SPELLING BEE

BY BEA WESTERBERG

A story is told

The Rug Hooking 5 Day Camp in Duluth- Procter area was a wonderful success. Our group was a bit smaller than years before and we did miss some of the regulars but it gave us more room to spread out our volume of wool.

Rug hookers do not travel light. Jackie’s Pilot was PACKED with her, Mary’s and my necessities. I did not even take an ounce of wool as I was doing something so different, I had to purchase everything from the teacher. The “Going to Rug Hooking Bible” contains the statement that you must stop at Tobies for pecan caramel rolls. Not sure what the ones coming from other directions do but it is in the going up north version. I add French Onion soup to that to complete my command.

We had our first ever male teacher and almost everyone wanted to see how he handles rug hooking so we had a large class – maybe even a bit too large. Keith Kemmer’s specialty is choosing colors to make a rug look old and used. This was perfect for what I had in mind for my 2021 rug. I was going to hook on burlap, use very faded colors and do lots of repetition on my rug pattern. It was everything I said I would NEVER do. His mountain of wool all looked so colorless that I wondered how I was going to get color of some kind in my rug. He picked out 7 different wool color textures and I was surprised that we both picked out 2 of the same. There might be hope. He was also teaching us to hook farther apart and then hook closer to the next line and that will make the loops lay into each other for an older look. Almost impossible for a “packer” like me but I got the hang of it and it really works. I went from thinking this was not going to work in any shape or manner to “Yes, wow I can do this and I can see all kinds of different colors”. Towards the end of class I looked over his color selections again and saw color in a whole new way. Very eye opening!

Note to the World: The Lavender Martini has become last year’s news and the Lavender Gin Smash is currently trending in the beverage department of my life. One of my evening meals consisted of the Lavender Gin Smash and Lobster and Shrimp Flatbread. Yummy! Jackie had the Thai Chicken Flatbread and Mary had Buffalo Wings. I never really had wings before so I got the complete lesson on how to order and eat wings including ordering “naked” wings if you don’t want them with the hot stuff. We did dine one evening at Grandma’s and me who is mostly a ginger ale person, decided the 3 Rum Special was worth a try. What was I thinking? It came in a very large glass and had LOTS of rum. I kept sipping and adding water but I hardly made a dent in it. Jackie tried it and said “pure alcohol”. That got left at Grandma’s, just like Las Vegas.

We did our fancy eat out night at The Boat Club which is right along the lake in the Fitzgers Mall. This was where most of the entrees were over $30.00, but it was very good food and excellent service. They also cover your parking. It seems very hard to get a parking place in Duluth. Good thing Jackie is the master of the wheel and can park like a seasoned pro.

We had very good catered lunches at the class site and the bar and restaurant were attached so we never went hungry. Our hotel rooms were part of site also so everything was close and handy. The one thing the coffee people said was that the coffee was not good like it used to be. In fact our great driver Jackie drove 12 miles round trip on 2 different early mornings to get Caribou coffee for Mary and herself with a delightful Chai for me! Now that is a wonderful driver – roommate! Since I probably have had about 4 cups of coffee in my whole, long life I would have been all okay with no coffee. But now the Chai, that’s a different story. And I really am a ginger ale person most of the time! I do get with the spirits on special rare occasions. RUG HOOKING!