Thursday, March 05, 2009

A nifty-gifty day!

In yesterday's mail was one of those delightful peach-colored slips telling me there were TWO packages at the post office. Since I got home (and my mail) well after 5:00, I planned to pick them up today. When I stopped to grab today's mail on my way to town, I found a third package that fit in the slot of our locked box! Of course I had to open that one right away, and found it was my gift from Brenda for the Traditional Knitting list's 2009 exchange.Brenda used an 1870 pattern called Beeton's Flower to create the beautiful linen face cloth, which coordinates perfectly with the wall color of our main room - a soothing mix of blue and green. Because of that, and the fact that it is much too pretty to scrub with(!), maybe I'll use it as a doily on our table. She also included a bar of fragrant lavender soap (one of my favorite scents), the Beeton's Flower pattern, and a lovely note telling about her area of New Jersey (fascinating) and herself.

As we drove over the hill to the post office, I wondered what the other two packages might contain. I was expecting Brenda's package, as she had emailed me to say it was on its way, and I was expecting one more for the same reason. But there were two more packages.

One was indeed the other package I was expecting, the result of signing up for Deb's ornament exchange in January. Vonda got my name, and sent me this cute snowman ornament - and a lovely sprig of cauliflower? No, it's an adorable resin sheep figurine, crafted to look like it was made out of cauliflower and an artfully carved mushroom for the head!
The third, "mystery" package was from my mom and addressed to Brian, much to his delight and excitement. It was stuffed with all kinds of fun stuff to please a little boy, from pencils and erasers to CDs and videos to chocolates and LifeSavers. There was even a couple of goodie bags in there for me, including some more sophisticated "art-inspired" chocolates, cute notepads, some books and newspaper articles. By the time we were done exploring our bounty, it felt a lot like Christmas!

Of course, the "shepherd's Christmas" (lambing season) is just around the corner. Venture a guess about what I'll get (see yesterday's post) and you could win a prize! At this point I'm thinking the winner will get to choose a trio of sheepy bead-and-safety-pin pins, a set of photo notecards, or some handspun Shetland yarn.

That's it for now from . . .

7 comments:

Ian said...

You are right: those post office slips that tell you there's a package waiting for you are always exciting, especially here where parcels can take several weeks to arrive!

OzWeaver said...

Michelle,

It's great to learn that you have sheep and horses and chickens, and at least one child....and that you are knitting/beading gifts for other groups and somehow running a farm too! Do you sleep??

You have a beautiful blog!

Brenda

MiniKat said...

What a fun bunch of goodies in the mail!

I love the linen facecloth. Brenda did an excellent job on it. You could also block and frame it for the wall if you wanted.

The cauliflower sheep is too cute!

Michelle said...

Oh Kathleen, that's a great idea! I have some of my grandma's doilies framed on velvet and displayed on my walls, so it would tie in perfectly!

Michelle said...

Very funny, Brenda! Yes, I sleep, and our "farm" is just five acres and not kept up as well as we would like. I homeschool our son, which takes precedence over nearly everything else, but do have some hobbies (riding dressage, spinning, knitting, blogging) to keep me sane. It is frustrating to have so little time for them, but that is life. (And I usually share only the highlights on my blog. :-)

white_lilly said...

How exciting! it did look a bit like christmas. I love the cauliflower figurine and I feel inspired to knit a face cloth :)

xoxoxo

Franna said...

Fun!
I'd love to have the pattern for the safety pin sheep shawl pin.
:-)
You know, if you have an INKY black gul ram lamb, I'm going to be very tempted!!!
Franna