• 2025 - Blanket - Cats - Crochet

    2025-2 January CAL

    June 5, 2025 - By 

    I love a Crochet-A-Long (CAL) especially the ones by Lucy of Attic24. She has been designing and hosting one in January for a number of years now, I almost always participate. It gives me something to look forward to in the cold and dark months of January and February. She always has a yarn pack you can buy from Wool Warehouse UK to go along with it, and I usually buy a pack, but some years I don’t, perhaps the colours don’t call to me, or I decide that I really should use yarn I already own and do some stash busting, or my daughter decides the blanket should be hers and picks out her own colours…

    This past December we had a mail strike in Canada so I couldn’t order the yarn pack without paying more for DHL shipping, which is always a last resort for me. Luckily I had a Starbright Blanket kit from Lucy that I hadn’t used yet, and many of the colours of the Canalboat CAL were in it, with a little stash busting I was able to pull my own yarn pack together.

    This year my husband James was the lucky recipient, I hadn’t made him his own blanket yet, he wanted one for his lap that the cats could cuddle on when he was in his recliner. I think they approve of it. They both supervised it’s creation.

    I really love the folk art feel of it that Lucy was going for, it definitely adds a bright splash of colour to the livingroom! Details of my yarn substitutions are below, I’ve also noted how many grams of each colour that I used in parenthesis behind the colour name.

    2 January CAL

    Pattern: Canalboat Blanket CAL by Lucy of Attic24

    Craft: crochet

    Hook: 4.5 mm and 4 mm

    Size: 46 x 78″

    Yarn: Stylecraft Special DK

    Colourway: Apple, Aster, Bottle, Claret, French Navy, Fuchsia Purple, Kelly Green, Lipstick, Lobelia, Gold, Magenta, Pomegranate, Powder Pink, Teal, Turquoise

    • Notes: I decided not to use the Canalboat yarn pack, there was a mail strike in December which meant I couldn’t order it on time, plus the colours aren’t really calling to me. I decided to stash bust and am using most of the Starbright yarn pack, but switching out two to get more contrast and match the folk art feel of the pattern. Removed Empire and Lapis from Starbright kit.
    • After row 5 my blanket is 132 cm wide
    • Two hook sizes, because I always start off with looser tension in a striped blanket and have to go up a hook size after 5-6 inches or my blanket narrows noticeably.

    Canalboat kit colour replacements

    Royal = Lobelia

    Green = Kelly Green

    Sage = Aster

    Lime = Apple

    Camel = Fuchsia Purple

    Fondant = Magenta

    Tomato = Pomegranate 

    Colour list and amount used in grams

    Apple = 70

    Aster = 78

    Bottle = 74

    Claret = 70

    French Navy = 74

    Fushia Purple = 71

    Gold = 65

    Kelly Green = 81

    Lipstick = 11

    Lobelia = 70

    Magenta = 62

    Pomegranate = 75

    Powder Pink = 75

    Teal = 75

    Turquoise = 65

  • 2025 - Knitting - Socks

    2025-1 Smooth Operator Socks

    June 4, 2025 - By 

    I never make New Year’s resolutions, but in 2009, after crocheting for about 15 years, I made a New Year’s resolution to learn how to knit. So in January of that year I searched the internet for resources and came across a website called Ravelry and signed up! For many years I really enjoyed their database of patterns and yarns, but what I really liked was their project section where I could keep track of everything I made, the pattern, yarn, needle and hook sizes, and notes for when I inevitably made changes. I often went back to look at completed projects when I was making a similar item, and I referenced other makers notes on their project pages. In the summer of 2020 they updated their website, which left me soured on them for various reasons. I decided it was time to step away and keep track of my projects another way. I still search their database occasionally when I’m looking for pattern inspiration, but I’m not active on it as a user anymore unless it’s required for a designers test knit.

    What I ended up doing was just keeping a word document for each year stored on my Google drive, I could access it anywhere and make updates on the fly, functionally it works very well for me, but it’s a private document, so other crafters can’t see it and get help from the notes or ideas to work on their own projects like they could do on Ravelry, and it’s not as easily searchable. In the last few years I’ve also not been enjoying social media as much, my Facebook and Instagram feeds are often just filled with ads and it wasn’t a space I enjoyed sharing my projects anymore. So the idea of writing another blog, just about my craft projects was born.

    So here’s what a project in my word document looks like, I’ll post each one as a separate blog post. At some point I’ll go back and share previous years projects, but I’m going to start with 2025. Eventually I hope it will make searching easier by using the categories and post tags.

    1 Smooth Operator Socks

    Pattern: Smooth Operator Socks by Susan B. Anderson

    Made for: Keely

    Craft: knitting

    Needle: 2.25 mm

    Yarn: Pro Lana Golden Fjord Socks

    Colourway: 189 Burgundy

    Notes: Yarn was gifted to me by Jeanette for Christmas. Start cast on for cuff with final solid section of burgundy. 40” length of yarn for long tail cast on.

    Knit ribbing for 1 ½”

    Knit leg for 6”, until 4 rows of solid light pink.

    Knit foot for 5 ¼” past waste yarn (last round of burgundy section.)

  • 2025 - Cats - Crochet - Introduction - Knitting

    2025, ugh…

    June 3, 2025 - By 

    As my tagline says, I’m just a girl, holding an existential crisis at bay, the best way I know how. Knitting and crocheting my way through my yarn stash, usually with a cat on my lap.

    Trixie the mackeral tabby cat on a crocheted blanket on my lap with a partially knit shawl

    The last five years have been hard, we have lived through a global pandemic, we’re seeing a rise in fascism, social media has turned into a dumpster fire of hate and conspiracy theories, and now measles is on the rise, measles? The childhood disease with a safe and effective vaccine? Yeah that one. On a personal note, all my kids have moved out and I’m stumbling my way into menopause, with all the joyful symptoms that entails. Thank you to the pharmaceutical industry, and a family doctor who listens to me, which is a minor miracle since I live in Alberta and our health care system is collapsing. Yeah it’s been a hard few years.

    Playing with yarn, and snuggling my cats really is my therapy. This year I wanted to create a positive space to share my projects, a home on the internet free of everything mentioned above. It’s taken me a few months to get it going, but I think it’s time to start writing and posting photos. Let’s start with a photo of Trixie on my lap, because it brings me joy.