Advent Calendar 2023 Day 15

The Tradition

Day 15 is called Krampus and the tradition comes from Austria. Krampus is one of the variations of "Santa's helper", where the helper is assigned the naughty list duties.  Krampus is an anthropomorphic goat figure with one human foot and a very long tongue. He is said to have accompanied Saint Nicholas on visits to children on the night of 5th December, immediately before the Feast of Saint Nicholas on 6th December, and he would warn the children to be good otherwise he will return on Christmas Eve with Saint Nicholas and punish naughty children with birch rods.  After WWI the Krampus tradition began to be banned and replaced their Saint Nicholas traditions with the kinder version of the American Santa Claus.

The Fibre

The actual fibre content is 40% Mohair, 20% Merino, 20% Bamboo, 16% South American Wool, 4% Viscose.  This blend represents arguably the most terrifying Christmas tradition I have ever come across.  This blend is called Krampus, who is like the polar opposite of Father Christmas, so instead of giving children gifts for behaving he scares them into behaving.  The figure of Krampus is large, horned, has fangs and even as an adult I think if some threatened me with Krampus I would probably start behaving myself.   This blend is very interesting looking, it's dark grey, as Krampus is usually depicted as dark greys, browns and blacks.  This contains Mohair, Merino, Viscose and Bamboo.  There is a lot of Mohair in here, which gives a nice drapey feel to it and whereas Merino blends tend to feel quite squishy this definitely feels smoother and a little bit more lank, which is actually quite nice, makes a nice change.  So the Bamboo and the Viscose that is dotted throughout here gives a lovely tweedy effect and actually the colour of the Merino has been lightened by the Mohair in it.  This is a very versatile blend.  If you're spinning it you probably don't want to spin it too tightly because the Mohair in it could risk it feeling a little bit harsh and a little bit hairy.  If you give it a nice light spin and a light ply it will keep the bulk of the Merino.

My Thoughts

I like this one.  It has lots of different shades of grey and black interspersed with blue viscose nepps which will give texture and interest to the finished yarn.  My initial thoughts were to work this with something equally dark from my stash but then I decided to buy an additional 50g when they became available.

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 are incorrect and different to what was printed on the bags. They gave us the fibre as 60% Fable, 40% Mohair.  What?  I don't recall ever seeing a mysterious Fable animal in a field, is that a sheep, a goat, a horse, what is that?  Oh, right, Fable, as in the name of a blend in the shop, so we have to go find out what that is ourselves and work out what we actually have here.  Fable is 33.33% each Merino, Bamboo and Viscose Tweed, but wait a second, Viscose Tweed is itself made up of 80% South American Wool, 20% Viscose.   This means that the overall fibre content is 40% Mohair, 20% Merino, 20% Bamboo, 16% South American Wool, 4% Viscose. 

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.