All the way from South Carolina

A while ago, Julie, aka the Samurai Knitter, asked me to go into a kind of swap whereby I bought up some Bendigo wool for her and she would send me various things amounting to that total in return.

Yesterday, the goodies arrived. Some months ago she sent me the fisrt part of the loot, which was an enormous book which is like a resource for the hows and whys of food - how things work basically. I've been working my way through it and learning all sorts of great stuff.

Part of the deal was that Julie would provide more of my favourite sock yarn of hers, Purple Trainwreck. A skein for me and a skein for Neet. Yes, Neet, your purple trainwreck has finally arrived. Here are our skeins.

Yum. Yum. Yum. There's also something else for you, Neet, if you're reading. A surprise. You'll have to wait til we meet up.

Among the many other trinkets and treats were such highlights as this -

I'd never heard of this then this morning, i was listening to Stash and Burn, and they mentioned it!

Also, one of these! it's to ward of bad things, apparently. I don't know if I've ever made my blue glass fetish public - I'm pretty sure I haven't. So Julie did very well to choose this.

She also sent me some blue glass wine bottle stoppers. Apparently she saw the word 'wine' and thought of me. No idea why. Again, a perfect choice.

There were all sorts of other delightful treats which I ran out of time to finish photographing this morning but rest assured it was all cool.

I can't wait to show it all to RoseRed IN PERSON when she comes to visit tomorrow!

Thanks all for the lovely, lovely comments on the steeked jacket. I really can't wait to have it done and to be able to say for once and for all that it's done and that lots of interest and enthusiasm from readers helped spur me along. There have been days when I've thought that if I didn't have people asking after it, I might never pick it up again. So thanks for the impetus.

And finally, here's a pretty ballband dishcloth I've been working on on the bus. The reality of working on the jacket again is that I really, really want the contrast of something mind numbingly straight forward at all other times.

Bells