Get hooked: Rug-making craft event to be held at Shaler North Hills Library

Some people retire to play golf or travel.

Fritz Mitnick left her job because she was hooked on another pastime — literally.

Mitnick does rug hooking, a craft where rugs are made by pulling loops of yarn or woven wool cut into strips through a backing or foundation cloth.

“I retired early to make more rugs, and I was not joking,” said Mitnick of Indiana Township. “It’s the ultimate in creativity.”

It all began for Mitnick when she was at meeting for a garden club at the Shaler Township Municipal Building. A woman there asked Mitnick if she wanted to buy a raffle ticket to win a rug. On the ticket was information about a rug hooking show at Northland Public Library in McCandless.

Mitnick attended the show and she won the rug, which she still has in her home. She also found out there was a Pittsburgh Rug Hooking Guild.

“I was so overwhelmed by the rugs I was seeing, I went to their next meeting,” Mitnick said.

She’s been hooked ever since.

“This is what I wanted to do all my life,” Mitnick said.

She and other members of the guild plan to attend Woolworks 2025 at Shaler North Hills Library, an event where there will be between 150 and 200 hooked pieces on display. The featured artist will be Kathleen Sherwood of Hookstown. She will have about 50 pieces on display.

Attendees will vote for the three they like best.

There will be small things for sale such as wool flower pins, and there will be wool for sale that was donated to the group from a woman in Erie.

Pittsburgh-based Christine Manges, a respected braider, also will be at the show. Manges will be working in a corner and people can watch her create.

“She makes stunning pieces,” said Ann Mertz, president of the Pittsburgh Rug Hooking Guild.

Guests can buy a raffle ticket to win a rug that was created by some of the guild members.

The event is free and open to the public.

The show has received financial support from the National Guild of Pearl K. McGown Rug Hookrafters. McGown was instrumental in the evolution of the craft of rug hooking to a tapestry art form.

The guild makes a donation to the library.

“The library is wonderful to host us,” said Mitnick, who joined the guild in 1997.

The library is a great partner, said Mertz, who leads 39 members in the Pittsburgh Rug Hooking Guild, which was formed in 1982 to promote traditional rug hooking.

Monthly meetings are held from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on the second Monday of each month, September through May, at Memorial Park Church, 8800 Peebles Road. Membership is $40 a year.

At their meetings, members include a show and tell about the pieces they have created or are creating. They also have welcomed guest speakers and host pop-ups at various locations and in some of the members’ homes.

The guild most recently has done demonstrations at the Depreciation Lands Museum in Hampton and the Harmony Fiber Festival.

“People are interested, and we invite them to sit down and try it,” said Mertz of O’Hara. “It’s fun to see somebody trying it. It’s not hard to do, and you really can’t make a mistake. The guild is a lovely group of people. And we have fun. In the summer, we have informal hook and chat events where we sit on a porch and make rugs. It’s low-key.”

Mertz heard about rug hooking when she saw a class at the Lauri Ann West Community Center in O’Hara. She thought it would be neat to try it and mentioned it to her mother, who gave her a rug hook that someone had given Mertz’s grandmother.

The class was taught by Mitnick, a certified McGown teacher.

“Fritz knows the history of rug hooking,” Mertz said. “She has so much enthusiasm and she showed us rugs she had hooked,” Mertz said. “They are just so beautiful and stunning. She is at the heart of our guild because of her expertise and knowledge. And she is a connector.”