Tuesday 28th November - The advent of Advent....

 

Today we opened the chest where Advent (and wool and stuff) is stored. These two wooden calendars are in place, waiting for their contents.  The fabric Advent calendar  and the pole it hangs from are ready and waiting, and the lego box has been unearthed. The chest is also where Christmas cards are stored. Keeping them all in the loft with the Christmas decorations proved to be a bad idea in the past which is why we split out the 'pre-Christmas' items. 

Did I mention yarn? I found a set of those looms for 'knitting' tubes, like the French knitting dolls, or maybe the handmade versions made from a wooden cotton reel, navy of us had as children. I bought it back in 2019 in the hope my godmother might enjoy using it, but her hands were too arthritic to manage. So I have put the outturn book inside the package ready to remove it.

And I found the strips of Tunisian crochet I started making back in 2013. This was when my mother came out of hospital following a major stroke which left her unable to use the left side of her body. I hoped that she might be able to manage this one-handed, but unfortunately it proved too difficult. 

I carried on making the strips using yarn bought at different places. It was a soothing activity during traveling, especially a couple of long haul flights to Canada, or just in the evenings, Howevef it soon became clear that if I followed my plan of sewing them together to make a blanket, the final result would have been incredibly heavy as Tunisian crochet makes a very dense fabric.

I've unravelled two strips so far, and will use the yarn to make something else. 

There are three more strips in this photograph, all with poignant memories. There are two rolled up together on the right; the very first one dating to when I was trying it out, rolled around one I made later when we stayed in a National Trust holiday house in the grounds of Battle Abbey.

The one on the left is the colours of the sandy beach and pake blue sky at Ijmuiden in the Netherlands where we scattered my mother's ashes among the dunes where she played as a child. I'm not sure what I shall make from this strip once I unravel it.

That was a lovely day. Perhaps that sounds odd, in the circumstances, but I just felt that she was released from the very difficult years preceding her death when she was confined to a wheelchair, totally dependent on others and in constant pain. 

At the same time all the Dutch side of her family were gathered together, many having been out of touch for many years, and it was a great celebration of the importance and joy of being a family. I hope that the re-established family ties have lasted. 

All that wool winding has sent my step counter on my wrist crazy; I certainly haven't walked anything like the 3000 steps it is displaying!