On Gouache & Rug Hooking

I discovered rug hooking about 10 years ago and fell in love with the lovely expensive wools used by traditional rug hookers. This is not latch hook (with acrylic yarn ... shudder) that you see at craft stores; I did do that back in elementary school, btw. I use as is wools, hand dyed and some up-cycled from the days when I obsessively shopped at thrift stores.

I've made rugs on and off over the years and have a nice pile of unfinished projects. I finished this one on New Year's Eve. It's hooked with 100% wool strips (in size 8.5 for you hookers) on linen foundation. I'm interested to see how it holds up in front of our fireplace. It's -2 degrees out right now and we use the fireplace ALL the time in the winter.

I love working with wool and plan to design more of my own patterns this year

Simply Leaves rug detail approx 3'x5'

6x9 gouache on watercolor paper

View from Crested Butte, CO

What does this have to do with Gouache? Gouache is a watercolor paint, but opaque rather than transparent. By painting in this style I can convert this to a pattern that can be hooked with these wool strips. Make sense now? This also makes me happy because I always want to try something new.

Thanks for taking the time to follow and read. XO ... except we can't really XO so remember it's the thought that counts. Lisa

lehut@comcast.net

http://www.lisahut.com

@lisahutart on instagram

"Let the beauty of what you love be what you do." Rumi

Welcome 2021!

2020 Highlights

- My family and friends are healthy, or recovering if they did get sick

- I finally got my website fully functional (it took a pandemic!) you can now buy online at lisahut.com

- The East Troublesome wildfire burned 193k acres in Grand County this fall; my home was saved by firefighters. If you didn't follow along there are pictures from October on my Instagram at @lisahutart

- We did a 5 week camping trip in January/February to Florida, right before the COVID shutdown. After restrictions were lifted, we took some short camping trips to Telluride, Crested Butte, Fruita and Aspen through the summer and fall

- I raced to Guiry's Art Supplies and stocked up on paint as everyone else was hoarding toilet paper

- "Life" taught me to never take anything for granted and appreciate everything!

About the Art

Yesterday morning I looked out the window at the snowy trees with Table mountain in the background. Table mountain burned during the wildfire, but I painted the aspen in the background as they used to be. I'll let you know in the next post why I'm painting in Gouache.

6x9 Gouache on 140# watercolor paper

Wishing you Love, Happiness and Laughter this year. Laughter sounds like a really good goal. I intend to start blogging again, it helps keep me focused. I'm mostly posting art to my instagram and FINALLY, the website is updated! I hope to continually update and put stuff for sale weekly (ok, realistically maybe every other week). Always with gratitude, Lisa

lisahutart@gmail.com

http://www.lisahut.com

@lisahutart on instagram

"Let the beauty of what you love be what you do." Rumi

2020 Less Quantity - More Quality

New Year - New Projects!

Happy New Year!

In January of 2018 - I posted oh ... about 20 or so New Year's resolutions - so full of energy, but still knowing I would only accomplish, 5 maybe? It was more like 3.

In January of 2019 - I didn't even bother to post goals, just my gratitude and affection for you all. And a little goal to work on "balance". Hmmm.

Here's January of 2020 - and I'm currently suffering with a 4 week cold/sinus infection that just won't go away. I blame it on doing too much and not having a strong immune system to fight anything off at the end of a busy year. So, I'm striving to do even less in 2020. Less quantity and more quality. Hopefully that means you'll see more art ... it makes sense in my head.

2019 was good year for us. My husband semi-retired in June which allowed us time to travel in our camper. The highlight was a 40 day camping trip across the PNW and visiting 7 national parks.
My son & his fiancé moved back to Denver.
My daughter graduated from college and also moved back to Colorado.
I only made half the mittens that I did in 2018, but still raised a lot of $$ for the Alzheimer's Association. My art shows went well and sales are keeping me in paint.

Here's to an artful year wishing you all good health, happiness and kindness all around.

Always with Gratitude, Lisa

Long Road Trip: Montana and Wyoming

We love Montana, even though it's raining. I'm way behind in keeping up with our travels, let's see if I can catchup without boring you to death.

Mama black bear in Yellowstone

zoomed in on this one to show you the claws!

The same day we saw the bear at Glacier NP (previous post) we spent the morning at Many Glacier and took a boat ride on Swiftcurrent Lake and Lake Josephine. We did a short hike to the falls where I could sketch.

waterfall

Sitting at the boat dock

Since it was raining in Glacier we headed south towards Missoula. We had some bad weather; lightning, rain and wind so traveling was slow. We camped on the Clark Fork River at Beavertail Hill State Park. It was a nice spot and we finally scored cherries at a stand along Flathead Lake. Fishing was a bust for Meriwether with the rain. We had an unplanned stop at Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park where he got a mountain bike ride in. We camped south of Livingston, MT at a KOA. I was desperate to do laundry and we had a nice dinner in Livingston, at a real restaurant. Then we spent the next 3 days traveling in and around Yellowstone putting mileage in on the truck. The second bear sighting was yesterday and we got up at 4 am today to head to Lamar Valley to see wolves. We did see one but it was too far away for a good photo.

