Scrumble #45

Here is my latest scrumble, finished last night.

It started with the strip of crochet bullions in the centre, which I had just unearthed at the bottom of a suitcase I was repacking. I didn't have any other grey yarn on hand, so decided to create a purple scrumble around them....but in the light of day I'm not altogether sure if that was a particularly good idea!

This morning the grey doesn't tone with the purple nearly as well as it did in the night light...so I may need to add a few other grey bits to the surface sometime, when I come across some more yarn in that tone.

The bullions had originally been worked in a straight line, using a smooth cotton yarn. To give them a better 'flow' I intentionally skipped stitches in some places, and added extras in other spots, as I worked the other yarns along the sides. There are a few knitted sections done moss (seed) stitch using a bamboo yarn, but the rest is all crochet, mainly in wools and mohairs, plus a few little areas in silk and angora. To add dimension to the piece some of the crochet stitches were worked 'around the post', and slip stitches were occasionally worked on the surface, too, for the same reason.

The scrumble was made in one piece, by picking up and joining on the stitches each time a new yarn was added (i.e. no sewing was involved). To give it a 'completed' look I finished off with a couple of rounds of short crochet stitches, being careful to increase or decrease wherever it was needed so that the piece remained flat.

As I think I may have mentioned on the blog before, bordering a piece like this is something that I rarely do for scrumbles that are going to become part of a garment, but I don't mind doing it to 'frame' a smaller artwork.

This is because putting a 'fence' around a lot of different fibres is often asking for trouble further down the track...even if the stitch count appears to be perfect when the piece is newly completed, if it contains a lot of different yarns you could find that some are likely to relax and expand a bit whilst others might shrink and contract slightly (even just in normal wear, let alone when being laundered), and this could cause the fabric of the garment to distort and go out of shape.

Scrumble # 44

This scrumble is perhaps not quite as unusual as the last one, but still it was interesting to make.

I used lots of leftovers in pinks, oranges and greens, and most of these bits were totally used up in the process, as I only had a tiny amount of each of the yarns when I started it.

In real life, even though I have used both orange and pink yarns, the colours tone in much better than they appear to do in the photograph. For some reason the orange area on the right appears to have more yellow in the picture, and therefore looks more harsh than it actually is!

There are some natural fibres (wool, mohair, cotton and mulberry silk), some recycled Indian yarns (these were rayon, not silk), plus some synthetic chenille, a glittery eyelash and 2 types of man-made ribbon.

Some of the yarns were fairly new, but others had probably been in my stash for at least 20 years; a couple were the leftover bits from yarns I had received in an online group exchange a few years back.

There are 4 small areas of knitting, and the rest is crocheted. Even though both of the mohairs were bouclés, the chenille was softly textured, the eyelash and recycled silks were 'fringy', the wools were either slubby or hand dyed, and I used the smoother mercerised cottons for fancy bullions stitches, the scrumble seemed to still be lacking something until I added a few areas of surface crochet at the end, to give it a little more life.

As usual, I welcome your comments.

Scrumble # 43

This scrumble was really interesting to make, and quite a departure from any of the previous pieces I have done for the blog.

I started by using a variegated yarn and crocheting the small central circular motif. Then I worked another circle around it, using the same yarn, doubling the number of stitches and making the second round of stitches into the back loops only of the previous round.

After I finished off the crochet I then knitted the area with the pink radiating bars of garter stitch. Working short rows in each of the brown/gold sections of stocking stitch, I shaped this knitted piece so that it would fit neatly around the crochet circle.

I intentionally cast the knitting off before it was long enough to totally surrounded the centre, and then I stitched it in place. The sewing was done into the back loops only of the crochet stitches, so that each of the circles now had a round front loops visible on the surface, and into these raised stitches I next worked the two rounds of crochet crab stitch.

Using a bulky multi-colour yarn I then knitted the 'tail' area, increasing and decreasing occasionally at the beginning or end of some of the rows, to shape it organically. Once it was finished off it was stitched into the gap between the beginning and end of the round section of knitting, and a row of crab stitch was worked onto the surface, lengthways down its centre.

Three little crochet domes attached to the edge, and a round of crab stitch right around the knitting, completed the piece.

All of the yarns used were either wool or blends with a high wool content, and were worked at a fairly tight tension, so the finished piece is quite firm and stable, and holds it shape surprisingly well.

Scrumble #42 - it's been a long time coming!

Where did the year get to?

