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Welcome back, friends! My 50 days of WIPs project is still going strong, I just have fallen behind on sharing what I have been working on. I thought I’d catch you up on weeks 4 + 5 (so the time from November 22nd to December 6th). I am slightly better at sharing over on my brightboldmakes Instagram account, feel free to follow me over there.
I haven’t been super strict about only working on projects that I had previously started, but I never really intended to keep the margins to narrow. The main point of this challenge is to do something creative each day, because it makes me happy.
Seeing that weeks 4 + 5 were the very end of November and the early days of December a lot of the things I made were quite Christmas related.
Advent Calendar for SJ
Last year, SJ was just one year old and didn’t really get that it was Christmas and the excitement of it. But she really does now! It is so so fun to see her discover and experience the festive season for the first time.
I decided to make her an advent calendar because in my opinion, they are one of the best things about Advent. The thing that tends to make me uneasy about Christmas is the over-consumption. I really don’t want all our efforts to live a sustainable and simplified life to go out of the window during this time. So, for her advent calendar I used some bags that my mum had sewn for the same purpose when my brother and I were kids. I filled them with playmobil that I used to have as a kid. On every other day she is also getting a little chocolate or a mini-pack of gummy bears. I got a few stickers and a necklace with wooden beads, but that was all.
So, on the whole, I didn’t buy anything new for this. It was so fun and satisfying to put together. The playmobil set I used is this stable-zoo scenery and it kind of has some nativity vibes, which seemed really fitting.
Sourdough Bread
As previously mentioned, I have gotten back onto the sourdough bandwagon! It had been a while since I made some actual sourdough bread. Based on my friend Kathleen Quiring’s recommendation I tried out the Sourdough Loaf for Beginners. It turned out so good! I have made it two more times since. Once I substitued wheat flour for spelt and the third time I used wholemal spelt flour. All three loaves were delicious.
I am kind of hoping to make it a weekly habit to bake bread. I love the process of it and knowing all the ingredients plus it just tastes so much better than anything I can buy from the bakery.
“Grättimänner”
In Germany we celebrate St. Nikolaus Day on the 6th of December. It’s quite a big deal actually! In accordance with the legends about Nikolaus, children put their shoes outside the night before St. Nikolaus Day. On the following morning they find them filled with oranges, apples, nuts and sweets. Often people eat a type of cake made from yeast dough that are shaped like men, decorated with raisins and almonds. In our region these dough men are called “Grättimänner”.
I decided to bake some myself to leave outside the doors of some of our neighbours as a little Nikolaus surprise. I didn’t manage to make as many as I had planned, so some people only got chocolates in the end. However, the ones that did get made were delicious and received a lot of praise!
Merry Christmas Garland
On the other days I knitted a lot on my Merry Christmas garland. When I first started this project, I rather enjoyed making the little jumpers, but to be honest, after the third or fourth one I pretty much had enough. They were just so fiddly! Plus, the yarn I had chosen was some very random scrap yarn that was quite stiff and not overly enjoyable to knit with. Also, I have to say that I am not a huge fan of doing colourwork when knitting in rows rather than in the round. Maybe I have missed some trick but doing colourwork on the purlside is kind of annoying.
However, I persevered! And I knitted all 14 mini jumpers and then sewed them onto a band to make into a garland. Even though this project was a bit cumbersome I am so glad I stuck with it. Seeing the finished garland on our door everyday makes me rather happy!
That’s everything for weeks 4 and 5! If you would like to learn more about this creative challenge check out my post on Week 1. And here are the other things I have worked on: Week 2 and Week 3.
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