Advent is soon upon us, and with it the vast array of Advent calendars.  For anyone who didn’t grow up with this tradition, Advent in most mainstream Christian churches is the four Sundays (and encompassed weekdays) leading up to Christmas.  There may be special liturgy, hymns and other activities in this time period of “expectant waiting”. Advent calendars have long been used to mark the time. When I was little, we used to sew 24 fancy buttons to a length of ribbon, and take off a button for each day of Advent.  (It was the 70’s and we didn’t have cable – we had to make our own fun!)

Like other things about Christmas, ‘Advent calendar’ is a concept that has been adapted to secular practices, and – predictably – used to sell things.  Chocolate Advent calendars have been around forever, and now you can get Advent calendars with Legos, makeup, various boozes, tea, underwear, socks, skin care products,  popcorn, wine, and who knows what else.  Among the many, many options available are yarn Advent calendars.  Sometimes, like the Jimmy Beans one, they have a project available to do with them, sometimes its just random bits of yarn and notions. I’ve been reluctant to get one so far, because they are kind of expensive, and when there is a project they are always MKALs by their very nature.  I’m not much of a gambler, and $200 + a month’s worth of intermittent work is too rich for my blood.

But this year I bit.  Ambah O’Brien has designed the ADVENTurous wrap and unveiled the design ahead of time, which takes a lot of the uncertainty out of the equation. It’s a nice design, and from all the test knits it looks good in a lot of different colorways. So you buy the pattern from her on Ravelry, and then you can either put together your own yarn from stash or new purchases, or you can buy a yarn Advent set from one of the many fine dyers who created sets specifically to work with this design.  For the interested, Ambah’s Ravelry group has a thread specifically for this KAL, and one of the first posts has a listing of the dyers who have created sets for it.  Lattes & Llamas was on the list, and since they haven’t steered me wrong, one of their jeweltone kits was in my cart the minute they became available for preorder, and I never looked back.

That was in mid-October.  Yesterday morning there was a brief commotion on our front porch and when we got organized enough to check it out – there were a couple of packages, one of which was my yarny Advent box!

I don’t know why USPS delivered packages on Thanksgiving, but I was definitely thankful for it!  Here is what it looks like unpacked…

And here’s the bag to put it all in!

So now the pattern is bought, the needles and other notions assembled, and I’m ready to go.  If only I can keep my hands off the little envelopes until December 1st!