My Life as a Hooker (of Rugs)

By Sylvia Campbell  Photos by Dick Katz

In the late 1980s, my husband Dick and I  shared a small condo in Boca Grande, FL, with  another couple. We took tennis lessons,   eventually played mixed doubles, and then joined the tennis team. It was there I met several women who hooked rugs, and we attended a rug show by Preston McAdoo in the community center. I loved the rugs but thought they were too expensive. I knew I could do that myself. From a magazine I ordered a pattern, and, with no frame, I began.

One of the “hookers” was also from Cape Cod, Massachusetts where we spend the summer, and introduced me to Gloria Hautenen, a teacher in Truro. Every Wednesday, six to eight of us from Chatham, Eastham, and Orleans went together to her classes. Since we wanted more time to hook, I started a Tuesday group that met at a different house each week.

Back in Boca Grande, I asked the community center for a time slot – and thus began the Island Hookers. We learned at rug camps in Jacksonville, Naples, and Sebring. Every year, the six of us went for five days to one of these. Here we met Searsport Rugs in Placida. They held an open hooking class every Thursday. That was still not enough for many of us, so we also attended a Hook-In at the Punta Gorda Colosseum for four years. Nearly 250 women from all over the country hooked together and looked at 15 vendors offering wool, patterns, books, and yarns.

During my summer back on Cape Cod, I attended more classes and created more rugs. One summer Dick and I drove to Nova Scotia (Canada) to see vintage Canadian rugs, and another summer, we drove to a rug camp in Richardton, ND. There we stayed in an old monastery, and I took a class with Joan Reckwert. (This trip also completed my travel through all 50 states.)

At the end of 2021, I realized we would soon move to Essex Meadows and that I had more than 30 years of hooking supplies that I needed to dispose of. I invited the two owners of Searsport Rugs and three friends to come to Boca Grande and take all my books, wools, yarns, patterns, and some rugs and needlepoint pillows. The next week I went to Searsport Rugs for the last time. They had placed all my things around the studio and invited everyone to take what they could use. It was sad, but I know where all my stuff is now.

In January 2022, we made the move to Essex Meadows, where I soon met Chris Breault, a talented, highly experienced fellow hooker, and her neighbor Carol Coutts, who wanted to learn to hook. I asked Susan Carpenter for a time in the then Arts and Crafts Room (now the Multipurpose Room). We started to meet on Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Some days there are three of us, some days more, with the addition of  two to three outside  hookers. In November 2024, Carol went to Cape Cod with me for a small class  with Diane Stiffel, and she  was “hooked” too.

We hookers had a display of our work and the process of hooking rugs in the Multipurpose Room on Wednesday, February 26, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Come see our work. Maybe you will be hooked too!