Advent

Apart from the over ambitious annual knitting plans  I am very relaxed about Christmas this year. That's despite it being December 1st, my having bought just one present (a beautiful wooden lorry with a magnetic crane to lift the blocks off for the Little Model's Little Brother) and finished only one handmade present.  No baking done for the freezer, no mincemeat or cake make, not even wrapping paper or cards bought because I have decided to make my own this year.

Why so chilled? Why no frenzied list making? I'm not sure really but I like this new relaxed me and perhaps it has something to do with having booked a Whole Three Weeks off work beginning on the 13th December .

But I have knitted an advent garland and today we prepared to hang the first item in the little tree in the hallway.  

A candle

Waking this morning at 5.30 and lying awake in the dark for half an hour before putting on all the lights and making coffee it was not hard to understand why many winter festivals are celebrated with candles.  There is no need for a candle early in a summers morning, watching the dawn in russet mantle clad creeping over your personal battlement or on a warm balmy night as you sit in the garden at nearly ten enjoying the twilight.  But in the winter evening's dusk there is something especially comforting about candle light (to say nothing about how it enhances the complexion)

So it pleases me that the instructions for the knitted advent calendar begin with a candle

x

C