With some Christmas money last year, I chose to buy an Attic24 Moorland Blanket pack from Wool Warehouse. I had been eyeing this up for about a year and loved seeing photos of others in the Attic24 Facebook group I’m in. It was such a beautiful blanket and the colours just “spoke” to me. The blanket pack contains 15 x 100g balls of Stylecraft Special DK which is more than enough to complete the Moorland or another of the Attic24 blankets in another pattern.

The blanket pack arrived really quickly on January 3rd (2022) after only ordering it the day before! How’s that for service? I couldn’t wait to open it but then remembered that I already had the Harbour CrochetAlong or CAL starting later on that week! So the Moorland would have to be put to one side. The Moorland was actually a CAL from a previous year before I started crocheting blankets so I was a bit late to the party here!

Every time I start a new project I get all the relevant shade pegs out for that blanket. It’s so useful to have the pegs to hand as sometimes when a blanket has similar shades of one colour, it can get confusing. In the Moorland there are a lot of similar greens and I always get them muddled up!

I live about an hour’s drive from the North Yorkshire Moors and I love the area so much. We go up there for day trips when we can. The inspiration for the Moorland blanket with its shades of green and purples to represent the Moorland heather comes from the North Yorkshire Moors.

The Moorland Blanket is made in a Wave pattern but upon looking at comments on social media about it, it can be a complicated pattern for some. I am not that confident with new patterns and I’d rather stick with things which are tried and tested. I looked in the Facebook Attic24 groups I’m in and noticed a couple of Moorland Blankets made with a ripple pattern but following the same colour sequence.

Fast forward to April 2022. I had completed the Harbour Blanket and another bespoke order for my work colleague and was ready to start the Moorland. I tried using a hook size lower than I usually do as I’ve found I crochet quite loosely. After a few stripes, I just wasn’t feeling it.

Crochet to me, is a massive form of therapy but back in the Spring I had had a bout of feeling rubbish. Mainly due to menopausal hormones and the lack of my usual HRT Oestrogel being in stock. I felt at rockbottom with my anxiety shooting through the roof. It was due to be my 50th birthday with a trip to New York on the Queen Mary 2 but I was too scared to be excited about it. All I could think of was everything going wrong, catching Covid and not being able to go on my dream holiday. So doing crochet which is usually a de-stresser to me, wasn’t having the same effect as it usually does.

The Moorland Blanket Colour Story version starts off with all the green shades mixed in with the odd brown and purple. Then I suddenly had enough of doing the blanket and put it away. This was so unlike me.

After putting it away I wondered if I might try another blanket so I started on another Attic24 blanket. I also had the Hydrangea Pack so I made a start on that and it brought the cro-jo back.

Fast forward again to Summer 2022 and I had finished two more blankets. I felt a bit more motivated this time. I needed to go back to the Moorland blanket but I was convinced that doing the full colour story in the ripple pattern would make the blanket far too long. After looking in the Facebook Group again, I found another suggestion. I love the Yuletide Blanket and made one last year as my festive project and saw the Moorland colours and colour sequence used in the Yuletide pattern. It looked absolutely stunning so I decided to frog the entire blanket and restart it!

At the end of August, after the original blanket had been frogged, I started on the Yuletide pattern. So far, so good.

With a square, you rattle through the first rows so quickly!

I loved when all the purples and browns were introduced to the colour sequence of the Colour Story version. I absolutely love Violet and Sage: two of Stylecraft Special DK shades which I adore. So my heart was so happy when these colours appeared in the Colour Story.

Eventually, after a couple of weeks it was time to introduce the blues into the blanket to complete the sky part to the blanket’s colour story. I decided not to do as many rows of this as was in the original Moorland blanket as I was worried about running out of wool. Also the blanket was getting HUGE!

In the middle of October, finally the border rounds were complete. I was on a roll to get it finished. There were lots of ends to sew in!

I don’t sew my ends in until the end. It’s only because I don’t want to have to pull them out if I have to frog them! As I did when I decided I didn’t want to do the ripple pattern any more. It ends up being a tedious job at the end but also it means I’m doing it all at once and not having to put my needle down in between rows. Or in my case, it falls down the sofa and you can’t find it again!

I chose to mirror the pattern of the original Yuletide blanket for the border but using the colours in the Moorland border to finish it off beautifully.

There’s an end to the end sewing in!

Finally, we have a finish! Or in Attic24 speak, a Ta-dah moment! Ta-dah moments make me feel fantastic. Only six months after I made my first foundation chain on the original ripple version and at a time when I felt rubbish. I felt much better as I draped the finished Moorland/ Yuletide over the armchair in my lounge.

As I type (January 10th), my blanket is on its way to its new home! Although it was finished in October, I chose to take my blankets offline in November and December due to the postal strike and not being able to ship them. I’m pleased to say that this blanket has a new owner, although I would love to have kept it. I just don’t have the room.

Love Sam xx