Don't unravel this December

 

Hello December! Hello advent calendars galore! I have three this year: a chocolate one, a marshmallow one, and a scrappy yarn swap one. And I have a self-striping skein. I am totally on board with the chocolate one: chocolate for breakfast is a joy! I’m sure I can find time each day to eat a marshmallow (on a good day, I may even find time to toast it!). But the yarn ones… December is stressful. Everyone (including me!) wants a magical Christmas, but that takes *work*. I’ll be dashing between carol concerts and nativities, organising Santa visits and decorating the tree, sorting presents and writing cards, organising food and baking goodies. On top of the usual laundry, food prep, housework and actual work. Does that leave time for extra advent projects? No. So I’m here to tell you: I find advent overwhelming. If you feel the same, you’re not alone. There will be posts everywhere sharing beautiful advent projects, knitted in order and on the day the advent door was opened, but if you stop for a second, you will know that there are many more advent calendars being opened that aren’t being knitted up *right now*! If your me-time this December is 30 minutes of working on a pre-existing project, or even just staring into space while your cup of coffee goes cold, know it’s not just you. I will love looking at everyone else’s advent projects, but don’t expect me to be wearing brand new scrappy socks on Christmas Day!

 

It can’t just be me. Will you be up to date with your advent calendar on Christmas Day?

 

Hope December doesn't leave you too overwhelmed. Until next time, happy knitting.

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?

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.

Yarning Along: Christmas craft excitement

This weekend I took a bit of a break from knitting (I had a sore shoulder and elbow, so decided that knitting might not be the best plan. Turns out it was a trapped nerve, which fixed itself pretty quickly), so got started with a couple of festive activities. You may remember that last year I made my own yarn advent calendar. Well this year I am making a yarn advent calendar, but it's not for me: I am taking part in a yarn advent calendar swap organised by layfamilyyarn on Instagram. So I spent the weekend stamping number stitckers, winding minis and wrapping tiny parcels, which was all a lot of fun. I also took a walk to a local Christmas craft fair, which is always lovely and very festive. I didn't actually buy very much, just a Christmas present for a Secret Santa that I'm involved with this year, but I always enjoy browsing craft fairs.

Another thing I worked on this weekend was the cross stitch wreath I have been sewing. I'm sure that when I bought the kit I thought I could do it in an evening. How wrong I was! Last week I realised I has misaligned one side of the wreath by a couple of stitches, so did a huge amount of unpicking. I was finding the chart that came with the kit too small to follow easily, so I decided to take a photo of the chart and print it out much larger. This was an excellent plan as not only can I now see the stitches to work from, I can also colour them in as I go, which makes the chart much easier to follow! Why didn't I think of that before? I am a little concerned that I have a whole length of thread that is a slightly different shade of green to all the others, but that I have assigned yarn to each of the symbols already, so may have done something wrong. I'm pretty certain it doesn't matter...

Back on knitting, I am making good progress with my Christmas socks, and love how the stripes are developing. Other than those I am currently between projects, which can only mean one thing: tonight I get to cast on the Christmas stocking! I'm quite excited about this project, and finally got round to writing the pattern up this morning, so should be able to publish the pattern in time for next Christmas if not this.

I'm still reading Into the Water and enjoying it, even though I'm not that far in. The story revolves around the drowning pool, which, as the name suggests, is where many people have drowned, and the unexpected death of a local author who was writing about the pool. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character, and the narrative jumps around in time. I'm finding the writing style really engaging.

Stocking yarn and the current read. And fairy lights. I bought them a couple of weeks ago, and now they're out of the box, expect them to appear in far too many of my photos!

What are you crafting on and reading this week?

Christmas countdown 2016: Days 23 and 24

Obviously I meant to write this earlier in the day, but here is the final Christmas coutndown post of 2016.

Day 23

A day mostly spent driving, initially in good conditions, then in horrible ones as it got dark, and wet and windy. The highlights of the day were knitting and hot chocolate in service stations, with the very highlight of the day being knitting on the sofa at home!

The advent calendars handed out some pretty yarn, which mostly got ignored as long-distance driving does not lend itself to blanket knitting.

Day 24

A day of last-minute Christmas preparations: food shopping, present-wrapping and baking. I made a batch of mince pies, but couldn't find the cutter for the tops so went with the letter 'M' instead, which allowed for comic 'mmm' mince pies! I also made sausage rolls, which are one of my Christmas Eve traditions.

The advent calendars provided some lovely colours for the final day, and some banana cream, which is not my favourite!

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Time to wait for Santa to come, and to catch some sleep before two very excited children make an appearance! Hope Christmas is good to you. Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas countdown 2016: Days twenty to twenty-two

Day twenty

A lovely relaxed day with family. I even managed to fit in some knitting on my sock yarn blanket, and somehow knitted an entirely green square from what, at the end of the square, looked like a purple ball of wool. I'm pretty sure this makes me a magician (though I am a little miffed that the purple didn't make it to the square - the purple and green makes me think of Spring, which is very welcome at this time of year)!

