Noodlings, my new blog, is as much for me as it is for you. I’m the kind of person who learns by scribbling, who sometimes doesn’t even understand what’s in front of her unless she has pencil in hand and can try to noodle it out on a page. I hope that each post finds a different way to intrigue and shake up our imaginations, yours and mine. With Noodlings, I share things that many of us ponder, learn, and experience with our hooking. I may simply offer up a completed rug for

Once upon a time, eleven friends liked to have rug-hooking sleepovers at a quilting retreat venue called Minglewood Lodge. And we enjoyed each other so much that we wanted to make mementos for each other of our hooking friendship. We drew eleven identical patterns--designed by Lou Ann--with eleven open blocks, one block assigned to each hooker. Then each of us designed our block and hooked it eleven times! We hooked and we hooked! We traded rugs and hooked some more. On

Back Row: Nikki, me (eyes closed), Jill, Jessica, and Nancy. Melanie, our wonderful helper, is down in front. Dennis (not pictured) elected to take our photo for us, and we appreciate it! As with all traditional and folk arts, we're keenly aware of the average age of rug hookers. Some of us--maybe a lot of us--are getting up there, and we need to teach younger people. In fact there are grants available for passing on the traditional arts to the next generation. Teaching e

It's a beautiful thing to make new friends in our "senior" years. From our first phone call, I just knew that Minnesota rug hooker, Andrea Froeber, would become a friend. We met in person at her rug hooking retreat in Detroit Lakes, quite near our family's cabin on a lake. A hail storm had taken out my windshield en route to the retreat, and Andrea introduced me to an auto-glass guy and drove me to and from! A friend indeed. I'd been hooking at the cabin for years, wishing

Hooked Braided Mat, 11” X 21”, #7-cut wool on linen, inspired by a braided rug, designed and hooked by Anita White, Overland Park, Kansas, 2007. “I found it helpful to make an actual braid with my wool strips,” Anita said, “so that I could see the angle and color sequence." Today, I'm reaching back into the archives of articles I wrote for Rug Hooking Magazine, which has now become We Like Rug Hooking, a wholly digital publication. I was a regular contributor from 2009 to 20

A formerly neglected part of the basement has become a dyeing and storage space. Look for the "BEFORE" photo, below. You won't believe it! This edition of Noodlings will be brief, because I have work to do! I'll post quickly in hopes that this story will help us all consider small spaces that seem to have NO POTENTIAL. My nearby friends know about this project, which has had our basement (and my home studio) in a jumble since mid-July. But it shows that even a dingy, narr

After many years of hooking in smaller cuts and with brighter colors, I suddenly had a hankering to make a rug that looks as old as the hills. This idea started with an antique frame. Well, it really started way back in March of 2009 with Janice Lee. Of course, many of us started hooking because we loved antique rugs and wanted to mimic that look. After I had learned to hook in September of 2008, I eagerly drove to Valley, Nebraska, every single Friday afternoon to hook at

For today's edition of Noodlings, I'm going back to my archive of articles written for Rug Hooking Magazine. Here, I wrote about Lynn Goegan's amazing rugs. Back then, I didn't keep track of when my articles were published, but given the dates that Lynn finished these rugs, I'm guessing the article ran in 2016. I don't have a print copy and the magazine no longer comes out in print, so I put together this issue of Noodlings, lest Lynn's dazzling colors fade from our minds.

Turkeys, designed and hooked by Marilyn Annin Marilyn in her living room, surrounded by her art. Last winter, I had the pleasure interviewing Marilyn Annin of Madison, Wisconsin. After hooking for a few days with some friends in Altoona, I drove on up through Dubuque and into Wisconsin to sit down with Marilyn, a painter, sculptor, and rug hooker. We talked about her artistic process, her style, and where her inspiration comes from! [Please read the entire article HERE! It

