Beauty? the rugs in the Cum Rya catalog are fabulous.
Pain? I tossed more than one of these catalogs 40 years ago and now I’m paying $30 to own one. Sigh.
A few more details than the product description provides: this book is a 40-page full-color catalog of Rya rug kits, available in varied colorways and multiple sizes. The copy is written in four languages, one of which is translated-English that’s easy enough to follow. There’s also a four-page bibliography (?) in one of the Scandinavian languagues.
I’m pretty sure my mother still has the Sunflower on page 32; the poppy that i made must have been in a different catalog.
It would seem that Rya has disappeared from the handicraft scene; pity. The pictures in this catalog could inspire you, and do inspire me, to make another one. They also point out that my initial design will fail–Rya is not an art form for sharp corners and exacting delinations. It’s shaggy, and wants softer transitions. Back to the graph paper. While the “official” product description states that this book is NOT a how-to, the truth is most moderately experienced fiber workers could make a Rya using the instructions in the book. (It’s a Gordian knot on a special canvas; historically, the pile was knotted while the canvas was being woven on the loom but you can buy the canvas on the web now. Allow 10 pounds of pile fiber for 24 square feet of finished rug. I’m using scads of crewel yarns inherited from someone else’s mother’s stash, three-strands per knot.)
By the way, a friend tells me that some Scandinavian languages don’t distinguish between the “c” and the “g,” so you may see the same book listed as “Gum Rya.” If so, the reference is most likely to this book rather than to anything available from the huge store in Moscow.
