On the First Day of Christmas....

This countdown calender is an interesting combination of inspirations, all found on-line at various blogs recently. I love how the Internet is becoming a center for creative ideas.

The pocket idea comes from All Sorts. Her's is much nicer than mine of course, but mine is very me. I actually started these pockets while at my mothers. I had forgotten to bring either bendies or knitting & had nothing to do, a tragedy! I didn't follow the All Sorts pattern, choosing instead to wing it using a piece of Ghirardelli chocolate. The pockets are red wool felt because that's what the Joann's near my mothers had. I did a button hole stitch on the edges and varied the flaps. Being the anal retentive person that I am, there are an equal number of round with and without button holes and pointed with & without button holes. Strangely I left off the numbers. We must be the only people who don't have numbered advent calenders, but I just don't see the need. We know when it's christmas, the calender is really a way to keep ourselves (OK, L) occupied while we wait for the holiday.

I had these finished for a while but for the life of me couldn't decide what to hang them from. While I like the homespun fabric strips, I don't have any in my stash & none of what I do have looked right. Enter Soule Mama's post about twist ties! Two very long treads of yarn later (& two cats who thought these were a toy for them) and our calender is hung.

Surprisingly the stars in the center aren't inspired from the All Sorts calender. That idea was sparked by a recent post at The Purl Bee. I liked the colors on the stars but again, not in the stash. Instead I used up the extra wool felt from the advent calender. I plan on adding a third, one for each of us in the family, but was too engrossed in X-men "The last stand" to finish it.

As usual, please don't mind the terrible photographs. It's entirely too late at night for there to be enough light for my poor camera to do a decent job at capturing this. However I couldn't wait another day to get the photos up! After all there are only .....counts remaining chocolates.... 17 more days until D day!