Just a quick post today, and a link to read the rest of the story! Most of you know that I'm editor of the newsletter for Midwest Rug Hookers, a chapter of ATHA. Recently, we put together five interviews of five members of Midwest Rug Hookers about interesting rugs. If you're not a subscriber to the newsletter of Midwest Rug Hookers, image below of our masthead and the opening paragraphs of the issue, feel free to write to tamaraleepavich@gmail.com. If you don't receive the

This is an older rug, Friends, hooked over several months leading up to its completion in 2013. I had been hooking for 5 years at that time. This is a special rug for me, and Cathy Stephan was my teacher. I'll include several other sepia photograph rugs here too, but I'd like to tell the story of "Lilly in the Field," a tribute to my mother and her difficult young life. This is my "Lilly of the Field." The gospels of Matthew and Luke say that God takes care of the lilies

This one is from 2024 or so, taken from the kayak. This tiny cabin has been in our family for 40 years. Mom and Dad bought it in 1986, and I have been seeking refuge here for about twice as long as I've known what to do with a rug hook. But since I started hooking, I have driven north many times each year with a carload of wool and an idea. This tiny one-bedroom cabin on the edge of a big lake, alive with waterfowl and many other creatures, has become more than a refuge. I

During our apprenticeship year, Suzanne and Becky and I talked about the art of Kintsugi as a concept we might explore in our hooking. As it turned out, I hooked something small, an experiment. By way of definition, Kintsugi is the art of mending broken things with gold. I'd seen images, like the one at left, where a pottery bowl had been mended with gold, adding value to the broken item. If we mend with glue, the item will forever be less valuable than it was before it wa

Dear Friends, this post is connected to a rug, of course, but it begins and ends with sort of a eulogy. Yesterday, I thought a lot about my Dad. It was the fourth anniversary of his death at 90 years old, and I happen to be staying in one of his favorite places, the family cabin, where he always had a project going. I like to remember the days when our family would often be aware of him in the next room or in the basement, wearing his tool belt, at work fixing something, an

This Cathy Stephan runner, with the teal border, is my second one, completed in 2023. Hello Friends, Today I have made good progress on a new star runner designed by Cathy Stephan. This is not terribly blog-worthy unless you take into account that I have already hooked this large pattern twice before. Of course, it's a beautiful pattern, but if Cathy was content to hook it once and move on, it's reasonable to ask: Why the heck am I now working on a third? THE JOY OF STAR CO

This is my finished rug, Waders. Dear Friends, I imagine we all have favorite hooking subjects. One of my themes is my parents. Dad died in 2022. My mom is 88 now. Late last year, I went through my photos of them at the cabin, finding this one of their waders--Mom in bibs, Dad in hip waders. I like it because they're having fun, but also they did certain chores in their waders: working on the rip-rap, pulling the dock out of the water, cleaning up the shoreline. So thi

A small sampling of Anita White's Long Lovelies. Back in March of 2026, I learned of an opportunity to teach a mini-class. At that moment, I happened to be admiring Anita White's "Long Lovelies," those beautiful strips of wandering color. I thought that maybe a rug hooker could use those brilliantly dyed pieces to mimic dazzling butterfly wings. Hence, the "Dream Butterfly" mini-class, where we would discuss why we find REAL butterflies so beautiful (their symmetry and dazz

Hey Fellow Wool Lovers, this edition of Noodlings is about my friend and mentor, Anita White, and how fun it is to be with her on those days when she's "in the dye pots!" I needed wool. And I needed it dyed a particular way, with several values of a color, and I needed quite a few colors. I was planning to teach a new group of portrait hookers in May, and so Anita--despite having just had surgery on her neck--agreed to dye it for me. But this time, she said, I would have

Dear Friends, This edition of Noodlings concerns “Bear in the Woods” and the dilemmas involved in hooking it. Dilemmas, it turns out, are little gifts that help us grow in our art. Here's the story... Along with the friendly hookers at Central Iowa Rug Artists (CIRA), I had a once-in-a-long-time opportunity to take a workshop with… drum roll, please… Gail DuFresne! Gail wrote a book on Geometric Rugs, and I have always loved her realistic creatures on a geometric background