Lows and Highs

Cross posted on my blog here.
If you looked down on the ground today, you might have found me sprawled on the sidewalk or under my car in the sitter’s driveway… I was kind of afraid that the under the car thing was going to result in an “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” moment. Aren’t I too young for that? Enough of the ice and snow already. Unfortunately there is more of it in the forecast tomorrow and again on Friday. So those were a couple of lows today.
Fortunately, our stop at the mailbox was more of a high point to the day. We have one of those lovely Canada Post Superboxes so that the postal workers don’t have to put too much of an effort into delivering our rural mail. (I’ll tell you the moving the mailbox multiple times story sometime when I’m really peeved at our local post mistress.) Having managed to get myself out from under the car once, I wasn’t risking a second time, so Older Son very kindly retrieved the mail. Isn’t it nice when the kids are useful? Just junk mail in the regular mailbox, but there was a key to a package compartment…
I was waiting on two packages – one being something from (Not So) Cynical Knitting Gal’s contest (I had received confirmation from the United States Postal Service that it had been posted) and the other being my Scavenger Hunt Package. Which one would it be? It was my Scavenger Hunt Package from Penny!
And then there was another low… The realization that the camera has gone away with Mr. Me to Halifax for a couple of days and then a couple of days in St. John’s. Ack! I can’t take pictures until he gets home. I (very) briefly considering letting Penny know that it had arrived and explaining about the photos, but I decided that I’d just open it and try to describe everything. So here goes:
The box was a 12 by 8 ¾ by 9 ¾ Smurfit-MBI recycled corrugated box – hey – she’d already hit the green category! (As a side note, I mention the brand of the box because it always makes me think of the Smurfs…) Upon opening the box I found a layer of sparkly red tissue paper covering all of the packages. The packages were wrapped in tissue – green, red, plaid, floral and one item was in a lime green bag… I just kept on taking them out of the box. There were 15 in total! I opened them in the order that they were described / identified in the accompanying letter…

First - “Green” was 3 balls of a lovely green shade of On-line “Tessa”, wrapped in green tissue paper and a green floral lei. It was purchased at Woseley Wardrobe, who even have their own Ravelry group! Very nice…
Second - “Hard” was a very sweet sheet mug with a hard vacuum packed bag of Irish Cream coffee.
Third – “Local” #1 and “local” #2. How great is that? Local #1 is a box of Morden’s Toasted Marshmallows. I’ll try to keep the kids out of them until I can snap a picture. They look and smell luscious… Local #2 is a skein of local 100% wool hand dyed sock weight yarn. It is heathered in shades of aqua blue, mauve and pink. Penny very wisely warned me that it is NOT superwash… (She must have read about some of my unfortunate felting episodes.)
Fourth – “Spoiler’s Choice”. Spoiler’s choice included 6 separate packages. There is a very sweet and lovely amigurumi book (those things just keep hollering at me) and 5 little packages with assorted yarns from Penny’s stash to make ‘gurumis. Now I think that that was a lovely thing to do in so many ways – it has given me a great colour selection and it would have also been suitable for the green category – and recycling is always a good thing. Love it!!! And there were 3 bags of sour candies to munch while I create ‘gurumis.
Fifth – “Round”. Round was a “Round Tuit”. What is this? It is a very pretty round box that is labelled “tuit”, with the explanation inside of how this should make my life easier since you’re always hearing people say they’ll do something when they get a “round tuit”. (Inside the “tuit” there is a round notebook and pen. The pen is from Penny doing decoy mail, but I’m going to have to ask her to explain that since I don’t know what it is.)
Sixth – “T is for Tiny”. Tiny as in tiny knitting needles, beads and crochet cotton with which I can make an amulet bag. The beads are a very pretty blue and the crochet cotton is a sort of cerise-y pink. Pretty!
And finally, “FUN-ny”. What knitter wouldn’t want a set of knitting word magnets? Very fun and very funny. My kids are going to LOVE these on the fridge!
At the very end there was a package that had a note on it to open it last. Inside there were patterns for a scarf to go with the green yarn (Ribbons Scarf from Yarn Yenta) and for the Bead Knitted Amulet Bag from S. Debra Santaniello.
Thanks again Penny for such a great package!