I’ve been unwell for a few months now, with numbness in my hands and feet. I am booked to see a neurologist, but not until August. In the meantime, my instinct has been to keep my hands moving as much as possible. To that end, I’ve been crocheting!  

I’ve not crocheted since school. Lucy @ Attic24 ran a Woodland blanket crochet-a-long earlier in the year which was a perfect way for me to get hooking again. If you crochet, you are bound to know Lucy’s work, and her excellent step-by-step instructions make easy work for beginners.

i didn’t venture away from Lucy’s recommendations and ordered her exact colours of Stylecraft DK 8-ply from Kylie @ Stitched Up Craft. When the yarn arrived, I was a bit surprised that the colours seemed a lot brighter than I expected. Thankfully, they took on a much more muted look in the finished blanket.

Not having a decent crochet hook to my name, I treated myself with the purchase of a set of Clover hooks. So much nicer in your hand than the old metal hooks I used to use.

And so with Lucy's help, I beavered away! It didn’t take long to recall that I crochet tightly, so had to size up my hook to get the correct tension. 

i wasn’t convinced about using an acrylic yarn - I’m a sheep farmer’s daughter so it goes against my grain not to use wool! But I was pleasantly surprised by the Stylecraft yarn - it’s soft, light, inexpensive and I’m hoping will wash well. 

This blanket was the motivation to put together my stitch marker tutorial in the last post. These little markers were really handy to keep track of the pattern, at least until I got my head around it.

I had forgotten how calming and satisfying it is to crochet. I made time each evening to sit by the fire, and worked a few rows. It is winter in Australia, so there was added incentive that as I crocheted, the blanket grew steadily on my lap and kept me warm! It seemed to come together quickly, and I'm quite pleased with myself!

I love how Lucy has designed this blanket to grade from warm to cool colours, inspired by a walk in the woods.

Pepper the Puppy is very pleased with the finished blanket too. Now if she could just work out how to distract me for long enough to drag it into her kennel ... !

Thank you to everyone for the feedback on my new website. I would much prefer that you tell me if you have any issues with it such as broken links, hard to read fonts etc. Don't suffer in silence!