Blogtober 2025

Hello to you, and happy October!  It’s the first of the month which, for the last few years, has meant the start of Blogtober for me.

Blogtober is a challenge amongst bloggers to post every day of the month and I’ve really enjoyed taking part.  It’s been a opportunity for me to learn something new, such as learning how to use a Shetland knitting belt, and get out and about, often with my lovely friend Lucy of Attic24 who usually takes up the Blogtober challenge herself.  It’s also a been good time for me to update or release patterns and over the years I’ve updated my Split Mittens pattern to include more sizes, released my Hope Socks pattern which I designed for baby feet using the West Yorkshire Spinners ColourLab Future Dreams yarn, produced a version of the Basic 4ply Socks (Calzini Base) in italiano, and a sock pattern called Branch Line which was commissioned by UK Hand Knitting for the first year of Yarnstravaganza.

This year, however, I have decided not to take part.

I was torn, I must admit.  Part of me really didn’t want to miss out on the challenge for this year, but I have decided that I would rather write fewer posts and catch up on some of the things I haven’t talked about this year –

💜  I never told you about the Chelsea Flower Show, or showed you the photos from big daughter’s yoga retreat in Coniston in May, and I am very proud of some of those photos!

💜  I have a tutorial that I want to write to go with a pair of stripy socks I knitted for my husband, and I won’t let him have the socks until I’ve done it … I’ve got a horrible feeling it may be coming up to a year now since I finished them;

💜  I’ve nearly finished working on the gift knitting guides that I’ve talked about recently and I want to make those available as soon as I can otherwise they won’t save anybody any time or stress;

💜  I’ve got two new DK socks patterns almost ready to go and I want to finish those so that I can release them in time for gift knitting (fortunately, DK socks knit up quickly!);

💜  And the big one – we’re going to have some major renovation work done to our house this month and I need to be available for that.

Goodness, I don’t think I’d realised I had quite so much on until I wrote it down so it’s perhaps just as well I’m not trying to write a post every day too.  I just don’t want to do a half-a*sed job of Blogtober because that’s not fun for anybody to read – or for me to write!

With that said, you can find previous years’ Blogtober posts here if you’d like to read them: Winwick Mum – Blogtober

I’m also going to share some links to other bloggers’ Blogtober posts so you can still get your fix this month 🙂

Barbara at Coastal Ripples is back with Blogtober on her blog this year.  She lives on the island of Jersey off the south coast of the UK: https://coastalripples.blogspot.com/

Rachel at The Barefoot Crafter is in Australia.  She’s a multi-talented crafter who packs plenty into her days:  https://thebarefootcrafter.com/

Lorrie at Fabric Paper Thread has also started.  She’s in the US and has beautiful photos on her blog  https://fabricpaperthread.blogspot.com/

I’ll add more links as I come across them then you’ll have plenty to read this month!

Lucy is still moving into her new Attic24 home and she won’t be taking part in Blogtober this month either (or not at the time of writing).  Her new website is up and running now and you can find her at www.attic24.co.uk.

At the moment, the website is still a work in progress but you can find Lucy’s older posts (and patterns and tutorials if you were working on something) here: https://web.archive.org/web/20250903190633/https://attic24.typepad.com/

I’ll be back soon with regular posts and, hopefully sooner rather than later, with the knitting guides! xx