Spoiled again!

Gentle Readers,
It's been a long long while since I posted here, and for that I offer my sincere apologies. And now I have so much to blog about (the Final Four, the massive [to me] amounts of money I spent on yarn while in St Louis for the Final Four, the Final Four!, the wedding dress I'm making [GULP!], my latest adventures in knitting, the Whedon-stalking that I'm hoping to kick into high gear later this year, and of course my deep and abiding love for parentheses) that I don't even know where to begin!

But the incredible generosity of my spoiler in the Ravelry Warm-Ewe-Up Winter Swap cannot go another minute without being acknowledged!



Y'all, "WOW" does not even begin to cover it. Underneath all the goodies is a knitting needles roll-up bag from Katie Fleck Designs which happens to match the boxy bag and the zippered bag that I received in two previous packages. This is so great!!! A place to put my needles! And I love the pattern of the fabric. I take the boxy bag with me everywhere I go, it's absolutely perfect and I love it so much. I'm so excited to add the needle case to it.

This is the first best:

I love how she used little post-its to cover up the parts of her message that referred to the stuff I may not have opened yet! Isn't that great? Because of course I tore open the card immediately because I couldn't WAIT to find out who it was! And she of course knew that I would do that!

And the spoiler is: mobarger!

Ok, so last month when I got package #2, I got a little obsessed with trying to figure out who my spoiler was, and I narrowed it down to about 4 peeps in the group, but I kept going back to mobarger. She farms full-time in upstate NY and also works full- time and STILL manages to find time to knit. That's inspirational.

Also, there must be something in my genetic memory (both sets of grandparents grew up on farms) that makes me long for a farm. It's completely unrealistic given my career choice, but I still fantasize about living on a small farm. Oh, I know it's an obscene amount of work, that's why it's a FANTASY! But I was pretty darn excited - word of warning to Mo -- I'm coming to visit you someday! I think it was the pics of the roosters that did me in. That and having read BOTH The Omnivore's Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in the past year has made me really think about where food comes from, and why oh why we are so OK with the industrialized process from which so much of our "food" comes from in this country.

But that's a rant for another day.

Now for the close-ups!

Lovely Linen Yarn. My mind is spinning with the possibilities!



SCHAEFER!!! I've been lusting after this in various yarn stores for months. I must be psychic or something because every time I've decided, regretfully, not to purchase any. And LOOK! I'm being rewarded for my restraint:



TREATS!



Look at all those tiny little chocolate sheep! And my two favorite kinds of chocolate bars: cherry & almond in dark chocolate and ginger in dark chocolate. YUM YUM YUM! Yes, you can see I cracked right into one of those already.

In the back is a mug from the Ithaca Coffee Company (it has a rooster on it! How cool is that??!!) with BEANS from Ithaca Coffee Company - it smells HEAVENLY. This morning my roommate was about to pour me some coffee and I yelled "NOOOOOOO!" and ran into my studio where I had just photographed everything (yes, I actually photographed everything BEFORE COFFEE. Does that tell you how excited I am?) and had to get my new mug and wash it so I could use it.

yes, I am a five-year-old.

THREE - count 'em, THREE patterns - two for socks (hooray for socks!) one of which teaches the toe-up method on one circular -- which I've been dying to learn! She also sent me some gorgeous sock needles to replace the ones I broke. And some lovely lovely little bits: a tiny little ornament with a sheep on it, a sticker from Ithaca Coffee Company, and a vinyl sticker that says "knitgirl"



I feel like I'm in that lovely state of bliss that you get after a well-prepared meal and a few glasses of wine. This was my first yarn swap and I feel so very lucky to have gotten Mo. She got to know me SO WELL and obviously took the time to pick through my blog and my wishlist and find things I would really love and appreciate - and many things I needed as well. Her generosity leaves me speechless.

Ok, not speechless, because that would never happen.

Mo, thank you so much.

ETA: Did anyone else notice that the colors of the knitting organizers and the colors of the yarns I just got match the colors I've selected for my blog? Is Mo really that clever, or is that just a coincidence? Inquiring minds want to know!