BIO:
Heather Ritchie lives in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales in England. She has been hooking since 1971, when a local farmer’s wife showed her how to make rugs to warm up her old stone cottage. Her first rugs were made from lisle stockings on old sacks. Many years later she was introduced to fine hooking and wool dyeing. From then on, she was thrilled to be able to replicate the beautiful country scenes of her beloved Dales.
In 1997, Heather was a student at the Green Mountain Rug School in Vermont. She found she was spending all of her free time demonstrating proddy techniques. At that time, few American rug makers knew about this technique. Heather uses proddy to introduce mixed textures into her work. Many friends were made in Vermont, and soon after, Ann Ashworth rang her from America. Ann invited Heather back to Vermont to teach a class the following year. Heather was so excited - it was like winning the lottery! That was the start of Heather’s many years of traveling to teach in many US states, Canadian provinces and Australia too, including Sauder Village in 2009. She reckons the students like to listen to her soft northern England dialect. Heather also has a video and book called Rug Hooked Story Telling.
In 2004, Heather read about the plight of blind people in the African country of Gambia. The blind were having such a dreadful time, with poverty and begging as a big part of their lives. As a former social worker and occupational therapist, Heather felt compelled to travel to Africa to see if she could help them. So, with her daughter Chrissie (who is a rehabilitation officer for the blind) they set off to Gambia to see if they could teach them rug hooking. Hooking enabled the blind to provide for their families by selling their rugs. Rug Aid (a not-for-profit organization) was started. Heather’s goal was to make a difference to some of the poorest communities in Africa by providing people with the opportunity to bring about change in their lives “from the bottom up”. Every year since, Heather and Chrissie travel to work with the blind students. A workshop was established, where students could meet, work, and sell to the public. Rug making is helping blind families pay for essentials, like food and school fees.