Looking down from the Calcite Springs Overlook

we watched a mama bear and cub below eating berries

So fun to watch her

The cub stayed mostly hidden under other bushes

Bison grunt a lot (digestive problems?), have a lot of nose snot

and I have a lot of bison pooping photos

... you don't want to see those

Saw hundreds of Bison, and cars ... trying to get around the bison

This particular backup was about an hour delay

Tomorrow we head towards the Tetons because we think we can squeeze in one more National Park.

Long Road Trip: Signs and The Down Side

I love driving through small towns and seeing old signs. Occasionally, it's a new sign made to look old but easy to tell the difference; the old ones are actually falling apart.

The Blue & White Motel in Kalispell, MT

Rainbow Bar - somewhere in Montana

On another note, several of my friends have expressed envy over my road trip. Below are a few highlights to make you appreciate your spacious home. Note: I am either freezing (like in Frozen), or burning up (Jack, Jack from the Incredibles) as illustrated below. Likely has nothing to do with camping but just thought I'd mention it.

- People are nice everywhere; except for the guy who flipped us off last week for driving too slow.

- A squirrel vomited on my picnic table, Berries-in-Goo, A la carte.

- I saw a mouse, that always ruins my day.

- Then I saw a dead bird. This was the first day I wanted to go home.

- You can't mind when leaves and pine needles keep falling in your food when cooking outdoors.

- Once, an ant crawled out from my salad, I flicked him away and kept eating. Really.

- I'm getting a little tired of dump stations - they are gross.

- I finally know the difference between potable and non-potable water.
  You don't want to mix those up.

- I Kayaked for a whole 10 minutes and have a blister on my thumb the size of a quarter. Weak.

- A bag of flour exploded in the camper.

- I baked chocolate chip cookies in the camper oven.
  It took 3 hours because I could only bake 4 cookies at a time.

- I just battled 2 wasps in the camper. Roadkill, don't even want to talk about it.

Overall a great trip, still have a couple weeks to go. You just can't let the little things get you down.

Long Road Trip: Barn, Barn, Barn, Barn ... Bear!

We have a game in the car kind of like duck, duck, goose. Ed drives, I have the camera, lens cap off, ready to go and if I'm not actively watching out the window (on the phone, fetching snacks, etc.) Ed yells Barn! If it's on my side, his hand and finger are fluttering dangerously close to my face. So as you can imagine, I have a lot of really bad photos but also reference shots for lots of barn paintings. And sometimes I miss them. Then we discuss if he yelled Barn! too late or if I'm too slow. We've been in the car a long time.

Only once has he said "Don't you have enough pictures of barns yet?".

I Love Barns

I will not win a National Geographic Award for this shot

So now about the bear. We are camping on the west side of Glacier NP and spent Saturday on the east side looking for bears. Finally, in the afternoon we got lucky. A flock of humans along the side of the road had already spotted her. Many people drove up, snapped a picture then on they went.

A couple rangers had to manage the people, as people are idiots when it comes to wildlife. Patience paid off for us. We stood in the drizzling rain and watched this beautiful black bear pop in and out of the bushes for over an hour, grazing huckleberries on the hillside. She zig zagged across the hill and eventually came closer and closer to the road. So fun watching her through binoculars and Meriwether's scope - the photos don't do it justice. She was getting very close to the road (and us), the rangers were thinking she wanted to cross the road and tried moving people back, some tween started screaming she was scared (in a fake loud dramatic fashion)  ... one photographer blatantly walked past where the ranger told us not to go, crossed the road and was inching up the hillside towards the bear, so the ranger had to chase him, then the crowd proceeds to walk where they told us not to ... sigh ... time for us to leave.

It was a great hour. Thanks, bear.

Long Road Trip: A surprising Twisp!

Today's Twist in Twisp. Say that 10 times. It all started with a sign in Winthrop, WA that said "RV Parking". So we parked, had lunch along the river and wandered up to town. It was a cute town and I found handmade wool rugs from a local artist (Katie Swanson) made from Pendleton wool selvages. My heart was beating a mile a minute. Hand woven wool rugs. Reasonable prices. I now own a new rug. She told us all about Twisp, another town down the road. In between there was a pretty campground right along the river so we stopped ... and stayed for 4 days.

Meriwether was in heaven, doing all the things we came for. Biking, fly fishing, SUP and Kayaking.
 He got a ride from a fellow camper that dropped him off a few miles up the road so he could float back to our camp spot. Camping along the Methow River was perfect.

He needed longer than the record breaking 15 minutes I spent out on the water with him. I got a blister on my thumb, so ya know ... back to painting I go. The next day I dropped him off 8 miles up the road on the SUP for a 3 hour adventure.

I painted, blogged and hung out by the river. Even had time to break out the acrylics that I brought and do a little experimental art.

WIP, inspired by the ferns and greenery of the Northwest

I started this one with stencils and will finish when I get home

Acrylic on canvas

There was a Brewery ... enough said

A view from across the river

pen and ink watercolor

Great camp and painting spot

We also drove up to Sunshine Mountain Lodge - I'm keeping a list of beautiful

lodges to visit one day and this spot makes the list