Magic Yarn Balls

This summer, I participated in my first Magic Yarn Ball swap. 
I had a lot of fun getting my partner's yarn ball together for her, and she really liked her goodies.
I was pretty excited when I first heard about this:  you take a skein of yarn, buy some knitting notions, goodies, sweets, or just about anything you think you can manage to wrap inside the yarn ball, and wind the yarn around each item until it eventually resembles a ball.  Sure, it will be lumpy and bumpy, but for the most part it will look like yarn.  When your partner receives your magic yarn ball, the idea is that as they knit something with it, things are revealed as the ball unwinds... or so I thought.  In our swap group, everyone so far has been too excited to wait and actually knit with their yarn ball.  They are so thrilled to have it arrive that they immediately unwind it to find their little surprises, then wind it back into a ball.  I feel glad that my partner GuapaM got to unwind and find lots of great stuff, but I feel bad that she had to go through all that unwinding to find it. I'm talking all the way to the end of the yarn for that last item (custom large buttons from my local yarn store).  I ordered her a cone of fingering weight yarn, and according to the swap requirements we had to do a minimum of 100 grams.  I ordered 150 grams of yarn, but saved 15 grams for me to do a swatch with (for a future order).  Which left me with over 700 yards of yarn to wind, if I did my math correctly.  That took me quite a while to wind.  Here is what her yarn ball package looked like when it arrived there:

I sent her some of my favourite coffee from Tim Hortons, as well as a Noro Coffee Cup cozy that I knitted myself by hand.  I love knitting with Noro!  It's a pleasure knitting with this yarn, but it's even more fun to be able to give it away to someone who will enjoy using it.  This really does keep your coffee warm, and feels great to hold.  The Dare Bear Paws crackers are something I chose because my GuapaM likes crackers, especially cheddar;  and I was sure she hasn't tried these yet.  They are fairly new on the market.  Here is the other picture, which shows all the stuff she managed to unwind from her yarn ball:

I can't wait to see what she ends up knitting with the yarn I sent to her!  She is such a talented knitter.
Wait a second... that yarn looks like it's been wound up with a ball winding machine - now I don't feel so bad about making her unwind so much yarn, ha ha ha!  Not bad, eh?  Look how much stuff I had hiding inside that ball of yarn!  I think I've impressed myself, too.  Sadly, there was no way to wrap the cracker box in yarn.  If you can accomplish that, you have my greatest respect.