Introduction
If you weren't already aware from my unboxing video's on my facebook page, I purchased the @CrochetSociety Advent Calendar last year and thought my fellow kiwi crocheter's might want to know more about this for next year.
Price
Price approx $187.38 NZD including shipping.
Pros
Each day you receive a small ball of yarn in different colours. The yarn is from Bella Coco (who also runs Crochet Society), is 33g/66m and called Confection DK. The yarn was nice to work with, has lovely pastel colours for the project.
You also get access to a pattern. The ball of yarn you receive links with the section of pattern you are doing each day and you can either read instructions or watch video. This year it was a small blanket/lap rug.
The pattern started off with the snowflake in the middle and worked outwards towards the end. The snowflake in particular was interesting to do as we attached the yarn to different parts rather than adding it on top later.
The pattern is quite fun to do as it takes through through a few different techniques like Mosaic crochet which you fasten off at the end of each row, then an adjusted mosiac technique that goes back and forth like traditional crochet.
Although not to everyone's taste (i.e. my husband's) I quite liked the colour scheme. I wouldn't have put these colours together myself so it's interesting to see them used like this. I also enjoyed how the pattern repeated below the snowflake is in slightly muted colours of the pattern above.
But wait....there's more!
You also get other small items like stitch markers, Christmas decorations and cookie cutters! They all seems like they are good quality.
AND........3 pretty glittery crochet hooks in the sizes needed for the project. They seemed pretty solid and were ok to work with, however, I didn't use these myself as I love my Clover Amour hooks.
The box is pretty impressive. I believe it's made out of cardboard but is very sturdy. I liked how on the first side of the box you can see the numbers for the advent calendar but then if you turn them around the artwork continues so you are able to use the box as storage or something similar later on.
The package arrived within plenty of time. I think I received it in October so I didn't have to stress that it wasn't going to turn up on time for me to enjoy it with everyone else. I had some other advent calendars (yes I had 6 this year) that didn't get set out till the beginning of December, which, with all the delays in deliveries, meant that I didn't receive the box till sometime in January.
Cons
I felt that the instructions for pattern were not always clear or laid out in a way that was easy to read or understand. I had to refer to the video for almost all sections and sometimes the video didn’t show the full details clearly so that you could be confident you had done it correctly.
I would have preferred more consistency with the extra items – i.e. some items were Christmas decorations for the tree, some were cookie cutters, some items were things like stitch markers. I would have preferred the 25 boxes to all be crochet related notions and tools, or all Christmas decorations etc. The mix of different types of gifts meant that there wasn’t quite enough of all of them to make a lovely set.
The size of the finished item was a bit odd. I think it may be able to fit a baby bassinet or something? Being someone who doesn’t have children or know people at this stage of life, I’m not sure what I will do with the end product. It would be good if there was a way to choose from a small selection on what the end item type may be? That' just me being fussy though, I realise I'm not the average crocheter type :-)
Other
When following other people who also received this box, I saw a lot of comments over missing elements of the advent calendar. Of course, we all understand that these things can happen, however, it sounds like the customer service to get some of these issues resolved was much to be desired.
I can understand that sending replacement items to somewhere like NZ would be difficult, but it looked like a lot of these were people reasonably local so I would have thought a replacement would be easy (assuming they had stock). If a replacement was not available, then you would expect some other kind of compensation for not receiving what was advertised. I'm not sure where people got to with their complaints but I just wanted to make you aware that it seemed a bit of a theme.
Conclusion
Personally I received all items as promised in the advent calendar so didn’t have any issues myself in this area.
It was super fun to be able to open a box each day and discover what was inside, and share with my clan (you guys!).
Would I order this again. Maybe.
It would depend on my budget at the time. I think its pretty good value considering you get 25 balls of yarn, 25 accessories, 25 days of pattern, it arrived in good time. Just be aware that it may be an issue if anything is missing or doubled up.
I would love to hear about the crochet calendars you got this year! Any you would recommend I try next year to review?