It’s that time of the year…

The first of December is here, and you know what that means: time to open the first day of the Advent Calendar! This year, I have bought the Schaap & Draak advent spinning calendar again, just like last year. Those 24 fibre samples took me over half a year to spin, so that calendar provided plenty of fun! I’m hoping that this calendar will be just as nice as the last one.

It arrived the day before my birthday last month. The temptation was great to open it that Sunday, but I managed to hold myself back and postpone the unwrapping until today. I didn’t even unwrap the paper around the box… but now I did!

Oooh! Another layer to unwrap… looks promising! I put the wrapping paper on the floor to throw out later.

Yes, Freya, you’re right, this wrapping paper is perfect to sit on. I’ll keep it for you!

And there is was! The Box. With its characteristic drawings (made by the dyer’s children) and again, the little sheep wearing a sweater.

Well, Freya, don’t you think the wrapping paper is enough? Of course, I understand. All the boxes in the house are yours. You’re right. Here, let me put all that wrapping paper in your basket, so you can enjoy flattening it.

May I please open the box now? Pretty please?

A pretty purple ribbon holds it all together. I wonder what’s inside…

Look at all the pretty purple and green packages! They are numbered, and they have each been decorated differently. So much attention to detail!

My first fun activity was putting them all in order, 1 to 24, top left to bottom right. I find it soothing to order and sort things like that. And then, the time had come to open the first one.

It didn’t snow today, it was actually grey and rainy, but the first present brought some brightness and colour to the mix.

The first fibre sample was Bluefaced Leicester, dyed in a gradient from warm yellow to green. My phone had a hard time capturing the red and orange, because it was quite bright.

By the way, did you know that today is also the first day of the #makersdecember2020 challenge on Instagram? There’s a prompt every day, to inspire you to post something you are making or have made. It challenges you to be creative. Well, today’s prompt was “Rainbow”. And this bit of fibre is actually a rainbow without blue! Because you already get the blues from the dreary weather outside, so you don’t need extra blues. Ha, choosing today’s picture was easy!

I put the advent spinning calendar next to the couch and next to the heating. Freya approves.

I’m not going to spin the calendar immediately, but I’ll enjoy unwrapping a small present every day, and think up a project once I know what I have received. I still have 24 minis from last year, so perhaps I can combine (some of) them. We’ll see. It’s like a blank canvas, inspiring and terrifying all at once.

By the way, Freya is doing quite well. She’s eating almost 100% again, and she’s happy and alert. So I’m very happy too!