Cat Mad Crochet

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

It is that wonderful time of the year when I make up my dream list of holiday gift giving projects. It’s months out, so I feel like I have lots of time to come up with a list of beautiful and complex things to make and still feel like I might actually pull it off this year. Will I? I don’t know. Perhaps. Let’s see what makes the list this year.

You have to understand that this list only has two recipients on it: My daughters. I dream of the holiday when I will pull off creating a fuzzy pile of warmth for each of them to open. It hasn’t happened yet. In the last few years, I often don’t even pull off one project for someone, anyone, to open. Part of this is my own fault. I get very excited when I finish a project, so I present it to whoever I made it for just as soon as it’s off the blocking mat. This is very me. I am bad at keeping surprises because I get too excited about them. My eternally over-excited five year old self just cannot contain itself when it comes to giving people the crochet I made for them. So this list is both what I want to make for my children and what I hope to be able to contain myself from showering them with before the holidays. 

Here we go!

For Adia

I started a cowl (the infamous cowl swatch) that I am over half-way done with, so that project can be pulled off by the end of August, let alone the end of December. I feel good about this one.

The half-circle, marled, rainbow gaming and reading shawl I started months ago for Adia is coming along nicely. I think by row count I’m just over one third done, but by volume it’s just a baby. I think if I keep plugging away at this regularly it will be done on time. Fingers crossed.

On the ride back home from collecting my great-grandmother’s dry sink, I balled up the yarn for a pair of fingerless gloves Adia asked for. I feel like this is a significant step, so go me! Look at that sexy balled yarn! Woohooo! 

This is another quick project, so I think I could pull this off easily before the holidays. Will it mean dropping the shawl project to make sure these are done on time? It could. Crochet is like that. It’s a brutal world in which one project’s time gets sacrificed so another can be done on time. We wait to see.

The last project for Adia is my stretch project. My “dream of the perfect holiday gift pile for Adia” project. I want to start and finish the sweater that the swatch cowl is being crafted for. Is this reasonable? I don’t know. It will take me about 140 hours of crochet time. I think I have that between now and the holidays, but does that leave time for other projects? What about unexpected happenings like illnesses or bad asthma days or doom scrolling events? I just don’t know. I’m leaving it on the list. One should always dream big even if one knows one will end up gifting potholders. Again.

On to Hannah’s gift list!

First has to be her Sophie Digard-Bright Star sweater knock-off cape. I am really close on this one. I have all of the squares that I will need made already. That’s half the project right there. I am making up the centers for the round motifs, so I can just start churning those out with reckless abandon very soon. If this project was just crochet work, I would have it done without question. But it isn’t. It’s literally almost two thousand ends and, therein, lies my downfall. (Ends – one for each center and two for the second row, so three times 630 motifs is a little over 1800 ends.) Can I get them all woven in time? I don’t know. I am going to have to make myself weave the damn things as I go or I really won’t be done on time because I will have run away from the project long before it is done.

Is this possibly the only project I can reasonably get done for her before the holidays because of the intensity of the end weaving? Yes. It’s possible it won’t even be finished. Is it the end of my list? Obviously, not!

Next for Hannah, is a pinkish merino and silk shawl. It’s set to be a long rectangle with a rust colored border. I think I might need more yarn for this, so I’ll drop by the yarn store the next time I’m in that area and pick some up, just in case. Better have the yarn and not need it than need it and not have it. The stash will just eat it up anyway, if there’s any left over.

I’m very into making shawls right now, so the next two projects are just rummaging around in my head, but they are both shawls. I can tell you that one will be made with a purple alpaca yarn and the other will be created with some silkpaca that I’ve been sitting on for a while. I think the purple one will be a rectangle with a complex stitch pattern, but I’m not sure. It might end up being a different stitch pattern entirely and the purple will be some other sort of wrap. I don’t know. I want to use the yarn and I want to use the stitch pattern. But if they end up being different animals, can I get them all done before the holidays? I don’t think so, but perhaps if I started them all now I could work out a better crochet schedule in which I have an exact row per day for each project. I mean, it’s not that many months to go without sleep, is it? It’s not like perimenopause was letting me sleep anyway. 

I also should make a sweater for my father because I said I would and a blanket for a new baby in the family because I thought I should. I have the yarn for both of them, it only makes sense to make them. 

So that’s my holiday plan. Right now it feels doable and wonderful! I will have soft, fuzzy, handmade holiday gifts to give this year. It will be a joy. Oh I won’t sleep and the house will fall into ruins, but those gifts will be in happy hands by December, mark my words!