Many of us took up a domestic art or two during the pandemic—cooking, knitting, gardening—but most of us can’t say that we grew our hobby into a business.
Photography courtesy of Crystal Rugs.
“They were almost always working on something when we’d visit, with a rug set up on a hooking frame,” remembers Crystal, who tried the handicraft as a teen but “felt intimidated and insecure, as teens often are.” Given her birthright, it was almost inevitable that she would find her way to rug hooking again.
But rug hooking quelled that feeling by checking all my boxes: It gave me creative freedom, used sustainable, hard wearing materials that could fully biodegrade given the right environment, and it was a craft that I really felt connected to,” says Crystal, who makes her rugs in her home studio in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
Crystal’s designs have folk art roots but feel modern thanks to bright and unexpected palettes.
“I’m drawn to a playful look that embraces warm color, texture, subtle imperfection—or, as I like to think of it, the mark of an individual craftsperson pushing against machine-made reproductions.”
In addition to flower motifs, Crystal often incorporates domesticated animals like cats and horses into her pieces.
Like her grandparents, Crystal dyes the wool herself.
All of Crystal’s hooked pieces are made without the use of adhesives, which, according to her website, “eat away at wool fibers, and make cleaning, repairing, and restoring extremely difficult.”
Crystal also makes pillows and these nifty wool trivets.
Crystal setting up a new rug on her frame. She sources all her wool from the Canadian Maritimes and mixes her own dyes on the stovetop.