Advent Calendar 2023 Day 13

The Tradition

Day 13 is called Sinterklaas and the tradition comes from The Netherlands. Based on Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children, who was a Greek bishop in Turkey.  He is depicted as an elderly, stately man with white hair and a long white beard and wears a traditional white bishops alb with a long red cape over the top and a red mitre on his head. When he died stories of the goodness he did were told and eventually these became celebrated in the middle ages. Sinterklaas carries a big red book which records whether each child has been good or naughty in the past year. The feast of Sinterklaas is celebrated in the Netherlands on St Nicholas' Eve, 5th December, with the giving of gifts. The feast is also celebrated in other nearby countries on 6th December.

The Fibre

The actual fibre content is 60% Bio-Nylon (Rosso), 24% South American Wool, 7% Merino, 6% Viscose, 3% Stellina (Gold). Saint Nicholas has been dressed in red and white and that is what this blend is focussing on.  A blend of bio-nylon, wool, viscose and Stellina,  The red in this is the bio-nylon, chosen because it is biodegradable and even though Sinterklaas is dressed in red we really wanted to focus on the glitteryness and also on some of the textures that you see like ruffles around his hood and his collar and cuffs.  We have the lovely red and the glittery Stellina and you can see the really nice nepps running through this.  The great thing about this, it's got a very very large amount of Stellina in it, more than we normally put in which means it will show throughout all of the work you're doing but because this Stellina is quite soft it's not going to give you an itchy or scratchy feel. If you're spinning with it you probably want to draft it out in advance of spinning so that you can make sure you get a bit of everything in every ply and this really is quite a fun blend, there is a lot going on.

My Thoughts

I took a sharp in-take of breath when I opened this one and then squealed excitedly.  It's gorgeous! I can't wait to spin this one and I might spin it along with a white blend from last year's advent calendar that was pure white but very much similar to the white parts of this blend.  I'm not sure yet but that might be what I do with it.

The information that has been printed on the bags is not always correct and there are no fibre content percentages, these have been provided on the chat boards.  The percentages that they gave on the chat boards were not correct.  What they originally gave us was 60% Bio Nylon (Rosso), 30% Natural Tweed,  10% Glitter White/Gold.  They state that it is a high Stellina content blend, and it does look like there is a lot of it.  After discussion, the Natural Tweed is actually 80% South American Wool, 20% Viscose and the Glitter White/Gold is 70% Merino, 30% Stellina so this means that the final fibre content is actually 60% Bio Nylon, 24% South American Wool, 7% Merino, 6% Viscose and 3% Gold Stellina.  I can't believe that there is only 3% Stellina in the blend, it certainly looks like there is far more than that in the blend! 

What I have done with my bags is to write the actual fibre content on the bag using a gold gel pen in the gap immediately below the printed details, pretty much the only thing that will show up on black are the metallic gel pens.  This is why I have not taken "new" photos of the bags.