Let's Talk About Advents.

Just typing the title reminds me that I have yet to open the window on my Jacqui Lawson advent calendar for today - well I'll do it after this post.

I have four advents this year, all different. I had an Arran Aromatics one from the OH a few years ago, as you'll recall if you've been reading the blog for that long, and this year I treated myself to another one. They are a lot cheaper than they used to be; I think the one I had before was the first year they had them and I remember seeing them on the website half price by 2nd December, so possibly they learned the price point had been set a bit high. Anyway here's week one of that

I'm still playing catch up with this and the next one as I missed the first six days through being away and I thought opening 6 all at once would spoil the pleasure so I'm doing two a day until I catch up.

The next one is a yarn one and is my Christmas present from the OH. It's tricky with yarn advents because you want one where you like the theme so in theory you hang on until all the dyers you follow have announced theirs and then pick. However as they all produce limited numbers, which is sensible in view of the amount of work that goes into them, the early ones can often be sold out before you know what other people are doing. I was lucky this year as not long after I decided this was what I'd like for Christmas a dyer who is relatively new to me, Beth from Beehive Knits, announced that her advent this year would be themed around the Laura Ingalls Wilder book The Little House on the Prairie. No brainer, and the OH ordered it immediately. 

Here are the first seven minis and the two extras I've opened so far

From bottom to top the colours are: Spring Woods Awaken, Sapling, Buds and Berries, Grassflower, Wildflower Posy, Nine Patch Quilt and Rosehip Jelly. They're seasonally themed so all of the above are spring apart from Rosehip Jelly which takes us into Summer.   The extras are a packet of wildflower seeds and some honey scented tealights. I do have a pattern to use these on but as I'm desperately trying to finish some Christmas gift knitting I don't know how far I'll get with it before Christmas. Probably nowhere, but we live in hope. 

We burn a lot of tealights at Christmas which is why I allowed myself to get the Yankee Candle Advent tea light advent wreath. 

For some reason this contains only 18, rather than 24, tealights but that works for me because, as noted above we missed the first six days of  December here. So we have one a day until Christmas. I have to say they are good value as they burn for ages and have a good strong scent, quite often you can only smell tealights when you stand up! 

And the fourth one I think I'll leave describing for another day nearer Christmas. For now, after a heroic struggle with the UK cards this morning I  have an afternoon appointment with my ironing board.