Creativity: Loving Wool

I love this season. After a summer of heat, I can’t wait to pull on a sweater and cozy up in my leggings with hot tea, run my hands through my wool, and plan my next rug.

It is a kind of winter heaven to be a rug hooker. So many people do not look forward to winter—rug hookers do, of course, because winter is our high season.

Get ready, it is wool time! (Well, for some of us, wool time is all the time.) We are ready to get our hands in it.

First
Long ago, when I hooked my first strip of wool, I knew that I had found something special. It was not just the hooking—though that has kept me so enamored with this craft—it is the wool. Occasionally people ask me “Can you hook with things other than wool?” Honestly, I want to say, “Why would you?” I mean you can hook a chip bag, but I am not going to. I am going to hook wool.

Wool has all the perfect qualities. First it is a natural fiber. I love it that wool comes off the sheep without any harm to the animal. There are many different kinds of sheep. In fact, there are more than 1,000 distinct breeds, and half of them are fine-wool breeds. That means that there are 500 distinct types of wool that comes from these gentle animals.