The Cabin, My Humble Hooking Haven

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. It's a creative space for achieving what my friend, Sandy Breach, calls a state of flow.

But I sure do make a mess! I love to arrive and walk in to an orderly place, less than 500 square feet, but tidy. However, no matter what size project I bring, the wool sprawls all over the place, the lint piles up on the floor, and that's the price of a rug taking shape on my frame!

I think I called this rug "Lake House," from around 2021. Obviously, I emulated Deanne Fitzpatrick's houses that show the water beyond through the windows.

I have hooked the cabin more than once. This one is a whimsical version, probably from around 2022, I think. It owes a lot to those see-through houses of Deanne Fitzpatrick, where you can see right through the windows of the house to the ocean, or in my case, to the lake. The actual cabin is a one-story building over a walk-out basement, so this three-story house doesn't exist. We don't really have a blue door. The black railing, the basswood tree--I took a lot of liberties here and rearranged things so I could include them. But our place IS gray with red trim at the windows, like the rug. I didn't hook our dark shutters, because they came later on, after I'd hooked the rug.

Maybe around 2015 or so, my mom, Lilly Phillips, hooked this rug of our lake and things she loves about it--namely the birches and the loons.

My mom also hooked a cabin rug. I love her rendering, which shows the birch trees and the boulders and a pair of loons on the water. I think she found a greeting card that was her jumping-off point for this rug, but it is all hers. Mom always hooks--not to get too high-falutin'--an abstraction? She hooks her own vision of a scene and she always forces her rugs to accommodate whatever materials she has on hand--and that restriction is her artistry. Sorry to say that her macular degeneration has progressed to a point where she won't be hooking too much longer. One last rug to finish. This one of the birches and loons hangs on the cabin wall--very precious.

Here is the orderliness I find on arrival, and I'll include another of wool bedlam!

A tidy place... the calm before the onset of a wool storm!

Holy moly! This is what happens when a rug is underway. You can walk, but barely!

The harvest table can extend to accommodate the cutter, and soon after I start tearing and cutting, there is wool and lint everywhere. I keep a Swiffer handy at all times, but it's best to let the mess happen until it reaches critical mass. Once a day or so, I sort and fold and stack and wipe and mop to get ready for the next part of the rug.

Our cabin is so small that I don't often hook when I'm here with other family members. Soon, my sweet husband will arrive, and we will want to play cribbage and cook and spend more time on the water. So my big rug and all of its bags of wool will go out to the car, and I'll just keep a small hooking project inside--the one I'm hoping to use when teaching beginners at our arts center back home (watch for a post on that topic).

Mom and Emma in the spring, when it's still chilly.

Last thing... I didn't even know that there were hookers up here in my favorite part of Minnesota! But fortunately, I learned about an April retreat at the lakeside hotel in Detroit Lakes, just 35 miles or so from here. I met Andrea, who has become such a great friend and confidant. She produces that retreat and lives about 30 miles from the cabin, in Frazee. And I'm meeting more of her friends in the area, too. I didn't dream that I'd have a hooking community up here--but it seems to be happening. And I'm so grateful.

I'll include a few more photos below, friends, and thank you for visiting my tiny hooking haven and reading my Noodlings today. What is your hooking haven? Feel free to share in the Comments section. Until next time, take care and Happy Hooking!

Mike, my husband, doing his cabin thing.

I took this photo from the kayak. For much of spring and summer, we have a group of pelicans at the narrows, where they sit on the rocks. I disturbed them, and they're about to fly or cruise away from me.

Last year, we had a family of 9 swans--two adults and 7 babies. Five of the young survived, and here are the cygnets, still gray in color. As adults, they turn white.

A minuscule living room, but it does contain many artifacts from our 40 years in this beloved place. A little bit of Dad's ashes are contained in a Burma Shave jar on the shelves.