IT'S OFFICIAL...I'M A SCRUMBLER!

Or...how I'm a happy 'hooker' and out of the closet, at last.

About 4 years ago, I had this hankering to learn to crochet. Why? I don't know. But I bought myself some yarn and a hook at the craft store, then went online and found a crochet tutorial site and started crocheting. My son was worried about me, he thought I was going a bit bonkers, I think. He said, "Mom, you're an artist and you're doing this little old lady thing." Well, being a creative person, I didn't listen to his fears and kept crocheting.

Since then, I've made too many scarves to count (I've had to give some away because they started to pile up), hats of all shapes and sizes and colors and again (I've donated to Bosnian orphans), wraps, shawls, tank tops, shrugs and even purses. I've learned the basic and not-so-basic stitches. I've tried my hand at bullions...it is as hard as it looks.

Then, I learned about free form crochet and joined The International Free Form Crochet Guild located online at http://www.freeformcrochet.com/ . When Prudence put out the scrumble challenge, I jumped in. Even though I'd only done one 'scrumble' before this, I decided I would do a few and let 'Pru' decide whether or not to use them. The wonderful and talented woman that she is, she used mine and 64 others scrumbles to create a magnificent coat, shawl and umbrella! Then to top that, she took photos of everyone's contributions and put it all into this new book, 'coat of many scrumbles', 'or just stop worrying and sew the dang things together'. It's a colorful, creative book filled with pages of crochet scrumbles, a brief history of the scrumble and how the whole challenge came together plus scrumbler prose and poetry as well as beautiful pictures of the finished coat, shawl and umbrella.

I'm honored to have been a small part of this great project. I want to send out a big thank you to Prudence Mapstone for her pioneering efforts to keep knitting and crochet on the creative map. For those of you who don't know, Prudence has her own website http://www.knotjustknitting.com/ as well as a web of galleries featuring creative crochet and knit pieces from people around the globe. I've been happy to be able to show some of my yarn creations in her exhibits.

If you'd like a copy of this beautiful book, contact your local yarn shop(LYS) or order it online at http://www.knotjustknitting.com/ . If you, too, are a closet crocheter(or knitter) and want to join in the fun, log on to the website anytime at http://www.freeformcrochet.com/ Ok, so some of your nearest and dearest may think you've lost your mind but if you want to do it, do it anyway and you might just find not only your mind but a host of others with the same desire and mind-set along the way, just like I did. Plus you'll be creating pieces that can become artwork and keep you warm to boot!