Queen Advent

Does anybody know how to celebrate Advent, really? It's becoming increasingly popular in non-liturgical churches, but even amongst Catholics we don't really celebrate it. There's this long pre-Christmas season of shopping and decorating that leads anti-climatically to Christmas Day... and then we pull down our decorations the very next day, or, if we are lazy, on New Years.

As far as I know, there's not really a tradition of celebrating Advent in the home.  I would like to blame that on the fact that this country is predominantly still culturally a non-liturgical culture, but I don't know of any cultures that make much out of Advent. 

Perhaps that is the point.  Perhaps waiting is the thing. 

Unlike what manufacturers of chocolate Advent calendars would like you to believe, Advent actually begins four Sundays before December 25th, in this case, on December 2nd (you'll have to throw out your commercially bought Advent Calendar--manufacturers rarely know what they are doing).  I was dissatisfied with all Advent calendars I found, so I decided to just make one--one that actually uses Advent colors, which you can see in the picture below. Purple for the ordinary days of Advent, in two shades; white for the feasts such as Immaculate Conception on Dec. 8th; red for martyrs feasts (St. Lucy on December 13th), and pink for Gaudete Sunday. You can find all of these colors displayed calendar-style here.

 I used a Little Cotton Rabbits free pattern for these little booties, somewhat modified to make them shorter and smaller.  Where it directs to work eight rows, I only worked four.  Stocking number 16 was the first one I did, and I worked eight rows there.  You can see how it's not quite as cute!

So since I used all the different colors in different combinations, it's sort of hard to tell what liturgical color each sock is supposed to represent. The body of the sock, that is, the space between the heel and the toe, determines the liturgical color. So the third sock down on the left (marked "16") is pink for Gaudete Sunday.  The same with 13, the red one with lavender toe and heel, for St. Lucy.

As you can see, I'm a sock or two short. I wasn't sure how many I would need this year, and since Advent is rather short this year, I assumed this would be enough... not! 23 and 24 are forthcoming.

And now, in honor of Notre Dame's UNDEFEATED, #1 status, I give you a pattern for a Notre Dame mini-stocking.  It uses the same mini-socking pattern as the advent stockings above.