Advent Calendars

Throughout what has been a very busy December (a General Election in December  - whose bright idea was that?), my rare moments of calm have involved these lovely things.

I absolutely love advent calendars and this year's have been particularly good. As a child I remember the excitement of taking turns with my brother to open a door each day and see the picture inside. Did everyone share an advent calendar with their siblings in the 1960s or was it just us? Anyway, I still enjoy a traditional picture calendar each year, even if I find it increasingly difficult to read the numbers on the doors. 

Last year's was particularly entertaining as Waitrose had commissioned one which had, as well as the numbers on the door, the number of days until Christmas printed at the top of each picture. Unfortunately, the numbers inside didn't match those on the doors so, for example, on the 2nd December, it was apparently only 16 days until Christmas. This made me laugh every day as we jumped back and forth through the month, although it must have been confusing for children. 

Anyway, this year my picture calendar is a very small one that I bought at the RSC two years ago and then promptly forgot all about.

As you can see, it's a traditional street scene spread over four sides. The numbers are actually dark enough for me to be able to read and there's space inside the walls for a battery operated tea light. The one I got actually flickers (how do they do that?) so it looks very realistic. When lit, the light shows through the open windows. It's hard to catch this in a photo but I had a go.

I also light a real candle every day in advent. I used to buy one of those advent candles with the days marked on them but it always proved rather too stressful. Either I forgot it and burnt several days by mistake or I didn't light it at all and ended up with a week to burn at the end. So now I just burn a tea light each day. The candle holder I normally use was the thing I couldn't find this year so I've been using this little angel one where the heat from the candle makes the angels spin.

You can't see them well in this photo but each angel is carrying something different: a tree, a star, a candle and a trumpet.

All very lovely but the real excitement this year has been my craft calendars - both home made. First of all, I used leftover Shetland 4  ply from 21st Century Yarns to make a weaving calendar.

Each of these little balls weighs about 5g and, if I didn't have enough of any one colour, I combined two in one ball. The yarn is doubled to give me the thickness I wanted on my chosen loom. My son then wrapped the balls in tissue paper and attached numbered tags so that I didn't know which colour I would be getting each day - the element of surprise is a big part of the joy of advent calendars, I think.

I've been weaving a four inch square each day, using my Hazel Rose multi loom and then slip stitching round the edge with a crochet hook.

After Christmas, I'll sew them all together to make a mini blanket. Want to see more of the colours?

There are tiny balls of each yarn left after the weaving so I might have enough to give my blanket a random crochet border. Hazel's looms are great fun to use and very compulsive. If you're in the UK, both Wild Fibres and Weft Blown stock them.

I've left the best of this year's advent calendars until last, even though it nearly ground to a halt in the first week of December.

My daughter put together this mystery cross stitch calndar for me as my birthday present in October and I was very excited about getting started on it. Each of the numbered envelopes had a numbered part of the chart to stick on to the big piece of card but I had no idea what the overall picture was going to be.

All went well to start with. Day one was a roof.

Over the next few days, I added the rest of the house, several hills  and a tree. And then I realised that the fabric was going to be too small to add the next part of the picture! Cue anxious texts between me and my daughter and a frantic search of the house to find another, bigger piece of linen so that I could start again. Needless to say, I didn't have any and, anyway, didn't much fancy stitching the first few days all over again. 

So, I put it away sadly, thinking I might do it next year instead. And then, on the 7th December, I got an email from my daughter with this picture attached.

She'd got a bigger piece of fabric and had spent a long evening stitching the days I'd already done on to it. She then sent it up to me with a friend who was visiting her that day so I didn't have to wait for the post. Wasn't that brilliant? Really, like a double present.

Now that I didn't have to re-do the first five days, it didn't take me long to catch up and, since then, I've been really enjoying stitching each day's chart. I treated myself to a super duper new light for cross stitching when I saw it reduced in Hobbycraft and it's made it so much easier. It's the Purelite 4 in 1 Crafters Magnifying Lamp and has really revolutionised my stitching. As well as the light and the magnification, there's a little attachment to hold your chart which is very handy. It isn't the most attractive of lights (especially in my old house) so I take the top section with the stick and lamp on off when I'm not using it. There's always the risk of the magnifier setting light to the furniture (or the cats) if the sunshine catches it too.

So, back to the actual cross stitch picture. It became apparent quite early on that it was a sampler which of course makes it much harder to guess what's coming next as things can be placed fairly randomly. After stitching this star, for example, I was convinced that the little curl next to it was the end of a sleigh runner.

It seemed obvious - a sleigh in the sky above the house, but no. This was what that part of the chart turned out to be ...

Here's what the chart looked like a couple of days ago ...

And here's the stitching to match ...

Since then I've added the word 'Christmas' (I did guess that one you'll be glad to hear) and a stocking next to it.

I'm really enjoying the combination of cross stitch and redwork; I love patterns made up of straight lines and there are lots in this picture. Just look at all the detail on the hills. It's going to be a beautiful picture once it's finished. I can't decide whether to frame it or to turn it into a quilted hanging with a fabric border. Something like this one which I made a couple of years ago.

Then there's the matter of which colour to frame it with. Red seems the obvious choice but maybe it's too obvious. Decisions, decisions.