Advent

I am a big fan of special things and this time of year gives me an excuse to factor in a little bit of special into every day. I am, of course, talking about advent calendars. This year there are four. First and foremost is the traditional card calendar with a picture behind every door.

The highlight so far this year has been the fat robin on a branch, complete with a hat and his own little stocking and bauble hanging from his branch. You may just about be able to see him halfway up the calendar on the left.

At the moment the calendar is propped up on my mantelpiece in the front room but, once all the doors are opened, it will be moved so that I can see the little quilt hiding behind it.

You can see my little beaded houses at the side of the picture too. These are from ThreadABead's Christmas Village series which are beautiful designs, full of little details. So far I have made three of them.

The Reindeer Barn in the middle is the most recent.

A new addition to the advent calendar traditions this year has been the advent jigsaw. This was a brilliant idea of my daughter's. You choose a festive jigsaw (1,000 piece is best), make it and then divide it into 24 sections and put each section into a numbered envelope. Then you put the envelopes into a box and give it to someone (without the box so they don't know what the picture is) and they have a little bit of puzzle to do every day. It's a cheap way of making an advent calendar, especially if you can find a suitable puzzle in a charity shop.

This year I made one each for my son and daughter, although I had to get them to help with dividing up each other's puzzle as that turned out to be too much for my Covid brain. Here's the one my daughter made me ...

It's going quite well so far. Each day's section takes me about ten minutes or so to do and is just the right level of difficulty. I think we could well be doing advent jigsaws again next year.

My third advent calendar is a crochet one. There's got to be one involving yarn, hasn't there? This is my Advent Chain, a simple crochet chain that buttons together to make a garland. I'm about half way through now and it's looking nice and colourful.

I was thinking that an Easter version of this would be nice, in pastel colours, perhaps with a little picot edging?

The last of my advent calendars is an advent candle. Well, actually, it's a night light in a lantern, one every day. I gave up on actual advent candles years ago as they were too stressful. Either I forgot about them and burned three days at once or ended up behind. This version is cheap and very forgiving to the confused and forgetful.

I thought I'd take a photo of it from where I sit in the evening but this is what happened when I tried that.

The pretty candle is on the hearth immediately behind Tolly (of course it is). So, here's a close up.

I should have taken this picture when the fire was lit as it looks even nicer then but never mind. You'll have to imagine the fire.

In between all my calendars I am managing to do a few other things. I'm wrapping presents, two a day and playing around with an idea for a 'stained glass' curtain for my front door. I did start a crochet table runner for one of the tables in my room of requirement (my craft room) but I'm not particularly enjoying doing it at the moment. I do like the colours though.

And this is the table it's intended for. I'm planning to add a border to make it fit the top.

I'm also proofreading what will probably be my last pattern before Christmas which I'm hoping to publish in the next couple of days. Don't get too excited. It's not colourful and it's quite tricky to knit. It does, however, qualify as Christmassy so that's something.