The Possibilities of Rug Hooking

Yesterday, for the first time in more than twenty years, I got out my mother’s rug hooking supplies. There were two boxes. The smaller box contained some tools— an industrial-looking needle; two hooks, one still marked 99 cents; and a little machine to clamp onto the edge of a table for cutting wool into strips. Below the tools were three bundles of rolled-up burlap. The last one made me gasp. It was a little rug, partially finished, lovely work, I thought, as I inhaled the grassy scent of burlap and ran my fingers over the multi-colored nubs of wool. 

In the larger box I found the stretching frame and a treasure trove of wool in various stages of preparation, a time warp of the tweeds, plaids, and subdued neutrals of my Connecticut girlhood. Some was even bundled into loose skeins of narrow strips, the result of many hours of work.

When we’d cleaned out my mother’s house, I couldn’t get rid of these boxes and have held onto them ever since. They were from the time of my parents’ divorce, when my mother busied herself with repainting the living room, making fresh slipcovers, and learning new crafts. She and our neighbor were like Lucy and Ethel tackling a great adventure.

We kids joined in as apprentices to help my mother with her first hooking project: a circular chair pad. She was going to make a set. I loved the colors of the fabric, the subtleties of the shades of wool, and how they set each other off. Yes, she would carry on and begin anew, her four kids by her side. My mother, not yet even forty, was pretty and optimistic—at least, she was trying.

I don’t know when she started to drink. The times I couldn’t awaken her in the evenings frightened me, but everything seemed okay in the morning, except for her daily sessions gagging in the bathroom.

I learned denial. I wanted to protect her. But things did not end well for my mother. And now, looking back at these beautiful new beginnings of hooked rugs, I can only wish she hadn’t abandoned them.

(Not the original but possibly the next)