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.

Week 22

see, I promised I'd have this next one up soon after the last! so I'm pretty much all caught up again now, I think.

So, what's a girl to do when she finds a ball of lovely lofty wool yarn that has been spun as a single and dyed a gorgeous purple...why, crochet lots of bullions with it, of course!

you have to admit that this type of yarn really is ideal for them. overuse of the crochet bullion stitch - who, me??? ;-)

Week 21

This week's scrumble is made with cotton, wool, silk, hemp, a few odds and ends of a Japanese paper yarn, and some man-made fibres. The rough hemp twine gives an interesting contrast to the other yarns, whether crocheted (as in the beaded flower on the right) or knitted (the sections at the top and left-hand edges). I am currently working on a much larger project that incorporates this yarn, and even though it is a little difficult to work with (a bit rough on the hands and overtwisted) I am enjoying seeing how it reacts to different stitches.

I was running a little bit late with this scrumble, but I almost have Week 22 done, too, so that one should be up by tomorrow!

20th week

This week's scrumble is all in crochet, and I'm again playing at bullion spirals. The pink one in the centre was done using 3 different pink yarns; the base was made by working a 2 colour spiral made up of tr (US dc) in a thin wool boucle and bullions in a thicker wool crepe, all stitches worked into the back loops only of the stitches in the previous round. The front loops were then embellished with sl sts in a shiny, variegated pink rayon ribbon yarn.

The purple double circle (which alternates bullions with tr in the outer round) was attached to the edge of the spiral using a few crochet slip stitches (this slightly distorted the spiral's shape). Then more random crochet was added around the central motifs - I used a bit of cotton, some wool, a soft looped mohair and some dark green manmade sparkle, but mostly it was with a handspun recycled rayon-mix yarn from Nepal.

The yellows in the variegated looped mohair actually blend in better 'in the flesh' than they appear to do in the photo.

week 19

Last week while travelling I came across a reference to psiloceras planorbis - ammonites from the Jurassic period that can be found fossilized in rocks in the south eastern areas of Wales....so for week 19's scrumble I have incorporated a crochet ammonite-like spiral shape set amongst a loose interpretation of some of the shapes and colours of the Welsh countryside. Mohair and other soft, hazy yarns were used to mirror the muted blending of even the stronger colours that were often apparent in the spring landscape.

week 18

I have spent the past couple of weeks in Wales and England, where the colours of the landscape have varied from the muted browns and greens of misty hills to the more vibrant greens of new folliage and the various colours of spring flowers...but one of the small bags of mixed yarns that I had brought with me has insisted on working itself into a more tropical ocean theme - as I have noticed many times before, freeforming sometimes just has a mind of its own!

Week 18's scrumble began with the crochet spiral motif in the centre, worked in blue cotton and later embellished with slip stitches in pink. A row of softer blue chain stitches were worked between the points, and then a very thick yarn was threaded through some of the chain stitches, leaving large loops sticking out from the edge. I then crocheted around the perimeter using a thinner blue and pink mix yarn, using short stitches with chains in between. These stitches were worked from the wrong side of the piece, as were the green and blue mohair additions around the edge and the majority of the dark blue and lurex lacy sections, but the bullion stitches in between were made from the right side, using a chunky pale lime single-ply wool.

I imagine that a much more 'English countryside inspired' scrumble will make its appearance here in a week or two ;-)