Advent

I love advent calendars. Home made ones, edible ones, craft ones ... there's always a risk that I will spend most of every day in December opening them. I hadn't got round to sorting one out this year, what with getting through each day being more than enough to think about. Luckily for me, other people came to my rescue.

First my daughter sent me this beautiful calendar.

It's a 3D Toy Shop, designed by Emily Sutton, one of my favourite artists. It's in pride of place on the bureau in my bedroom where I'm hoping the cats won't be able to get to it. I have a soft spot for picture advent calendars as that's what I had as a child. I remember sharing one with my brother. What I don't remember though is having trouble finding the numbers. Nowadays it takes me ages to find the number each day. Today's little door was on the back of the shop in the basket of a bicycle.

Rose and I compare notes on the pictures on our calendars each day which is nice too. Hers was a fox on skis today (of course it was).

The big excitement this advent though has been this intriguing parcel which arrived a few weeks ago.

As instructed, I opened it yesterday and look what I found ...

A very kind friend on ravelry has sent me a yarn advent calendar from Henny Penny Makes. Do you want to see inside?

24 little striped sweet shop bags, each with a skein of hand dyed 4 ply yarn. I hadn't heard of this dyer before so I'm very excited to discover her. Oh the excitement when I opened the first bag this morning ...

Each mini skein weights 10g and the colours are all inspired by pantomimes. This one - a lovely blend of silvery grey with a dusting of pink - is called 'Glass Slipper'. I think I might punch a hole in the little cards and thread a length of each colour through so that they will serve as a shade card.

Can  you see the little stitch marker at the bottom of the picture? That was a lovely surprise. I had two with the original parcel but wasn't expecting more. This one is a bauble with multi-coloured star confetti inside. Here it is with the other two.

I think these are too nice just to use as stitch markers so I shall probably turn them into jewellery. What do you think?

Of course, I couldn't resist playing with my new yarn as soon as I'd got it so I wound it into a ball and crocheted a little square.

I liked the idea of using each day's yarn but didn't want to commit myself to anything too time consuming. So, that little square is only 6 cm across - I can make more on days when I'm up to it and just one when I'm not. No idea what I shall turn the little squares into yet but I'm sure an idea will evolve as I go along.

As well as all this new advent treasure, I've also fished out my old Advent Stars to hang up each day. These are a really easy calendar as I just hook them over the rails above my scullery windows and they're done. Here's the first one in a truly dreadful photo.

Here are all the stars in a much better light.

This evening I shall light the first of my advent candles too. I used to buy those special marked candles where you burn so much each day but they proved too traumatic for me. I was always burning two days at once by mistake (or missing days). Now I just use tealights. One lasts just about the right amount of time and it doesn't matter if I miss a day.

I wonder if I should go and crochet another square ...