A latch hook rug 50 years in the making

This is a bit of a project. But understand where I’m coming from on this one.

I wanted to craft another latch hook rug, so that I could enter two different rugs in two different competitions this year, and then flip the rugs to enter them in the other respective competitions. I already had my covered bridge latched hook rug earmarked for Altamont and the Big E; now it’s time to see if I can quickly craft a rug for the New York State Fair and/or the Durham Fair.

Mind you, I started this project at the tail end of March.

Procrastination, thy name is Chuck Miller.

And to do so, I found this latched hook rug project from a 1977-era kit.

The kit was manufactured by a company named Bernat, and – ooh, this looks cool. Latch hook on the top, fringe on the bottom.

I’ll order it on eBay and get to latching. I figure this will arrive in plenty of time, I’ll just set aside a few weekends, bind this up, and it will look impressive.

The project arrived – and I opened the package, ready to use the yarn inside and craft this bad boy.

it was only then that I discovered that the “project” contained NO YARN.

None.

Somewhere there’s a note that says “YARN SOLD SEPARATELY,” but that note must have been listed separately.

Oh. It’s listed there. In the fine print. Yeesh.

This is that same feeling when you order the X-ray spectacles from the back of the comic book, so that when you put them on you can see through that cute girl’s clothing. And you find out it’s just a cardboard cutout of sunglasses with no see-through powers, and the only thing you’ve learned is to never order toys from the back of comic books.

No matter. Maybe I can source the rug strands and go from there.

Except …

These don’t look like standard Herrschner’s colors. The code number doesn’t match up.

Apparently Bernat had its own latch hook yarn sub-brand, called Tabriz. And after searching for Tabriz yarn, all I discovered was that the Tabriz yarn I needed was hella expensive.

Of course it was. I’m looking for 50-year-old skeins. And that’s not even factoring the cut strands I’ll need for this project. Ugh.

I looked at the yarn descriptions. Gunmetal? Cinnamon? Sea Shell?

That’s not going to help me. I only have a few months to put this together.

So I went with a personal executive decision.

No law says I can’t swap out colors as needed.

Heck, no law says I can’t use other colors instead of gunmetal and sea shell.

A quick trip to Michael’s Art Supplies …

And I’m walking out of there with skeins of fuschia and neon yellow and safety orange.

Yep, not only am I going to make a swank looking latched hook rug …

This thing is going to react to ultraviolet light. Perfect to hang next to that painting of velvet Jesus. Or velvet Lassie. Or velvet El Santo.

Normally I would buy the pre-cut yarn strips from Herrischner’s and work from there. But I have no time to wait for Herrschner’s and their shipping service.

A quick trip to Amazon, and I purchased this.

What we have here is a little rounded wooden stick. One wraps the yarn around the stick, and then, one cuts the yarn strands along that wooden groove. A pair of household scissors will do the trick.

The plan now … cut the yarn when convenient, and then hook it into the canvas. And where I had to originally deal with gunmetal and sea shell colors, I’m going with fuscia and neon yellow.

And boy oh boy, am I moving in a decent pace. An hour or two each day, and I’m already up to …

Well …

I’m up to this so far.

I’m maybe about 45% of the way complete. And I have a feeling I can finish this up by the end of the month.

Which will be a really neato alternate latch hook rug canvas for Competition Season 2026.

And working on a project like this helps reduce my stress.

Trust me, stress reduction is a wonderful thing. 😀