The advent calendars might have given me their best day yet! I love everything that came out, and can't wait to add Day Twenty to my blanket.

Day twenty-one

The shortest day, although with children that just means the shortest period of time available to let them run around outside... I finally got round to putting on my Christmas nails (these are Tinsel Time by Jamberry; they're nail wraps, sold via independent consultants, I buy mine from http://samfindlay.jamberry.com/uk, run by Sam, who is a friend in real life). It's the first time I've put on a whole set of Jamberry wraps (I normally do a couple of accent nails with nail varnish on the other nails), and a couple of the wraps could have been applied better, but the overall effect is great, and I can knit while I wear them, so I will use them again.

I also did some knitting on the Christmas socks I started in November; while I did knit a couple of stripes on them, they're definitely not going to be done by Christmas, oops.

Another good day from the advent calendars, although the lack of light did result in a slightly blurry photo, which I didn't notice until I made the photo bigger this morning, sorry!

Day twenty-two 

It's still early as I write this, but I have a good day ahead: I am off to see school-friends for coffee this afternoon and get to meet my friend's (who lives in Australia, but is over in the UK for a couple of months during her maternity leave) daughter, who is 8 months old, I can't wait!

My daughter has loved having access to all the jigsaw puzzles at my parents house, so we've already completed one this morning (fortunately not too big - we've hidden anything with more than 54 pieces).

Today the advent calendars yielded a bonus surprise: two tokens from my son's Batman car. I had noticed my daughter poking about with the Paintbox Yarns box, and that a couple of the doors had been disturbed, but not that she had made additions! It made me smile, so I thought I'd share. A bit of a mixed bag of colours, and I love them all individually, although maybe not together. I do finally have some red from the Paintbox Yarns calendar, so whatever I make from the yarn will look more festive!

I found one festive treasure at my parent's house, a cd my sister played on a loop over one Christmas (and I've no idea what the B-side was, so I suspect she played just the one song on a loop), and a song I'm pretty sure I can sing in it's entirety now, many, many years later: I Want an Alien for Christmas by Fountains of Wayne. I'm saving it for the car journey home, it might amuse the kids for a bit. Or drive us up the wall!

What plans do you have for the next couple of days? Are you all ready for Christmas?

Christmas countdown 2016: Days fifteen to nineteen

Hey there December, could you please SLOW DOWN a little! Having said that, I am starting to get into the holiday spirit a little (probably helped by my children being rather excited!).

Day fifteen

An utterly un-festive day, occupied by routine appointments and things that need to be out of the way before everything slows down for Christmas. I did manage to get the final few Christmas cards written though, which is always good!

More crazy combinations from the advent calendars: the Opal one seems to produce a lot of shades of orange, which is my least favourite colour (probably, that might be reserved for brown...). I do like the purple and the speckled yarn though, and am still enjoying opening all the calendars every day.

Day sixteen

The final day of term; cue excited small children asking, repeatedly, how long they have to wait until Christmas. My son is five and pretty much the perfect age for Christmas. When we visited Santa earlier in the month he was totally sold. I cannot wait to see his face on Christmas day!

Some more muted shades from the advent calendars. The one on the bottom right was donated by a friend and is gorgeous and sparkly.

Day seventeen

A day of travelling to see relatives, which is never all that much fun with small children: 'are we nearly there yet?' and 'I want to go home' are pretty common refrains. While we live a long way from relatives it's certainly worth making the effort, the kids love all their grandparents and aunts and uncles.

My husband went out to see the latest Star Wars film in the evening, which I'm not bothered about seeing at all (am I the only one? It does feel like it sometimes, even though I know I'm not). So I settled down to watch the Strictly final after the kids were safely asleep in bed (I don't watch the whole series of Strictly, and just dip in and out over the series depending what else I have to do), which was excellent, even already knowing who'd won when I started watching (grr, Facebook; yes I know looking at Facebook on finals night was a mistake if I didn't want to know who'd won).

Gorgeous shades from Opal in the advent calendar, and the brightest peach from the Paintbox yarns calendar - my phone did not capture it well!

Day eighteen

Panto time! For my son, husband and his mum. My son had gone to see a different Panto with school and LOVED it! So we were happy to send him off to see another, which he also loved. We let him choose who he wanted to go with as my daughter is still a bit small to enjoy it (my son said she would be scared), but next year I think we might all go along. While I don't love Pantomimes, they are a festive tradition, and I quite like those.

I got on with knitting the final must-knit-before-Christmas project, which I can't show you as it's for a magazine. I was still knitting it at midnight, at which point I called it quits and vowed to finish it in the morning. Sometimes that really is the best decision!

