Advent Calendar 2023 Day 1

So, following the arrival of the Advent Calendar about a week and a half ago, I have since decided to throw the fibre packaging away as it really isn't worth the hassle of trying to do anything with it.

This year's advent calendar is themed on different "Holiday Traditions" from around the world.  I will say "Holiday" because there are numerous religions and faiths that celebrate at this time of year and it's not necessarily called "Christmas", there are many other names for many different celebrations.

The Tradition

Day 1 is called Gävle Goat and the tradition comes from Sweden where a huge goat is made of straw every year and erected in the town of Gävle at Slottstorget (Castle Square).  It is basically a giant version of the traditional Yule Goat decoration.  This tradition started in 1966 when an advertising consultant by the name of Stig Gavlén (1927-2018) came up with the idea of placing a giant version of the traditional decoration in the square and the giant goat has been subject to all sorts of vandalism and destruction since then, usually by human hand but sometimes by nature.  As of December 2023, 42 out of 58 goats have been destroyed by burning or some other cause.  It is now illegal to destroy the goat and if you get caught doing so it is a 3 month prison term for you.  The first one built in 1966 stood at around 13 metres tall and the height has varied over the years, with one year it being just 2 metres tall and then this year it stands at around 12 metres tall.  

The Fibre

The fibre is 80% Mohair, 20% Flax and represents the Goat and the Straw element of the tradition. The flax brings a little bit of texture to the blend and the blend has a fantastic sheen to it.  Anything you knit with the spun yarn will have a little bit of texture and colour running through it.

My Thoughts

It's not a fibre that I am particularly familiar with so this will be interesting.  As usual I will wait until I have opened all of the packets before I decide what I will do with it.  I am hoping to create great pairings with other packets of fibre from either this year or last year, as I have used very little of last year's advent calendar.

As what I often do, due to a busy life, I am writing up these blog posts some time after the event so the first photos are what I took on the day of opening using my mobile phone and the early December natural light, which isn't always the best, and the next photos have been taken some time after using my proper camera and my little lit pop up studio and the colours are more true to life. I am also including a close up photo of each of the pattern strips that are on the packets, each one is different, and some are of a different clarity/quality, that is not my photography skills but rather the printed design and this must be down to the original image source.

The information that has been printed on the bags is not necessarily correct and there are no fibre content percentages.  This information has been provided in the online chat boards for this advent calendar and in some instances, where they have used amounts of other blends that they produce along with other fibres to make this new blend, we have collectively asked for further clarification and then the fibre content has changed quite considerably.  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 and before "World of Wool".  Petty much the only thing that will show up on the black packaging are the metallic gel pens.  This is why I have not taken "new" photos of the bags, they all have my scribble on them.

Spinning the white blend of the North Country Cheviot

I know that I have started to blend the Llandovery Whiteface Hill ready for spinning but I really should crack on and finish the spinning that I started as well.  I've already spun the lime green version a few months ago now so it was time to spin the natural version of the North Country Cheviot blend.   I almost forgot to take any work in progress photos of the spinning, but at least I did remember, unlike last time!

This one is prettier now that it's spun up and it will be interesting to see how it knits up at some point in the future.  I intend to find a pattern that will use both yarns in one project.

The fibre content of this one is 83% Cheviot Wool, 6% Tussah Silk, 4.5% Silk Noil, 4.5% Hemp, 2% Trilobal Nylon

It has spun up to double knit weight and the skeins are 77g/180m and 72g/162m

Blending the Orange-Brown Llandovery Whiteface Hill - Foxes and Pumpkins

Today I have been having fun with my blending hackle and tackling the Llandovery Whiteface Hill fleece that I dyed orange-brown back in September.  I sorted out the additional fibres that I would be adding to all four lots of Llandovery Whiteface Hill back at that time and then dyed the lots of fleece colours to go with the additional fibres that I had chosen.  All of the additional fibres in the different colours are within a few grams of each other and I plan to use all of each bump of fibre so that the final fibre content won't be exactly the same for all four blends but will be very close.

The other fibres that I chose to put in this blend are, from left to right, top to bottom: 19g Tussah Silk in shade Rust, 12g Trilobal Nylon in shade Pumpkin Spice, 10g Silk Noil in shade Pumpkin, 11g Hemp that I dyed myself in June 2023 using cold water dyes and finally 156g Llandovery Whiteface Hill fibre that I dyed in September that I think looks like the colour of foxes.  With this in mind I have decided to call this colourway "Foxes and Pumpkins".

I discovered that I had somehow managed to felt the wool slightly during the dye process so I had a little bit of trouble getting it to open up again but I managed it and I ended up with 208g of a lovely unique blend ready to spin.

The fibre content of this one works out to be:

75% Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool
9% Tussah Silk
6% Trilobal Nylon
5% Silk Noil
5% Hemp

The 2023 Advent Calendar has arrived

The long awaited Advent Calendar has arrived in a huge box, it's so big my first thought was the line from Molly Weasley when she says "big box for Ron".  I opened the outer-box to reveal a massive black gift box with packaging around the sides.  This packaging is apparently the waste from the wool mill and consists of various fibre and yarns and there has been a bit of a challenge thrown out to see what we will do with it.  Some have said they will bin it, some have said they will probably use it to protect garden plants from the frost and cold over the winter and some, like me, are considering the options, but there is a lot of it.  My packaging weighs 584g!

