What is scrumbling?

'Scrumbling'

'Scrumbling' (that is, making things up as you go along) has always been our word for free-form crochet.

There is a whole range of different techniques and philosophies behind the idea – probably as many as there are people doing it. Ours have usually been about finding what suited us and took us in new directions.

It is all about peeling off the layers of household grime which have accumulated around the infinitely popular, but limited, 'painting by numbers' tradition of domestic crochet and discovering underneath a brilliantly simple and expressive technique.

Starting with a hook and a continuous thread of some kind, each of us can make fabrics and structures in two and three dimensions, allowing our eyes, hands and heart all to work together to create intuitively and immediately

What we have always tried to teach are down-to-earth, practical approaches to help people to develop their own creative personalities, rather than always to be measuring themselves against someone else's set-piece crochet 'recipes'.

It is still my plan to use this space to help de-mystify the things that often confuse or intimidate people about crochet, so they can really begin to fly …

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