way Scenic Routes. We were feeling adventurous (at the beginning of the trip we had decided "L" roads and those in grey (with no number) on the map were off limits. Well not today.)

First stop was Lough Hyde which is a salt water lake, partially fed by the sea. The walking trail said "terrain steep, rough uneven, path with steps and exposed drop to the side". It didn't sound appealing. We got back in the car.

On the way back to the main road we had to stop to let the cattle move to a new field.

This cove is Tragumna, nobody there but the public washrooms were open (with the only chain pull toilets I have see on this trip)

Nicola's navigation was in top form today. We were not put off by the roads with grass in the middle (often they were asphalt and the grass had broken through the centre and spread) and she had a general idea of the direction when we reached unmarked (most) intersections.

The "castle" at Toe Head. We actually decided to turn back, not continue on this road. It didn't even look like a track.

But the views along the coast were lovely and the old stone tower, like so many here, abandoned and in ruins.

Up and down, along windy, hedge and wall lined roads we finally stopped in Castletownsend

and had a coffee on the grounds of the "castle".

The peaceful inlet

invited photographs

of leisure and

working boats.

Wandering down another road we were stopped by a man and a small child who said we could go down the road but had to pull into a driveway as there was a large tractor coming. He was right, it was huge and we would have never been able to pass it on that road. Haying season was in full swing!

Worth the wait as Drombeg stone circle was on a peaceful hillside, surrounded by farmers fields.

There was also the remains of a couple of bronze age huts and a pit that when filled with water and hot stones  rolled into it, heated the water enough to cook meat.

The smoked salmon on menus always indicates that it comes from Unionhall so we were not surprised to find the village had a large commercial fishing harbour.

We stopped for Irish Coffee,

and lunch and watched 2 steeplechases on the TV (My horse came first in 1 and last in the other, good job I wasn't betting)

in a lovely little pub in Rosscarberry before heading home.

We packed and then finished off the craft projects we had bought with us to fill a rainy day (we only got one day like that and hadn't got them finished)