scrumble for week 25

This week's scrumble is all in greys and browns, and actually is much more alive than it appears in the thumbnail, so be sure to click on the photo to see the enlarged version too.

The other day I ran across a scrap of knitted-then-felted soy and wool fabric that had been used last year to create a hat for my latest book. The felting was actually done by Jonelle Raffino from South West Trading, as she co-authored the book with me. For the designs in this book I have added a wide range of different freeform embellishments to Jonelle's basic creations...and for the hats, wraps and cape that we jointly created, she mailed me many different pieces of felted fabric, which I subsequently cut up, and then crocheted around. Here is a picture of 'Hat and Soul', the hat in question from our new book, "Freeform Style".

So as I said, the scrumble for this week started with a scrap of that left-over felted Karaoke yarn. It was a strange double triangle sort of a shape, so I just folded it over and then picked up stitches and knitted into the edges or onto the surface to create triangles, ridges and ruffles. The yarns I used for the embellishments this time were mostly slinky ribbons, mohairs and a wool boucle.

Consequently, this scrumble is around 90% knitting - the only crochet is the random mesh overlay that I finally added above the felted sections, and this was worked in a similar manner to what I did for the hat.

Week 24

I finished this week's scrumble a few days ago, just in time to display (along with all of the scrumbles from the previous weeks) at my stand at the Sydney Craft & Quilt Fair. The display is getting a lot of interest, and I hope to be able to continue showing the growing range of scrumbles at other shows around Australia throughout the year.

This one is a mixture of both crochet and knitting; there are some knitted slip stitch areas plus some knitted ribbed sections, together with many different round-ish crochet motifs, and some ruffles. The yarns were in various thicknesses - from a rather chunky, looped blend to some quite fine synthetics; they included mostly mohair or man-made glitzy stuff, along with some wool and a few scraps of cotton.

The purple flower motif was finished with a little embroidery to give definition to the petals, as they didn't appear to show up so well once the other crochet had been added around that particular motif; then I also finished off the centre of this flower by stitching on some commercially made floral art stamens.

week 23

My 23rd scrumble started with a couple of cables, knitted from a variegated slub cotton blend yarn. Then I added various crochet sections to the edges of each cable, using scraps of mohair and cotton. The blue floral motif was made next; I crocheted it in linen and edged it with a very fine mohair, then I hand stitched the 3 sections together.

A few stitches were then picked up into the crochet using a knitting needle, and I knitted the grey and brown striped section on the left. Next came 2 random circular crochet motifs; when completed these were joined on to the sides of the knitted square, using crochet slip stitches, before the yarn used for the outside rounds of the crochet was finished off. The round open floral motif on the upper right was also crocheted separately and then joined.

To give balance to the scrumble, a few small cups (crochet 'dome' shapes used upside down) were made and stitched to the surface, and then four 'fairy wing' variations (like those found in my 'Freeform' book) were also created separately and then added around the edge.