About The Coloured Cat

Who is behind The Colored Cat?

It’s me, Marijke Lennards, I’m not only crazy about yarns and knitting, but about everything that has to do with yarns, textiles and color. I can’t visit a country without looking for the local yarn shop, fabric shop or museums with traditional costumes (with the excuse of professional deformity 😉).

How can I help you? Do’nt hesitate to contact me by e-mail, I will be happy to help you!

• I understand it’s difficult to find color combinations on a website.
If for some reason you can’t figure it out, I can always send you some photo proposals by e-mail.

• If you’re not sure whether a yarn fits the pattern you want to make, send me the (technical) information of the pattern (the whole pattern is not necessary, a photo is useful) and I will let you know what the possibilities are.

The Coloured Cat is a one-womans business, which means I do everything myself, I can’t always respond directly to an e-mail. I will always try to answer your e-mail a as soon as possible.

About my background (take a cup of tea): 😅

In primary school I learned to knit and crochet, during my puberty it became a real hobby. In fact, I took my knitting to school and knit in class. I remember leg warmers were in fashion and I knitted them with all kinds of colors and patterns, also for friends. There were a lot of yarn shops were I marveled at all the colours.
There was no internet yet so I taught myself various stitches through a stitch book of the vogue that I bought at the Hema. Just doing what was described, sometimes successfully and sometimes without, that meant unraveling and repeating the stitch.

During my fashion design studies at the Artez art academy in Arnhem I was very busy, so I was mainly behind the sewing machine. For school assignments I dyed a lot of fabrics and threads because the colors that were available often didn’t appeal to me.

I graduated in ’91 and started working as a clothing designer. In permanent employment for a while and then as a free lance designer. I specialized in designing knitted clothing.
In 2009, during my freelance work as a fashion designer, I designed hand-knitted clothing for a slow fashion brand. During this period, of looking for beautiful materials and knitting again by hand instead of the machine, my knitting virus has been rekindled.
So the idea arose to make my own knitting patterns and to sell them together with the matching wool. In addition to my regular work, I started working on that idea.

In November 2011, I started an online store (Recht en Averecht) with a small range of fair trade and organic yarns and a number of patterns developed by me. I loved the outlook of the handed yarns I bought for my store. So I started to dye yarns myself for my personal use.
People liked them so at the end of 2018, I started ‘The Coloured Cat’. At first I only sold them in the store, but the response was so good that I also took them to trade shows.

I dye my yarn in our former barn (once a bakery) at home (an old bakery shop). The old bakery shop has become a showroom, so customers can visit by appointment and the barn is now a studio, where I have a dye studio downstairs and my office is in the attic.

Some other unimportant facts about me.

I am an animal lover, I love both dogs and cats, I grew up with cats and have 4 cats, an elderly black male who is now deaf, a large white male who talks to you, a red adhd male (because he can’t stay anywhere for long) and his tortoiseshell sister who is actually a dog disguised as a cat, because she follows you everywhere.

I am a collector when I come across something that inspires me (art/color/traditional costume/nature etc) I can’t resist taking it with me. My studio is now full and I have to be a bit more selective, but boy is that difficult sometimes.
I also like messing around in my city garden, baking sourdough bread and (on the weekend) cooking elaborately.