Swappy Fun

I haven't talked about it in detail on the blog, but I participated in The Loopy Ewe swap that was put together by awesome women over on Ravelry. The only rules were that yarn from The Loopy Ewe must be used and something that reminded you of home had to be included. Everything else was open to creativity and how much fun money is in your budget. LOL

The box from my swap partner, Ellen, arrived on Valentines day. I was hoping this would happen since the DH and I will be away for a week starting today. The mail man cleverly hid it behind the screen door for maximum suspense.

Please excuse my half assed pictures, the camera and the light were both dying.
First of all the knitted goodie was a lovely pair of socks knit in Shibui. They are more of a green than teal then this photo indicates. When we first started the swap Ellen asked me a lot of question about what yarns I like, what I haven't used but was interested in. She made a great choice with the Shibui, it feels really smooth and the color is beautiful. The pattern is Teosinte by knitspot. You can see a better picture of the pattern over on Anne's site than I was able to take. The cool thing about the stitch pattern is off the foot it looks a lot like little leaves. Then when worn the leaves create decreases that are cable like. I looked down and saw cables and was completely surprised. See my foot pic, fits nice no? What a cool pattern to choose for the swap Ellen!

Now being a generous knitter Ellen also made sure I had plenty of goodies, both food and fun stuff.
That deceptively small looking plastic container is full of homemade peanut butter brownies and I assure you that it is not small in real life. My tastebuds say they would like to eat some more. If I get tired of brownies (snort,as if) there is a peppermint pig in that bright red box. I've been sniffing him through the wrapper. I wonder if that's what crazy people do. :)
Moving on, its not a knitting swap without sheep gifties. (I know because I did the same with my downstream partner) You can see the cute little white fluffy sheep and there is a silver sheep pin that is blending into the needles. Speaking of the needles Ellen got me a pack of blunt and a pack of cable holders both in bamboo. I'll be using these babies before you know it. Last but not least, a little horse shoe for good luck (I need that!) and a postcard from Saratoga. Now it might seem obvious to some people to send postcards in the swap boxes but it never crossed my mind once. I was entirely charmed when I opened my box and found Ellen had written me a note on the back of a postcard.

Thanks Ellen for making my first swap a great experience!