At least rug hooking is rarely frustrating, as opposed to painting. Though with this work, I had to dye the yellow background color twice. I wanted a light color, so that it would appear to lie behind the blue "frames" but still have clarity and light. The first piece of yellow wool came out much too dark, in that the yellow was too saturated, so would compete for attention with the blue and red. It turns out that the lemon yellow dye is very strong; a tiny bit goes a long way. So I dyed a new piece of wool that came out closer to what I had envisioned.
When I start a new project, I have to decide in which direction to hook the wool. Here, I am hooking the background in a random pattern, which enhances a feeling of overall-ness. The red of the loop is hooked along its length, and each blue rectangle is hooked in a different way: the largest one has the hooking go in concentric rectangles moving toward a center; the other two have 3 sided rectangles, pointing toward the bottom and top. Two others will have horizontal, and vertical, hooking. (If you click on the image, the larger image will make this easier to see.) I think these different directions of the hooked wool add some liveliness to the surface, moving the eye around and about.
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