Welcome to our group website!

In May of 2012, the North Bay rug hooking group hosted the Ontario Hooking Craft Guild Annual Conference. It was the first time that this conference had been held so close to Sudbury, so Rugs on the Rocks rose to the challenge of supporting the North Bay group. We sewed give-away treats. We prepared initial hook-in packages. We organized the silent auction that would raise funds for the guild over the weekend. We planned the display of the theme rugs, the theme being “All about Bugs” and helped to organize the registrations of display rugs, both for the conference theme and for our group’s submissions. With the help of Rugs on the Rocks, the conference was a great success. Even though many of the delegates from Southern Ontario mentioned that they thought they were coming to “a quaint little village in the north” (North Bay), the conference had: the best turnout ever, the most display rugs registered ever in its history, and most money achieved at the silent auction ever. Yeah Northern Ontario!!

For our part, many thanks to Marion Pitkethly and Camilla Yahnke for organizing the silent auction, to Nancy Barber for organizing the theme rugs, and to Tanya Knodel for helping with the display of our group’s rugs. To our credit, Nancy won the “Best in Theme” award for her 3-D bugs.

We ended the year with a lovely gathering, hook-in, at the home of Donna Gordon, in June.

In September 2012 we started up again with four new members, one of whom had been at the Annual and who had completed a rug BEFORE she came to our group because she had been so inspired. We have met each week since and have continued to support each other all the long winter.

We held our 5th Hook-in on May 9th 2013 at the Parkside Centre. We hosted members from North Bay, Powassan, Manitoulin Island, and Whitefish. We had a lovely day with good food, thanks to Sylvia and her staff. Rittermere Hurst Fields, our supplier, came to the north like the Hudson’s Bay Company in the days of old, bringing lots of new supplies of wool, rug patterns and hooking tools. Thank you for helping to make our hook-in such a success.

We made beautiful pins with leftover bits of cut wool to give to our attendees and these were very well received. Rug hooking has a lot to do with re-cycling! We also had some door prizes and a few people from the general public dropped in to see what hooking is all about. It was a fun day.

The 2013 annual conference for the Ontario Rug Hooking Guild was held in Kingston, On, May 24-26. Some of our members attended and represented Rugs on the Rocks from Sudbury. The next annual conference for Ontario Rug Hooking Guild will be held at Durham College in Oshawa on May 23-25, 2014.

We are still meeting, until June, and new members are always welcome. Come hook!