Summer Swaps

I meant to mention this in my last posting, but I had already yapped enough for one post.
I usually don't knit in the summer, switching to scrap booking.  My friend says I do it backwards - that I should be knitting for winter in the summer, but I like to knit winter stuff in the winter.  It makes me feel cozier, but then no one really gets much time left to wear the things I make for them since they finally get them at the end of winter.  So this year, my goal is to finish the winter knitted gifts by the end of fall.  I haven't done much of it yet, to be honest, because I'm having too much fun knitting things for my swap pals in the summer swaps I've been participating in.  I'm also making a really cool Bri Bag for myself.  If I do a good job of it, I'd like to make one for others as well.

I had been participating in a yarn De-stash swap in June, but was unable to send out my parcel by the cut off date due to the mail strike.  So instead of selecting yarn for my partner from my stash, I ended up buying some nice for her online and buying her a pattern from her Ravelry Wish List.  I selected for her the Montego Bay scarf, and it looked so nice I will be adding it to my own list of patterns I'd like to try out.  I even bought some yarn for it, but I might not get to it till the fall.

We had secret partners for this swap, so I didn't know who's turn it was to spoil me.  Turns out it was Rosa, who sent me a great package!  She got me lots of goodies, including things I've had my eye on but didn't mention.  She must have Swapper's Intuition!  Here are some pics of us discovering the contents of Rosa's swap package.

Here is Emma shaking the card up and down to make the googly eyes go all googly. 
Shown to the left is a special dessert treat Rosa sent for us to make together. 
This will be fun, as my kids love to make pudding!

And here is a photo of the actual card.
 See the cute little eyes?

For the pattern, this was a perfect fit for me!  I've been wanting to knit this one ever since I first saw it on Ravelry.  I don't know if I've actually added it to my queue list yet or not, but I can't wait to get it started.

And guess what?  The perfect yarn for this Girlfriend Market Bag arrived along with it!  I'm going to LOVE knitting this bag, and will post pictures when it's all done.  Such nice yarn, eh?  I haven't seen any of this yummy stuff around my neighbourhood yarn stores.  Maybe I'll have to put in a request...

Now for this swap, all that was required was yarn and a pattern.  Rosa went above and beyond, sending me lots of goodies to go with the yarn.  Here are some the extra goodies she spoiled me with:
inside a pretty little sachet were 2 lovely pearl stitch markers, 6 cool looking triangle stitch markers (they will fit nicely on my dpns), and 2 awesome boots that I call my knitting socks.  I tell the kids they help keep my needles warm when I'm not using them.  These socks come in so handy, you can never have enough!  I wish they would make mini ones for my dpns - I have those green and purple cone shaped ones, but they aren't as fun.

Another goodie I've been dreaming of, that I was spoiled with, is this absolutely amazing tool from Knit Picks.  It's an emergency fix keychain for when you accidentally drop a stitch.  When you are out and about, and haven't brought all your knitting tools with you, this comes in very handy!  I just saw this one on our Happy Blue Year group discussion thread, and thought to myself how neat it would be to actually have one of these.  And now I do!  Yay!

Now for the last picture, I present to you my son Evan, who is teaching me how to wear my yarn buns like Princess Leia.  Thanks again Rosa, for spoiling me completely!  Hope you had fun de-stashing!