Give a Gift
Cycles of Creating
“Everything old is new again.” So reads the tin of metal-polishing cloths that I recently used to bring a shine back to an old brass door knocker for a friend’s housewarming gift. The phrase always sparks a deep satisfaction in me when I pull the tin out of my cleaning cupboard—probably because it offers a confident answer to one of my biggest, most fearful questions: is what is past gone forever? Must life and beauty always fade, or can they be restored?
When it comes to rugs, the answer—as are many answers in life—is complicated. We know that the rug our great-grandmother hooked cannot be recreated in the same way with the same materials ever again. However, using the powers of observation, creativity, and care, we can revive our ancestor’s design with new materials today. Two articles in this issue address this process. In the first, on page 30, Pam Upton walks readers through her mission to reproduce an antique rug by an unknown maker; in the second, on page 36, Vicki Cameron adopts the mission of recreating her mother-in-law’s beloved hooked rug.
I’ve heard that time is less like a line, or even a circle, than it is like a spiral. As we progress along the path, we reach the same areas again and again—never exactly alike and necessarily altered by change. This autumn will be another autumn in a long, long history of autumns. At the same time, your experience of this season will be unique to your season of life, your current ways of doing and being, and what’s going on around you. It is the same, familiar song, with new harmonies. So it is when you endeavor to recreate an antique rug, or hook a classic pattern, or use the bags of noodles passed down to you by a friend.
Another cycle in the rug-hooking world concerns Celebration. September 1 marks the release of Celebration 36 and the opening of our Readers’ Choice Poll for this year’s rugs. Visit welikerughooking.com/book-club to obtain your digital copy of the book, and vote for your favorite rugs at pollunit.com/polls/celebration36. While Celebration 36 is in a new, digital format, it carries the tune of decades of Celebration. I hope that you’ll also consider adding your own harmony to Celebration 37 by entering a rug in the competition. See page 6 for more details.
Cheers,
