Our advent calendars give you 24 mini skeins - that's lots of colour to play with. The 24 colours have been dyed to make up a colour wheel. This means you can pick any colour to start with, then carry working round the wheel and after 24 colours you'll be back where you started.

It's amazing how different the same colours look when you mix them up. Instead of moving in small colour changes you'll get beautiful stripes.

The two skeins that look pretty similar in the bottom left hand corner of the photo are skeins 1 and 24 - so that's the point where the colour wheel comes back to where it started.

These are the same skeins, just laid out in two lines. So to get stripes you'll pick a skein from the top row and then the skein from directly underneath it. We've made it easy for you to make the colours work in any way you want. Each advent calendar comes with a postcard which identifies which colour is in which numbered parcel. There's even space on the back of the card to note down which parcel you want to open each day.

Our advent calendars come with a welcome letter which explains about the colour information on the postcard. The card itself is inside the box and it's safely hidden in an envelope which explains that it contains spoiler information. Some makers want to plan, and they can open the envelope and start plotting. It means they don't have to open every parcel to see the colours before starting a project. (I'll be honest and say I hadn't considered that possibility until a customer emailed me to say how much she appreciated the card and colour information).  Other people like surprises, so they can leave the envelope unopened.

Either way the advent calendars make a great gift for yourself or a loved one. The mini skeins are dyed, wound and wrapped, and we have wooden boxes ready to engrave with the recipient's name. I'm very aware that COVID19 is likely to have an impact on delivery services, especially as we get closer to the end of the year. Our post is collected daily by Royal Mail, and UK parcels are generally arriving in 2 days (although there is the occasional delay). Overseas post is trickier to predict, so we're using tracked and signed post for that so you can see where parcels are (and usually that's the post which gets priority)

Shop for an advent calendar 

It's been a colourful few days in the workshop - the perfect antidote to the rain and dull days outside.

We've dyed up a whole rainbow (and more) of our splodge colours. The yarn is our 4ply British Blue Faced Leicester, mulberry milk and British baby alpaca - total luxury. A single skein will make a shawl that's a pleasure to wrap round your neck, and adding a second skein will give you lots of options.

There are 400 meters in each 100 gram skein.

As well as a rainbow of colours we've also dyed some more neutral backgrounds. These are ideal if you'd like to combine a pop of colour with a more subtle look.

Fibally we dyed navy and plum colourways. I'd love to say that we planned how beauifully these work together, but it was a very happy accident. I'm very tempted to put these together in a striped shawl.

Now that all of the advent calendar orders have been posted I'm ready to start making more mini skeins, and the rainbow colours make an adorable set.

There are 320 meters in this set - perfect for a little project or to combine with another skein.

These yarns will be in the shop at 1900 on Thursday 15th October.

I've taken pictures of colour combinations of the rainbow splodges - and if there's a combination you'd like to see please get in touch and I can take a quick picture for you.

Pink, red and orange

Red, orange and gold

Orange, gold and green - isn't that the perfect autumn colour combination?

Gold, green and turquoise

Green, turquoise and blue. This reminds me of summer at the seaside on one of those rare and perfect days when the sun shines and the sea is turquoise.

Turquoise, blue and purple

Blue, purple and pink

Purple, pink and red

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