My newest WIP

I am currently working on a Santa riding a sheep and have a reindeer and welcome piece up and coming. I am STILL looking for some white wool in my price range. I keep checking the goodwill and thrift stores as that price range is right up my alley. Yes I am among the many that are suffering due to economy so I do with what I have or what I can find at a good price. Nothing wrong with that in my book. Hehe.
Here is the progress of Santa. I hope to finish him this week as I need to do a rush job on the reindeer. May not complete the welcome piece this year but that one was for me so thats okay.

So hows that for a succession of WIP heheh. I contemplated changing the color of Santa's toy bag  just to make it more visible but have decided that time is of essence and I need to just keep going. It is okay I think. Next pic will be of the completed rug. Don't you  just love hooking. I do, but my hands sure do take a beating on the frame from the gripping wires. I have to make sure that I don't bleed on the cloth. heheh
I made a couple of changes and finished up the sheep's hat.

Just a few more changes. A red nose for Santa's Ram and some nicer eyes. Okay, Now I am working on the background and since I have no white or cream I have chosen to do a winter sky of light grey and one a shade darker. Still being new to rug hooking I hope that this is the right way of doing this

Okay, I think that's all the changes, I need to finish this piece so I can get on with the reindeer for my friends daughter who is also my friend.

It is so nice to have such great friend to make things for.

Rug hooking for Christmas

I love it but I am in need of some linen or monks cloth. Going to have to get online and do some ordering I guess. I am using some good burlap for two of the projects but they will be wall hangings so I done't have to worry about wear and tear on the backing. I sketched these myself but got some ideas from Dept 56 Krinkles for the reindeer. I don't recall where I saw the Santa but it was on the images for reindeer.

So far so good. My sweet little 100+lb lap puppy wants me to stop though. She keeps dropping her toys on my lap frame.

I just finished a penny rug of a moose but I can't believe that I gave it to her before I took a finished picture. Duh... but this is close to how the finished rug looked

I have also been making some cute crocheted pine cones. Once you add a bell and a little felt cap along with a nice Christmas ribbon you have an awesome Christmas door decoration.
I found the free pine cone pattern online http://planetmfiles.com/2008/12/18/free-crochet-pine-cone-pattern/
They are so easy but it works best if you use a heavy not too soft yarn. One with a bit of roughage so to speak.  You will find out if you try the softer and thinner yarns that they just don't have the humph that the heavy weight yarns give them.

New candle mat

I just finished this one this morning. Now on to my next project. I think I may do a little tweeking to the little angels on the tree. They need a little something more.

This is how it looks now since I tweeked the angels a little