Saturday 16 December 2023

Advent Calendar 2023 Day 16

The Tradition

Day 16 is called Pavuchky and the tradition comes from Ukraine.  The tradition goes that a poor widow and her children found a pine sapling growing in the dirt floor of their shack.  So that they could have a Christmas tree to decorate that year they cared for it diligently but when Christmas eve came they couldn’t afford decorations. The spiders that lived in the shack heard this and spun their webs across the little tree so that when the family came down in the morning and the sunlight shone in through the window, the tree glistened with the web decorations.

The Fibre


The actual fibre content is 70% Shetland (Forest & Evergreen), 15% Red Eri Silk, 15% Mulberry Silk (Edinburgh Grey). This blend mimics the tree decorated with spiders webs. We have a base of Shetland, we've used British Shetland in all the different shades of green that we have and then we've added Mulberry Silk and Eri Silk to this to mimic the spider webs and it drifts through absolutely lovely and I think that this really has done the tale justice.  This has got a lovely sheen through it and you can just imagine all of the silk as little bits of spider web hanging off the tree.  Because this is Shetland it has a lovely bouncy spring to it and the weight of the Mulberry Silk doesn't take anything from that, if anything, it adds a little bit of extra softness.  If it was put into a garment in some way it would look absolutely fantastic.

My Thoughts

I love this one.  I do notice that in my length of the blend there appears to be more Silk at one end than the other so when I spin this I will have to split it down the length and turn one half around and put it back together to even out the Silk.  I thought the Silk was white initially and was surprised to find out that it is grey but it must be a very pale grey because it looks almost white.  This one isn't overly soft but it's not nasty, with the Shetland it is another everyday wool with added luxury from the Silk.  I might spin this with something white, I have plenty of options so will find something to match the fibres in this one. I don't think that I want to barberpole this one, perhaps I will blend it first.


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 seem to be correct for this one.  

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.

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