Never Enough Stars
Updated: Sep 16
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 CONSTRUCTION
I think it has to do with how Cathy taught me to construct my stars. Each star is its own little project. For each one, Cathy says, you "make a bouquet of eight woolens." This time around, it seems, most of my stars have either a dominant color or two colors that look nice and that balance or add to the scheme of the whole rug. (Photo below, ten stars complete so far.)
The stars are constructed in layers. You start by outlining the eight-pointed star with your first wool--see the orange outline at left. Then you take your second color and contour within that first outline. You'll end up with six of these stars-within-stars, and then your circle and the fill color that surrounds the circle. Those are your eight different woolens in a star.
THE TWINKLE IN THE STARS
In every star, I include pixelated woolens--the checks, the herringbones and the hounds tooth woolens, the plaids, the ones that bring a twinkle to the surface of the rug. I used to wonder what on earth I would ever do with such wool. They seemed too loud, but now I keep them in a special place--for constructing my stars.
Sometimes I choose something with no texture at all, just because the color is right-- but not often. Almost everything in a star has some texture to it.
CUT SIZE
The stars are hooked in an 8-cut, and the backgrounds (in various darks) are 8.5. The wavy lines that separate the blocks are hooked in an 8.5. The circles at intersections (some are half circles) can be hooked in either 8 or 8.5.
OFF AND ON, OR JUST ON! This is an easy rug to pull out and work on for a day or two. You can get a star or two completed, which is quite satisfying. And that's how I usually approach these runners, slowly, off and on, and over several months, between other projects. But this time, I'm coming off a period of working on difficult adaptations for the first part of 2026, and I AM LOVING the familiar challenge of constructing stars. I brought my runner to the cabin with a carload of wool. I am in star heaven.
WHAT COLOR PLAN? Last week, I joined a group of Minnesota hookers at someone else's cabin (Andrea drove me to Linda's daughter's cabin where we hooked with Debbie, Sharon, and Sue right on their lake near Nevis, MN.). Linda asked me something about my color plan. Color plan? "I just take it star by star," I answered. But that's not really the whole story.
First, knowing the border color in advance has always helped me choose everything else in the rug. This border will be lime-green, so my wavy outline is naturally a red-orange (complement). Most of the stars incorporate teal, green, gold, purple and orange. (But in smaller amounts, there are reds and blues in this rug too. They blend.)
Secondly, I have a favorite palette, and it's in that area of the triads--the secondary and tertiary triads on the color wheel. Seems like the majority of my woolens are already in this color ballpark.
I'm not certain about how I'm treating the color of my circles--those circles that appear at intersections (not those at the center of each star). So far, I've been hooking them all in some version of green, including blue-greens. But I may change some of them.
MY FIRST STAR RUNNER
Back in 2016, I made my first runner to look as much like Cathy's as I could, including her red border. But I got a hankering in early 2020's to hook another one, this time with a teal border. And now, I've gotten started on one with a lime-green border. I bought the green rygarn (the strong yarn to bind it with) years ago. knowing I had a third one in me.
NEVER ENOUGH STARS
Believe it or not, I've been dreaming of a purple border. I almost feel that I should buy a couple of these patterns from Cathy, so that I never run out of stars. Thanks for reading my Noodlings, friends, and happy hooking!
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