Prince Edward Island’s Historic Rug Hooking Connections to the New England States

21 Mar

 While I am not much of a traveller myself, I do know that this is a great tour for rug hookers of Prince Edward Island and the rest of the Maritimes.  People who went on last year’s tour tell me that they couldn’t believe how much rug hooking they saw in such a short time. http://www.targettours.ca/destination/72/New-England-Rug-Hookers-Tour

 This tour gves me the opportunity to talk about my interest in the rug hooking history of PEI.

Pastimes PEI gallery wall

My quest to fnd out more about the history of rug  hooking started a long time ago – when I started hooking n 1975.  If you are familiar with the history and culture of rug hooking, you will know that it seems to have ‘started’ in the Canadian Maritimes, Newfoundland and Labrador, eastern Quebec and the New England states. No one knows for sure because, like many things that women did in in the household, it did not make it into the history books. (That subject can be left for another wntery day.)  I can tell you that just as rug hooking culture runs deep here on the Island, so does it just south of the border, not far from here. 

 Much of the rich PEI rug hooking history has not been recorded.  Heather and I  interviewed just a few Island rug hookers way back in 1991 as part of an art class we were taking at University of Prince Edward Island. In 1999 we created a slide show about the people who hooked on PEI.  All of this was before technology – we used a plain old 1990s camera and took real ‘slides’ of the rugs and the women…. but at least we did that much way back then. I promise to keep you updated on our quest to gather up more Island rug hooking history.. if you are nterested.  We have presented our new version of the presentation to a couple of local rug hooking groups but it is still a work in progress.  The more people tell us about our history, the more we all will come to know and appreciate our past rug hookers.

Meanwhile, online, you can read Anne Nicholson’s detailed and very informative series of topics on the culture of PEI rug hooking with separate articles on some of  the people who hooked great rugs: http://www.gov.pe.ca/firsthand/index.php3?number=43723&lang=E

Jack and I have to get a move on today and finish a little rug for a new little beginner kit called 1-fish 2-fish using two new Dorr wool textures and plain Dorr blue – all while we watch the Canadian women’s curling team in the World Curling event:

Jack is supposed to be helping me hook the sample for the new beginners kit....

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