I have no idea if I will use this, or not, but for now it is bagged up.  It may yet end up in the compost bin or dug into the vegetable bed or something.  I'm not sure yet but it is really soft.

So, onto the box, now that I can actually get it out of the outer box.  It's huge, bigger than last year's, but it also feels relatively flimsy, compared to last year's so I'm not sure if its a size thing or whether it's a cheaper box.  It's more matte and the wording is stuck on with some kind of tape, whereas last years box had a more shiny surface and the wording was properly printed onto the box.  We did try to carefully peel the tape off but the lettering is coming with it so we pushed it back down.  There is no magnetic closure on the box this year and the ribbon can be pulled through both parts of the box.

If I had bought this as a gift for someone else I would be a bit disappointed but I have bought this for myself and it is just the box and the most important things are inside, but even so...

The box is actually too big and so these didn't arrive neat like they are now, they were all over the place and I was a good girl and managed to stand them up without looking at the print on the front that details the name they've given to each one and the fibre contents.  There was also a load of "sprinkles" inside the box, I'm not sure if they paper or a kind of plastic or laminated type material but they have the Aztec type print on them and they are shaped like sheep.  Might use them for something, not sure, but they were a little annoying like when people put sprinkles and glitter inside birthday and Christmas cards and send them in the post to you for you to open and get covered in it all.  Now that all the bags are all stood up the only print I can actually read clearly are the numbers of the days so I sorted them out in order.  They are nice bags by the look of it, I didn't look at them in detail because I'd be able to read the contents and I don't want to but apparently they are resealable.  The issues with these bags are that the details are printed on the outside and so can ruin the surprise and I store all of my fibre in clear bags so that I can see at an instant what the colour is so once I've opened each day I will most likely be cutting around the details to place it in a clear bag with the fibre.  I wonder if they could have had a peel off piece placed over the name and fibre details so that all we see on delivery as the numbers on the bags.  That would have been a solution.

I'm sure as the boxes arrive with their customers those of us who chat on their social media will express our views about what we like about it and what we don't like about it.  I can't believe I start opening this in just over a week's time!

Combing the Suri Alpaca

I recently dyed some Suri Alpaca in 4 different colours.  I got 200g of fleece back in 2015 from a lady in Gloucestershire who keeps Alpacas and this came from a Suri Alpaca called Butterscotch.  I washed it on arrival and was left with 162g of fleece to prepare for spinning.

I did nothing with this alpaca fleece until recently, when I decided to split it into 4 amounts and dye each amount a different colour.  

Over the past couple of days I have combed this Suri Alpaca so that it is ready to use when I need it.  Each lot started out at 42-44g and it took me 90 minutes to comb each lot and each time I was left with just 15g of lovely hand combed top, except for the orange-brown one where I was left with 12g.  It's not a lot but at least I did get something from this fairly old fleece that I had somehow overlooked for so long.

Dyeing an array of fibres purple

Further to my previous three posts I have continued to dye the Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool and fibre selection that I have chosen and now that the third lot is dry I can get on with my fourth and final lot. 

So, what I will be dyeing in each dye pot is:

150-155g of Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool that I hand combed myself
40g Suri Alpaca, this is some raw fleece from an alpaca called "Butterscotch"
25g of 14.5 micron Merino, which was from Day 23 of the 2021 Advent Calendar
25g of Mulberry Silk
12g of Tussah Silk Noil
12g of Trilobal Nylon
12g Milk Protein, which was from Day 19 of the 2021 Advent Calendar

I soaked all of the fibres in warm water with a splash of Synthropol added to the water to remove any "chemical finish" that may have been added to the fibres during production.  This also removes any grease and dirt that may be left in the fleece.

I made up a dye bath of 1% dye depth made up of 67.5% River Blue and 22.5% Flame Red and 10% Midnight Black.  What I weighed out was 1.86g of River Blue, 0.62g of Flame Red and 0.276g of Midnight Black.  The dye didn't take so well on the two Silk lots, they are little bit patchy but they are OK.

Dyeing an array of fibres blue

Further to my previous two posts I have continued to dye the Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool and fibre selection that I have chosen and now that the first two lots are dry I can get on with my third. 

So, what I will be dyeing in each dye pot is:

150-155g of Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool that I hand combed myself
40g Suri Alpaca, this is some raw fleece from an alpaca called "Butterscotch"
25g of 14.5 micron Merino, which was from Day 23 of the 2021 Advent Calendar
25g of Mulberry Silk
12g of Tussah Silk Noil
12g of Trilobal Nylon
12g Milk Protein, which was from Day 19 of the 2021 Advent Calendar

I soaked all of the fibres in warm water with a splash of Synthropol added to the water to remove any "chemical finish" that may have been added to the fibres during production.  This also removes any grease and dirt that may be left in the fleece.

I made up a dye bath of 1% dye depth made up of 75% River Blue and 25% Amazon Green.  What I weighed out was 2.07g of River Blue and 0.69g of Amazon Green.  The dye didn't take so well on the two Silk lots, they are little bit patchy but they are OK.