Today’s tea was Mango & Passion Fruit. It was a lovely herbal tea. I enjoyed it this afternoon as part of an afternoon break.

Today”s yarn is a gorgeous blue called Blue Christmas. I know it’s only day 2, but I am really loving the speckled yarn. I’m starting to want to use this for something other than the granny square afghan. May be a light weight scarf? A shawl? Something that really lets the speckles come out.

Also, there was a charming (no pun intended) stitch marker attached to today’s yarn. It is a Christmas tree light bulb charm on a lobster claw clasp. It will make a fun progress marker. In fact I am currently working on a pair of socks in the Holly King color way from Llady Llama Fiber Co. I think I will put it on these. I’m past the placement of the waste yarn for the heel on the second sock on this pair of socks. Love this yarn and I love this color way. I will write more about this WIP in a later post.

Today has been a wonderful Sunday. I’ve gotten to experiment with some ideas for family presents for Christmas. I was inspired by Pinterest. Ahhhhh…. How dangerous is that? But so far it’s going well. I’ve gotten to enjoy crafting today and spending some time feeling more relaxed than I have in a while. Tomorrow of course, is Monday, and the start of the last week of classes for this term. It’s going to be busy. So I do want to get as much done today as possible. But maybe I can use crafting as motivation for getting school work done. I will have pictures after Christmas of today’s crafting.

Happy Day 2. We’ll talk again tomorrow.

Happy December 1st! Welcome to Advent season!

A couple of years ago, Laura from the Knit Girllls was showing her Opal Advent Calendar. What?!! A mini-skein of yarn everyday of Advent?!!! That sounded so cool! So last year I made a point of getting my hands on an Opal Advent Calendar.

I had a terrific time opening the little doors and sharing pictures with my family and on Instagram. I even brought the box all the way to St. Louis when visiting my family. My mom and my niece both participated in the opening of the the little doors while we were there.

Everyone seemed to be working on a granny stripe afghan at the time and I considered starting one myself. But, I couldn’t get excited about the cast on chain. To be wide enough to make me happy, the chain would have been ridiculously long. So instead, I created a rectangle using double crochet and once I was happy with the dimensions of that, I started the granny square stitch going round and round. Then I just kept attaching the new skeins as they came up. I’m still working on the second to last skein from last year.

The blanket is about big enough to cover my lap and go down over my knees. I love the different color combinations and flecks of colors that go through. It reminds me very much of my mom’s and my grandma’s afghans of many colors (scrap yarn)). My cat Leonard seems to like it very much. He pulls it out of the basket to lay on it…and to chew on it. He seems to have some fascination with the texture of the wool. He likes to suck on the blanket. It’s little weird. But he can be a weird little cat sometimes.

I enjoyed last year’s advent calendar so much I wanted to do another one this year. I started early looking for an advent calendar for this year from Opal yarns. I had no success. I don’t know, maybe there was one, but I never located it. September rolled around and I still couldn’t find one. So I began looking at the offerings on Etsy. I finally picked one from Felicity Yarn Studio. It came with 24 wrapped mini skeins and one special full size skein.

The yarn is a 3-ply 80/20 merino/nylon sock yarn. I am planning to continue adding to last year’s afghan. Eventually, I’ll get it to a proper size. Today’s yarn is a beautiful blue speckle called Icicles. It is really lovely and deliciously squishy.

I had such fun sharing pictures with my family last year that I thought it would be fun if we all had the same calendar to open. We all like tea so I decided to find a tea advent calendar to share. I chose one from Blue Moonstone Designs on Etsy.

I got calendars for my sisters, my mom and myself. My parents seemed really pleased when they received their calendar. I even got a phone call this afternoon when they opened their first tea package.

I hope everyone has as much fun with their advent calendars as I do.

Happy Advent season! We’ll talk again soon.