My Booty Has Arrived!
Booty Ho!
Hey, get your minds out of the gutter - I am not referring to a "working" girl's posterior! I'm merely calling out a notice that my gift from my Booty Swap Pal arrived today!
When Gryphon went down to the Post Office this morning, this was what he found:
Since we were on our way out to do errands, it was a while before I could settle in at home and find out that this was under the wrapper:
Well, I didn't think my Pal had presumed to send me boots, even stylish ones. So I opened the lid to reveal this:
The hand-drawn card told me that my Booty Pal was yet another Jen - in this case, lowercase jen*, in Arizona. About as different a place as could be from here in New Hampshire!
Pile O' Booty
jen obviously had studied my blog well. Her card pointed out that she's also a rat owner, which seems to be a case of really cool serendipity - I don't think I had mentioned even our intention to acquire rats before nipper made the match-ups for the swap! jen noticed a lot of details about things I liked, and she made excellent choices that spoke to them.
In the front left corner of the picture, you see a couple of luscious looking packages of chocolate - one is ginger-toffee chocolate thins from Choxie, a flavor I haven't had before, but all those components are things I like. The other is a Belgian milk chocolate truffle bar. Since I'm a person who savors sweets slowly and in small quantities, these will likely last me a week. And I'll enjoy every minute of it!
As I staged that picture above, the chocolates are sitting in one of the handmade goodies that jen sent - a knitted, felted bowl. I read on her blog today that she used her own Kool-Aid dyed yarn, and a pattern from the book One Skein. I may have to add that to my wishlist at Amazon if it's got fun things like this in it!
Felted Bowl
There was a little velveteen pouch that turned out to contain 9 handmade stitch markers. And not just any stitch markers - turns out that jen is a whiz with shrink plastic! I've tried to play with the stuff before, and found it too frustrating trying to get the final results I wanted. But jen has clearly figured it all out, and she made these especially for me.
Pirate, Knitting, and Rat-themed Stitch Markers
There's a ball of yarn, and a skull-and-crossneedles. It took me a bit to figure out what the letters spelled - at first I thought they were "NYARRR!" as an alternative, piratey exclamation to "ARRGH!". Peeking through jen's blog, though, I found that she's been referring to "YARRRN!" quite frequently of late, and, aha! that had to be it.
And look at the center one at the bottom - she even made a little rat! It's my very first rattie collectible!
The Rest of the Loot
And here you see the rest of the items that jen scored so well on. At the back is a blank journal that she decorated for me, with puffy letters spelling out "FOLKCAT" on the cover. A little to the left in front of that is a keychain notepad - seemingly not much, but you know, good ones are hard to find, and I have always wanted one and never been able to settle on paying the money for one when I have seen them. Well, jen fixed that for me, and now I have one!
The other two items - well, let's just say that she really hit the nail on the head with these. I've been trying to start collecting Chibi's, and I've got two - the see-thru orange one with curved-tip needles, and a cream colored one with green that holds tapestry needles. jen sent me one that I didn't have yet - see-thru green with darning needles! One step closer to my goal of ultimate Chibi-ness.
And finally, the ball of yarn. One, small, humble ball of yarn. One ball of Noro Kureyon, handpicked by jen to add to the collection I'm making to knit a felted laptop tote. Again, seemingly unremarkable.
But let me explain - I have six balls of Noro Kureyon gathered so far. One in Color #50. Two in Color #153 that my husband gave me for Christmas. The remaining three are in Color #40, Dye Lot Q.
What do you suppose jen picked to send me, knowing only that I was collecting Noro Kureyon and not what colors I had? A ball of Color #40, Dye Lot Q.
From Arizona. From a yarn shop somewhere near her that is thousands of miles away from where I bought my balls of the same color/lot, my three balls that were the last ones of that color that the store had.
Instead of a wild jumble of colors, having four balls of the same color - and dye lot! - will mean that I can have a Main Colorway in my laptop tote when I finally make it. With the others as accents.
Heck, if my Noro Kureyon luck continues this way, I may even be able to knit the whole thing out of Color #40.
lowercase jen, thank you so much for my great Booty! I am in awe of the serendipity that put another rattie owner in the position of gifting to me, I am impressed by your skill with shrink plastic that can create such different and personal stitch markers, and I am overwhelmed by the effort you went to to learn my likes and dislikes.
This was the first swap I ever participated in, and jen, you made it a great experience.
Thank You, jen!
Booty Arrived
Meanwhile, I had received an e-mail yesterday from Elspeth of multitasking, letting me know that my booty for her had arrived, and how much fun they were having with it. Again, this was my first swap participation ever, so I was really pleased to hear I'd done good!
I'm looking forward to continuing to read both jen's and Elspeth's blogs, and I am grateful for these chances to make new friends. Both jen and Elspeth seem to have a lot in common with me, for all that we are clearly very different people, too. But that's what I love about meeting new people from all over. If we were all exactly alike, how boring would that be?
Star says
"Never mind all this booty talk, just keep the yogurt coming, and I'll be your pal right here!"
*There seemed to be a high number of Jen's, Jenn's, Jennifer's, and Jenny's in this swap - weird, huh?
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