The Tradition
Day 4 is called Window Shoes and the tradition comes from Iceland and is just a small part of the tradition of the 13 Yule Lads. Icelandic Folklore features stories and poems about monsters and trolls and one of these is a female troll called Grýla, who has dozens of children with her first two husbands, none of which are mentioned anymore, but is now married to Leppalúði and has 13 children with him known as the 13 Yule Lads. In old times these characters were portrayed as kidnappers of naughty children who would take them back to their huge family cave and eat the children. They were used to frighten children into good behaviour, similar to the story of the Boogeyman. It is said that the King of Denmark, Christian VI, objected to the use of this disciplinary stool and the scary stories were officially banned in 1746. In more modern times The Yule Lads are benevolent pranksters who arrive one by one over the 13 nights in the run up to Christmas or Yule and each one stays for 13 days, starting on 12th December and the first lad departs on Christmas Day with the rest departing daily through to 6th January. They place small gifts in shoes that children leave on window sills, although if the child has been naughty they will find a rotten potatoes in their shoe.
The Fibre
The actual fibre content is different to that that was printed on the bags, see the comments in "My Thoughts" for full details. We have used Icelandic in this blend, naturally, and blended it with Stellina and Glitz to mimic the Northern Lights so you have greys and whites of the snow and cold and these little shocks of green and purple just to mimic the lights and you can actually see it coming through in the blend, which is lovely, This isn't a really soft blend because Icelandic is not a really soft fibre. It is double coated which means it has a long coat on the outside and then a shorter warmer coat on the inside which gives it character, as you will on the sheep they look a bit scraggy in places, so this blend is not hugely smooth but its perfect for outer garments if you're going to knit or crochet.
My Thoughts
I'm not a massive fan of this blend but I don't dislike it either. It is certainly interesting and it definitely does not contain any Stellina whatsoever, there are no metallic looking fibres in this at all. Stellina looks like the metallic threads that you can buy to hang off a Christmas Tree and gives a sparkle whereas Trilobal Nylon is much softer and really really fine and gives more of a shimmer than a sparkle. At this point in time I am not sure what I will be doing with this one.
The information that has been printed on the bags is not necessarily correct and there are no fibre content percentages, these have been provided on the chat boards. The percentages that they originally gave on the chat boards was 50% Icelandic, 30% Glitzy Aubergine, 20% Glitzy Mallard, which is different from the Icelandic and Stellina that is printed on the bag. I have some Glitzy Mallard in my stash and this is made of 70% Merino, 30% Trilobal Nylon. Aubergine and Mallard are just the names of two colours of the same range of fibre that have the exact same fibre content and no Stellina in sight. The actual fibre content is 50% Icelandic, 35% Merino, 15% Trilobal Nylon
As I said yesterday, as a customer/consumer I don't want to know the percentage of "other blends" that are in the blend and I shouldn't have to then do research or ask questions to find out what is in that blend and do the maths to add those fibre percentages into the main blend fibre content percentages. Thankfully I was not the only one that brought this oversight up with them and they've been pretty good about it.
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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