Last night I decided that it was definitely about time I added another scrumble to my blog...but on looking I discovered that I have only posted here once all year!

So much for the initial idea of blogging about a scrumble weekly!!

Oh well, at least I am back again with a new creation...and sincere hopes that I will get a few more done over the next few weeks (and hopefully months).

This scrumble started with a few tiny bits and pieces that had been kicking around in a bag in the cupboard, literally for years. There were five small sections, each with one or more areas of knitting, each with a couple of segments of crochet added directly onto their sides. I imagine that they had been samples that I had made during a workshop or display long ago, as I was demonstrating a few basic stitches to class participants or exhibition onlookers - but for the life of me I honestly can't remember exactly where or when...

Because they weren't necessarily the sorts of colours that I would have chosen to combine, I decided to draw the whole thing together using some oddments of black and blackish yarns. I didn't want the dark colours to totally outline or overpower the other colours, so I used short sections of random chain stitches to connect the pieces.

Once the pieces had been joined, a bit more crochet (including a few bullion scallops made with a variegated single-ply green yarn) helped to complete the design.

Hopefully you'll see me back with another new scrumble very soon...I'd cross my fingers, but it's rather hard to crochet or knit with them twisted up like that ;- )

Scrumble # 41

ok, so i'm really not planning on making all my future scrumbles resemble anything in particular, but since i said last time that i had one that was sort of wanting to turn into a fish, i decided to go with the flow with this one, too ;-)

it started out ages back when i made the knitted 'body' (which was worked in short rows: 2-colour stripes in garter stitch with a dull and a glittery yarn). then i added various bits and pieces of freeform crochet directly onto the edges of the knitting (and a couple of sections onto the surface too). the crochet was done using some wool boucle, a smooth cotton, some ribbon, a stretchy cotton/lycra yarn, and a hand-dyed one that looked like a cotton/acrylic mix.

the unusual openwork area where the fish's 'head' should be was created using a crochet cord of the kind that is usually worked as the foundation for Romanian point lace.

once i had created a length of cord that was about 8" long, i twisted it around onto itself and stitched it together wherever it touched. then i added rows of crochet slip stitches to the edges of the cord, to give it a 3-D edging. the tail was added last; just simple fringing, using 2 different flat ribbon yarns.

and before you ask the answer is...no, it isn't actually underwater...though i hoped that the background would help to give the photo that impression! i finished working on it yesterday, and then photographed it sitting on top of some pigface (carpobrotus - a succulent plant) that was growing wild on a sand dune near Monterey, CA; i thought it made great 'seaweed'!

Scrumble #40

Sometimes it just happens that freeform knitting and crocheting has a mind of its own. No matter what you try to do, some scrumbles seem to be intent on becoming something you were not expecting.

About half way through creating this particular mauve and purple piece I turned it around to add something to another side, and suddenly discovered that it was morphing into...

...a bear in a hat!

The crocheted lurex ruffle had become more like an eye than a flower, the knitted cable was now looking very snout-like, and the bullion clusters seemed to have positioned themselves just where ears and a nose should be.

Since that definitely hadn't been my intention, I started to think about the best way to detract from the impression I was getting...but each time I looked at the scrumble from a certain angle that blasted bear was still there, winking at me.

So don't laugh! In the end I just gave up and went along with it, adding a bobble for an eyeball, a crochet edging around the 'collar', and some purple bouclé ribbons streaming from the back of her hat.

Hope you like her ;-)


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Scrumble #39

Scrumble #39 actually started with a couple of small crochet doodlings that were made quite a while ago, but were only recently rediscovered amongst my stash - these were the little yellow area of Tunisian crochet near the centre of the scrumble, and the oval shape with spiral embellishment that is underneath it, near the bottom.

When I decided to use the yellow cotton Tunisian section in this scrumble, I knew that it would be too light a colour. Not wanting it to be too much of a contrast, I immediately wove a length of olive green ribbon yarn under the bars, so that it would blend better with all of the other autumn-tones yarns I was selecting for this piece.

I added a couple of knitted sections to both of these 'starter' pieces before sewing them together; then, once they were joined, I continued outwards in all directions, using tiny scraps of yarn to create other random motifs. Most of these small sections were finished off just because I was about to run out of that particular yarn.

The 2 green leaves and both of the flowers, plus the wool bullion circle (top left) and the round linen piece (top right, partly hidden under the bent bullion flower), were done last; these were all made separately before being attached (some with crochet slip stitches, the others sewn).