LEARN A NEW TECHNIQUE USING ARRAIOLOS WOOL AND PRODUCE YOUR OWN UNIQUE CARPETS, RUGS, TAPESTRIES, CUSHIONS, HANDBAGS AND MUCH MORE!

This book is an instruction manual giving detailed step-by step guidance and lots of practical tips that stem from the author's personal experience.

With its many illustrations and colour photographs, it will accompany you from your first small locker hooked item through to much larger, more advanced and complex projects, and offers many ideas to express your own creativity and embellish and personalise your home.

Look forward to many hours of pleasure working with this new application of Arraiolos Portuguese Carpet Wool!.

Quote from Foreword:

..."I have been an arts/crafts/fibres addict since I was a little girl growing up in Germany, learning to knit, crochet, weave, etc.

Later, living on the Orkney Isles at the far north of Scotland, I taught myself to spin sheep's wool on a "kit assembly" spinning wheel, with the help of the public library and any and all books on crafts, and a lot of patience.

Yet many years later, now living in the Algarve, Portugal, I was still spinning, not only sheep's wool but many other fibres. I believe every member of the family has in his/her possession an article of clothing that I handspun and knitted or crocheted, so I started to look for new ideas.

The local sheep's wool was my next area of experimentation, and I started to combine my handspun with a little known technique called LOCKER HOOKING, and that is how our bedroom carpets were made.

WEAVING DIRECTION OF CANVAS

New challenges required again! I was persuaded to take part in my first Portuguese craft fair and attended with a fair bit of trepidation, nothing to sell (yet!), but my trusty spinning wheel to work live, lots of "feely" bits of luxury fibre, our bedroom carpets, my husband's handspun/handknit sweaters, and my then not-at-all-adequate Portuguese. Well, it was sink or swim, but to my surprise I swam; and there was a lot of interest in what I was doing, especially the live spinning demonstration. So I carried on.

Several more fairs later (I was selling my natural sheep's wool locker hooked rugs) a client asked if I could make him a coloured rug. I said yes, of course, not having the slightest idea how to achieve this. So I went home and, of course, experimented with Arraiolos wool (high twist, 3-ply, Portuguese carpet wool, available in 350 colours, mothproofed, and colourfast). In Portugal this wool is being used in traditional rugs embroidered onto a jute backing in an oblique cross-stitch, a technique which originated in the Portuguese town of Arraiolos and has since become known as the Arraiolos stitch.

This experiment to marry locker hooking with Arraiolos wool was the birth of LOCKER HOOKED ARRAIOLOS WOOL CARPETS, and after adapting the technique to the intricacies of Arraiolos wool, patenting my GYU, coming up with the beam and trestle arrangement, and many carpets and happy clients later, here I am putting it down on paper.

VIEW OF THE TOP OF WORKED STITCHES

I have had many enquiries from people wanting to learn this new technique, and I hope that this book will explain, in detail and with lots of tips that come from personal experience, how you can, in your own home, produce lots of hardwearing, colourful carpets, rugs, cushions, tapestries, and much more.

Do have a read first, the bits that you do not understand will become clear when you start working.

VIEW OF THE TOP OF WORKED STITCHES, UPPER THREADS TUNNELLED UNDER, WAITING TO BE CUT OFF.

This book is an instruction manual, but it is also a reference manual that you will want to go back to time and time again, whenever you need a tip, refresh a certain point, or have a problem. Usually, re-reading will solve the conundrum.

CANVAS HOLDER

I intended this book to be used as a guideline only. It is up to you, the reader, to use your own creativity in producing your own unique works of art and your own heirlooms, and I hope you will find as much satisfaction in being creative as I do, and will be extremely proud to show off your finished masterpiece!

Happy Locker Hooking!

SCALLOPING

- Quote from Epilogue -

...The reader knows by now, having come to the end of this book, that I am always looking for new challenges in this exciting craft of ours.

CROCHET FINISH - EXTRA CORNERING CHAIN

I am thinking: bedcoverings sculpted to the size of the bed, maybe folds at the corners; cushions to match, bed headboards, either incorporated or free-hanging, cushioned or not; curtain pelmets straight or shaped, attached with velcro,

Etc., etc., etc.

BE CREATIVE!"

- END OF QUOTE -

LARGE TAPESTRY

- QUOTE FROM "TROUBLESHOOTING" -

You have left your work on the floor and the cat/dog has got a hold of it and pulled the last top threads out of alignment.
- Undo the offending stitches by pulling out a section of locking thread and then pull out the top threads from the bottom.

The first and last stitches worked with the hook are not as level as the inbetween ones.
- Try to hold the hook more level to the canvas. If the last stitch on your hook is always lower than the next one you pick up, use your fingernails, pinch the 3 threads of the low stitch (all of then) and gently lift them. This will even out the stitch height and will disguise where you finished and started a "hookfull".

A square is missed.
- If noticed early enough, undo by pulling out the locking thread back to the missed square, pull out the top threads from underneath and start again.
- If work has progressed farther, and undoing is not an option, cut 3 threads of about 15cm or so, use a thick darning needle or your crochet hook, and pull the 3 threads through the missed square, on one side of the existing locking thread, and then down again, through the same square, on the other side of the locking thread, so covering it. On the back of the canvas, darn in the loose ends. Check that the threads in this replacement stitch are aligned properly.

Stitches are not lying parallel.
- Check that you are untwisting your top threads regularly by either letting your shuttles dangle and unwind or starting your GYU. Make sure that your bottom hand GUIDES AND SMOOTHES the 3 threads before you pull up the stitch.

Canvas weave dislodges and has to be manually pushed back onto the worked row. - You are not working with the weaving direction of the canvas. See Chapter 5.5.

Started off a new locking thread, and pulled it right through your hookfull of stitches.
- Happens to me a lot. Try to go back with your locker hook and pick up the empty stitches. If this is not possible, pull out the top thread from underneath and start again. Next time, watch for the end of the locking thread before it disappears under the loops.

Only pulled up 2 threads instead of 3.
- Check at the back of the canvas, the escaped thread with be visible.

Only one ball of a particular colour left.
1. Wind 3 small balls of similar size and put them into your GYU.
2. For shuttles: Take a length of thread off your ball. Unite its end with the centre-pull thread AND the outer thread of the ball and wind these 3 threads onto your shuttle."

- END OF QUOTE -