Sara-Beth Black

Rug Hooking

I moved to the Asheville, NC area from Miami 11 years ago. My Husband Jan owns Harry’s Body and Fender on Smokey Park Hwy. I have two teenagers in school in Asheville – causing many gray hairs!

My grandmother Verna taught me to hook. The memories of her collecting wool clothing, taking the skirt or jacket apart, washing the pieces and hanging each piece of the garment to dry still goes thru my mind when I am doing the same thing, except that I use a clothes dryer rather than a clothes line. After she passed away, I continued learning different techniques from many McGowan-Certified teachers in rug hooking. I try to attend a couple of workshops in a year, finding that each teacher has her/his own approach to hooking, that offers something new and different. I learned how to dye wool at the Pro Chemical and Dye plant in Massachusetts, using the acid dyes, and I have also dyed with natural dyes, using roots, berries, etc.