Advent inspiration

What do you have planned for advent? Every year I see more and more yarn advent calendars, which are a great way to countdown the days to Christmas. But what can you do with the yarn in them? What if they're beyond your budget? What if you already have plenty of yarn? Have no fear, I've got you covered!

 

Pattern inspiration

Do you have a fancy hand-dyed advent calendar and are looking for some pattern inspiration? I wrote a blog post last year with a few suggestions. Why not go and have a look and see if anything sparks your interest.

https://www.vikkibirddesigns.com/2020/11/ideas-for-your-yarn-scraps.html

Want to make your own yarn advent calendar?

Don't have a yarn advent, but do have plenty of yarn scraps? Last year, I made some yarn advent calendars as gifts for friends, and they went down really well.  Maybe you fancy making your yarn scraps look more interesting by turning them into your very own yarn advent calendar? Or you could get together with a friend and do a yarn countdown-calendar swap? Everything you need to know about making a yarn advent calendar can be found on the blog.

https://www.vikkibirddesigns.com/2020/11/make-your-own-yarn-advent-calendar.html

 

Advent calendars not your thing? Maybe you need an advent project?

This year, I'll be knitting myself a pair of socks during advent using some self-striping yarn that will hopefully arrive in time for December 1st. I'm hoping to find half an hour to myself every day to work on the socks, and by Christmas Day I should have a new pair of socks!

These are the socks I knitted during December last year. Yarn is by The Yarn Badger.

 What are your knitting plans for advent?

My calendar-free advent

Since March, I have seen adverts for indie-dyed advent calendars all over Instagram and Facebook. I love yarn (you might have noticed) and have been tempted by several of these delights, each one containing 24 surprise mini skeins that can be opened one day at a time in the run up to Christmas, but have resisted. I have had a yarn advent calendar for the past two years (two years ago I had three - one acrylic one from Paintbox Yarns, an Opal sock yarn one, and one made from mini skeins from my stash; last year's was an advent calendar swap, so I had twenty-four 5 g minis from a friend, and she had the same from me), and while I really enjoyed the excitement of opening the advent calendar every day and seeing what yarn I had, I wasn't enamoured with actually using the yarn.

The first year I had a yarn advent calendar, I had grand plans to add two squares to my sock yarn blanket every day. I did manage to add a few squares, but two squares a day resulted in not much time to knit anything else, and I got a bit bored of knitting garter stitch. I never did make a plan for what to do with the Paintbox Yarns advent calendar, and the balls are now live in a Kilner jar to make a lovely ornament in my living room (it’s the jar of mini balls I use for my Yarnometer photos). And last year I did knit a whole pair of socks over the course of advent using the minis from the calendar, but I only used a yarn from a few of the days as I don’t like the look of scrappy socks all that much, so used a neutral yarn to tie all the yarns together, which meant I only used about a third of the yarn, and the remaining balls are still living in a bag.

December isn’t a month in which I have a huge amount of free leisure time, with present shopping, festive food to be made (making mince pies with my kids is always a highlight of the festive period), school activities, socialising and generally enjoying the season, and I find setting myself the challenge of using all the yarn from an advent calendar to be an added stress I can do without. So this year I am doing something different, and over the course of December will be knitting a special project just for me, the Soul Warmer. 

I bought the kit for the Soul Warmer cowl while I was at Edinburgh Yarn Festival in March with the intention of knitting it over advent. The yarn for it (bought from Martin’s Lab, just this once I’m using the exact yarn used in the pattern) is lovely, and the pattern only requires 438 m of fingering weight yarn, which feels doable for a finished project that I will love and wear. I’m really looking forward to getting started tomorrow!

How do you feel about yarn advent calendars and scrap yarn projects? Do you have a special project to work on over the festive period?

Wishing you a peaceful advent, happy knitting.

Yarning Along: The things we do for love

Here we are, five days from Christmas, and you find me, somewhat predictably, busy. Most of the Christmas preparations are done: the tree is up, the presents have been purchased, the cards have been written, and everything that needs to be in the post has been posted; I probably ought to do a food shop and wrap the remaining presents, but otherwise I'm sorted. Which should allow plenty of time for relaxed knitting and reading, right?! Well, not quite. The schools here don't break up until Friday, so I'm still on full work mode, and am trying to finish writing some patterns this week so I have a decent chance of getting some sample knitting done over the holidays, as well as contemplating the year that's just been and anticipating the year to come: what's gone well, what hasn't, and where I want to be in a year's time. It can't just be me that gets terribly introspective at this time of year? Anyhow, I have resolved to make the most of it, and have bought a new notebook so that I can make a plan for 2018!

