Saturday 4th December - Advent Calendars and Knitting

 The Advent calendars are properly on the go now;

The little drawers on these two are filled with chocolates (the tree shaped one) or either chocolates or exotic teas (the Father Christmas one)

This one comes out every year; the pockets contain baubles or glass ornaments which are transferred day by day to the tree. I sewed gold buttons on the tree for the decorations to hang from. 

And the Advent candles. The tea light is actually yesterdays; I am catching up... already...

Oh, and another Advent thing; the multicoloured red and blue piece of knitting is this a free knit-along pattern from buttercup miniatures . The patter can be made in 'proper yarn' and will result in a cowl, or in very very fine crochet cotton to make a tiny poncho for a 1/12th or 1/6th  size doll. Do have a look at the marvellous creations on the website! 

 The blue-green knitting with a row of stars is a baby hat - I'm hoping it won't be too enormous or too small for some friend's first grandchild. I don't know the age or sex of the baby. Oh well - it can always be given to someone else. I'm getting pleasure enough from just the making of it.

The cowl led to one of those 'one thing leads to another' moments yesterday. I was laboriously 'tinking' a row of darker blue stitches in poor light when himself noticed that the working light I have by my seat doesn't actually shine on my work. So I paused in my labours while he started moving things in order to get to the light

'My word, look at all that dust and crumbs and stuff on the floor' - so we hoovered the corner that was now disgracefully visible.

'Goodness, look at all the dust behind the settee' - horribly apparent after moving it forward to reposition the lamp. More hoovering ensued.

Meanwhile I removed myself from the scene of activity where I was rather in the way and polished my boots which has been waiting attention for some weeks.

Inside was a ball of Shetland wool! I did wonder where it had disappeared to.

Cleaning out the cat beds was also a task that had been on the list for too long, and was well overdue.

Before

and after. Very overdue!

That was, all in all, a good morning's work. We celebrated with coffee and Advent chocolates.