Frankenadventsocks - No. 1 Wensleydale

It wouldn't be December without some kind of advent celebration. I'm done with the overpriced hugely commercial sponsored by Cadburys / Thortons chocolate before breakfast calendars but have yet to persuade the children that there is another way. I don't really know the full history of advent but it's interesting to note that if you do start to google it, "the history of advertising" comes out as the top hit which I think says a lot about the whole count down to Christmas.

What with the time of year and the stresses and strains of my working life, I have found myself not really feeling that well. So following all I discovered in Wovember and the therapeutic effect of knitting and getting back to nature, I'm stepping back from the hustle and bustle of 24 shopping days left to Christmas and taking things one stitch at a time.

I came home from work early yesterday, thoroughly crushed and Shinybees Podcast came to the rescue with Frankenadvent socks. These are an advent based development of Frankensocks, which had also previously passed me by. Frankensocks are the knitted descendants of Frankenstein; a monstrous hash of woolen cast offs joined together to create something that resembles socks. I have yet to investigate how the knitting community on Ravelry enables friendship but all credit for Frankenadventsocks goes to someone who goes by the name of Feltaria.

Today therefore is the first day of Frankenadventsocks for me and the best place to start was with my first Wovember purchase from Home Farm Wensleydales.

I'm going for top down socks and have started knitting a 1 x 1 twisted rib with 100% Wensleydale 2ply in Ercu. This was the first attempt at spinning by the very lovely Jayne who sent me a truly informative letter and some gorgeous samples of Big Wool which is a Blue Faced Leicester and Wensleydale mix.

The dog and I settled down to some comfort movie watching on True Christmas and a cup of green tea in my latest treasure find tea cup to banish those worries and woes. What better way to clear the chaos in my head than to knit it all into some woolfully knitted Frankenadventsocks. I feel better already, well it's a start.

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