This week's key crafting projects are very much labours of love: my husband's phone lives in a phone sock that I knitted for him ages ago. He has a new phone, and it requires a new phone sock. Easy. Just an evening or two's knitting, but it's the sort of obligation knitting that just isn't all that fun, so it feels slow even though it's not. I will definitely get it finished today, which is a good thing, then I can get on with something I want to knit! The second labour of love project is an odd one. My daughter has requested a cuddly toy bunny for Christmas. I have managed to purchase one that matches her requirements, but she has also requested that the bunny comes with some carrots, so I'm going to crochet a couple over the next few days, assuming I can find my crochet hooks, which have gone AWOL. Children sometimes ask for the strangest things; I might crochet a little basket to go with the carrots in the hope that we can keep the carrots belonging to the bunny separate from the other play food.

The rest of my knitting at the minute is rather sock heavy. I spent an evening this week working on my advent socks, and will confess that I have shuffled the colours a little so that the socks will be to my taste (and so they don't contain any single-plied yarn - single-ply just doesn't work in socks). I am almost at the end of sock one (I just need to look up how to do the toe decreases - I do top-down socks so infrequently that I can never remember when I should switch from decreasing every other round to decreasing every round) and the second one only requires the foot knitting, which I should be able to do in an evening. I am undecided on whether I will turn the other yarn from my Advent calendar into another pair of scrappy socks, or whether I will add it to my sock yarn blanket. Part of me wants to start a crocheted granny stripe blanket using sock yarn as I have seen so many other people making them recently. The other project that has seen some love this week is my Christmas socks. I have completed sock one! We'll ignore the fact that I've not yet cast on sock two...

I'm really looking forward to finding a bit more time to read over the Christmas holidays: I have acres of stocking stitch planned, so I can read at the same time. So far in December I have mostly been reading The Christmasaurus, which I finished last night and loved. This evening I will start reading The Girl Who Saved Christmas by Matt Haig, which was recommended to me by my sister, and next week I might finally get round to finishing Into the Water, which seems to have been on hiatus since the start of the month! I looked on my Kindle last week and realised I had downloaded a few books in the past couple of months that I've not looked at yet, so hopefully they might get some attention soon.

As ever, linking up with Rachel for Yarning Along. What have you been reading this week?

Yarning Along: Scrappy socks and slow shawls

So, last weekend's sleet and cold became SNOW! I always get a little excited about snow, but only when I don't have to go out in it. Unfortunately, as the snow fell during the week, I did still have to chauffeur the kids about and get on with all the usual activities. The kids loved it though. It was daughter's first time seeing it, and she was in her element. It's warmed up again now, but I think we're all hoping for a bit of snow later in the month...

This weekend we started our Christmas activities with our visit to Santa. Both the kids were really excited, and it was lovely and festive. I'm not totally sure we're going to manage to keep the festive feeling carrying on for the whole of December, but I am aiming to spread our festive activities out over the month so we don't all get burnt out. This week I'm taking my daughter to the under-5s show at our local theatre, and I'm at least as excited about it as she is! And this weekend we're off to Newcastle to see Fenwick's Christmas window (a North East tradition). This year's window is Paddington-themed, so we're going to make a day of it and see the new Paddington film at the same time.

We are now well into Advent, and this year I have an extra special advent calendar. A friend on Instagram organised an Advent swap, so I put together a parcel for someone and they put a parcel together for me. Every morning I get to open a tiny package containing 5 g of sock yarn and some little extras. I had originally planned to add the yarn to my sock yarn blanket, but had a last minute change of plan and cast on some scrappy socks. I am not totally ok with scrappy socks though, so have striped the yarn with a cream to minimise the risk of major clashes. I am up to Day 4 on one sock and Day 3 with the other, and have turned one heel, and so far have beautifully coordinated socks. I am now a little behind (mostly because of the extra knitting required for the heels) and am not keen on the yarns from Days 5 and 6 with what I have already knitted, so I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do next. I suspect I'll make a second pair of socks and everything else will end up in the sock yarn blanket. Do you have a yarn advent calendar? What are you doing with your yarn?

My other major work in progress is my Red Katana shawl and it is SO SLOW! I have no idea why. The pattern is pretty straight forward, but I have had to write myself a cheat sheet and cross off each row as I work it (having pulled the whole thing out twice already). I think I am starting to get a little faster, but I don't see myself finishing any time soon! I'm knitting my Red Katana shawl as part of the Indie Design Gift-A-Long, a knit and crochet along that is running on Ravelry until the end of the year. For more details and to take part, head to the Ravelry group.*

Last week I asked if anyone had any recommendations for Christmas books. Well, on Friday I went to Waterstones and browsed their festive reads table and came home with The Christmasaurus. Yes it's a children's book, but I am a third of the way through and am enjoying every second. So much so that my son and I are reading it together too. A definite Christmas book recommendation!

As ever, linking up with Rachel for Yarning Along.

*Ravelry link. You need to be logged into Ravelry for this link to work.