I love all of the yarns from the advent calendars on day eighteen, even the pink and orange one! And that green is fab!

Day nineteen

The must-finish project was finished over breakfast, washed in the sink while I grabbed a shower, then dried over a radiator (after squashing out all the water into a towel) until we were ready to drive on to the next destination. I had the project hung in the car to get it really dry - this one has to be in the post on the 20th, so I wasn't taking any chances!

The kids and I drove further South (more complaints about the distance). We stopped at several service stations along the way (I don't like driving in winter, the changing weather and light make my eyes ache, so we stop much more frequently than at other times of year), and, as always, my kids loved the stop at Gloucester services, which has an indoor play area that is always a hit! I also appreciated ten minutes to get a little bit of knitting done.

Just look at the neon. Actually, you probably can't avoid looking at it, it is a tad shouty. I've wanted to try Regia Fluormania for ages, and 10g is probably just the right amount!

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Last week I commented on the selection of colours I was getting out of my Paintbox Yarns advent calendar after Sara mentioned that hers were rather pastel; I'm still not sure what I want to make from it, although I do have an idea that I'm going to look into and maybe do with the kids on Christmas Eve (no spoilers in case I totally run out of time, which is a distinct possibility). Sara sent me a photo of her colours (below) and they are so neutral! I'm really hoping she has some brighter colours now, although hers has gone so far down the neutrals route it'd be really odd if she suddenly got some neons!

Sara's Paintbox Yarns Advent Calendar selection. Image copyright Sara Roberts

I wonder how Paintbox Yarns chose the colours for the advent calendars? Does every calendar contain 24 different shades? Are they planned in any way? And is every calendar different? There are 60 different shades to choose from, so it's certainly possible that they're all different! I'm pretty sure (from my assessment of the #opaladventcalendar2016 tag on Instagram) that the Opal calendars have 24 yarns to choose from, but the order they appear in is random. has anyone else been opening a yarn advent calendar? Are you pleased with the yarns that have come out?

I'm hoping to get a bit more done on my sock yarn blanket this week as most of the Christmas planning is out of the way now (I still have to wrap the Christmas Day presents, and put one pre-Christmas birthday present in the post; this is the most organised I've been in years!); it's stalled over the past week.

*This post contains affiliate links, see the Disclaimers and policies page for more information. All items are subject to availability.*

Christmas countdown 2016: Days eleven to fourteen

Day eleven  

I could have sworn I had written a post for the eleventh, but apparently not. I think I spent it frantically knitting the rainbow hoodie, which is written to be rather long, so took longer than expected (and why do hoods always take more time to knit than I think they should?!).

Some slightly meh colours (read too orange for my liking) from the Opal and Paintbox Yarns advent calendars, but the blue rainbow yarn is beautiful, and I'm very much looking forward to adding it to the blanket.

Day twelve

Monday was the crazy day in the lead up to Christmas with the nursery party and the school show. I was also meant to be at my work Christmas dinner, but decided from the start that the day would be too busy if I tried to get to that as well! I also managed to whizz through some sewing of last minute gifts to people I was seeing at my Monday night knitting group. Phew! I did get to have a nice relaxing knit in the pub in the evening though, which was lovely, and I managed to get a bit more knitting done on my sock yarn blanket, so am not quite so far behind.

And I finished the rainbow hoodie, just in time to pass on to its recipient on Monday morning!

The advent calendars handed my some crazy clashing colours, including the most neon neon yarn I have ever seen. And it's sparkly! Not totally sure that one will end up in the blanket...

So neon you can see it through the bag!

Day thirteen

A much quieter day: a morning to myself to get on with some non-festive pattern writing (though the deadline is Christmas day!) and start knitting a sample. And coffee in peace!

I loved all the colours from the advent calendars - isn't the festive yarn from Felt Fusion beautiful? I won it in a competition in the summer and have been saving it for Christmas. And just for Sara Roberts, here are all my Paintbox yarns colourways in one photo. I hadn't realised quite what an assortment I have (Sara, do yours look better slung into a pile - I tried laying mine out in order and they looked rather drab), and still haven't decided what I'm going to make from them, but I'm starting to think that I'm going to wait until they're all out of the box and make something wonderfully coordinated for next Christmas.

Day fourteen

My final child-free day before Christmas, so I have spent this morning frantically trying to finish writing the Christmas cards written and get anything that needs to go in the post wrapped (largely unsuccessfully, fortunately our Post Office is in a shop and is open until late). I have also stitched the final two Christmas presents that needed doing, so I'm feeling pretty on top of things at the minute.

Today's advent calendar colours are lovely. Nicely coordinated! I added the Paintbox Yarns ball to my Advent Kilner jar, and might have to find an alternative display system for the yarn, the jar is full!

What's everyone else been up to over the past few days? Is all the Christmas prep done?