Ravelry Cup a Tea Swap

Sorry so long with no posts! I've been spending too much of my free time knitting, and not enough of it writting about the knitting. =]
Before I get to my new projects, I'm going to do a write up of the wonderful swap I participated in and the awesome package I recieved! (My poor recepient still does not have her package...I have to wait for the yarn to arrive!)

My 'upstream' swapper (I think that's the term) was CynthiaCC, and she gave me an amazing package!

This is the box - look how nicely everything is packed!

And this is my loot!

In there is:

• Weekend Knitting (which I've wanted forever but never got around to buying)
• Good Earth Organic Seven Spice Chai Tea (which i haven't tried but which smells awesome)
• Yogi Indian Spice tea (which I brewed up as soon as I finished taking pictures)
• Mirage tea (from her local tea shop - Cynthia kindly included a description: "A superior blend of coconut and pineapple bits with marigold and cornflower blossoms." It smells divine and I can't wait to try it!)
• Cranberry Orange biscotti (how fall! Since yesterday was filled with Thanksgiving treats, I decided to wait before opening these, but I can't wait!)
• Mirage Yarn from Twisted Sisters in gin blue(That Cynthia is smart - did you notice the yarn has the same name as the rooibos tea? They match!)
• Blue Face Leicester Aran from Fleece Artist in Marine (So beautiful! It's an amazing combination of blue and green and purple - it's my favorite color mix!)
• A lovely card (with beautiful blue and white flowers)
  

AND! Last but BEST!

• A hand made teacozy!

I'd just finished making a teacozy as a gift for my friend's birthday, so I've been frustrated by how hard they are to make, especially to fit my teapot - a Personalitea from Adagio. Cynthia's cozy fit perfectly!

Of course, once I finished unpacking all the goodies I simply had to go make some tea! It was late afternoon, so I tried the Indian spice. As I was opening the teabag, the yogi tag gave me this bit of wisdom:

It seemed very applicable to the wonderful generosity of the knitting community in general, and, in this case, CynthiaCC in particular.

Here's a shot of my teapot enjoying its cosy:

Now, I'm sure you saw that and laughed, but my thought at the time was "wow, I've never seen a cozy pattern so smart! It keeps the top of my tea warm, but keeps the bottom flat to sit on my desk! I wonder if she made it up herself." After taking the cozy off I realised......I'd had it on backwards. =] Hey, whatever keeps my tea warm!

A million thank yous to Cynthia! This was a great introduction to the knitting swap world. =]

Expect another post about what *I* have been knitting later in the day, but until then, drink some tea! If you've never had Adagio tea and want to try it, you can get a free gift certificate by entering your name in the little box on the right hand side. (The aplet was designed by Adagio, so I won't see your email address, only them. There's no catch to the free tea; a similar certificate is how I started drinking them and they're one of my favorite tea places yet!)

Assorted

So, I know I still don't have pictures up of my one sock, and Soctoberfest is 'officially' coming to an end (though over at Ravelry, it looks like a bunch of us are going to stay in the community) BUT I'm happy to say I finally made it to the heel flap of sock two. I'm also proud that I was able to figure out how to transfer my dpn pattern to two circs! I'd taken Cat Bordhi's book out of the library to figure out how the two circs thing works, but I had to return it yesterday. Luckily, I think I've conceptualized what the changes are, so I was able to figure this out relatively easily.

Let's see, what else is new....I'm participating in the Tea Swap over at the Cup 'a Tea group in Ravelry, and I'm getting excited about that. I haven't had a chance to go shopping yet - I need to wait until the next paycheck clears - but I've been planing what I'm going to get. I won't spoil it here in case somehow miraculously my giftee stumbles across my blog, but I really hope she'll like it.

I've been planning out what I want/need to get, knitting wise. My birthday's coming up and, while I know I won't get yarn from anyone, I'm hoping I'll get the means to *purchase* some yarn. Here's my purchasing plan:

1. Yarn for my swapee! No telling any more here...yet. =]
2. Two more skeins of Habu silk/stainless steel(R) in color 3 for mom's scarf - more on that.
3. Yarn for the stag bag(R)!
4. One Skein by Leigh Radford(R)
   
5. If I get a good birthday haul - a swift and a ball winder.

(The linked Rs are Ravlery links. Right now I think anyone reading this has ravelry, but if that becomes not true at some point, I recommend you get on the list. It's amazing. )

Why do I want all those? Well, the first one is obvious.
As for my mom's scarf - on my trip to Purl, as I said earlier, I picked up some lovely Habu yarn after having looked at the Kusha Kusha (R) scarf. I love the textural variety that the scarf achieved, but I didn't really like the way the yarns changed. It was too 'modern art' for me, and more importantly, not the kind of thing my mom would wear. Searching through Ravelry (do I sound like someone a broken record yet with all this ravelry talk?) I found this simpler scarf(R). As I was hoping, the steel qualities show well in this larger fabric, so I'm going to make a variation of this for my mom. This means, however, I have to get two more cones of yarn, since the silk/stainless has only 281 yards to the merino's 747.

The stag bag(R). Where do I start with this magnificent bag? Despite never having done any color knitting before, I saw this pattern and new I had to make it. It even inspired me to spend this past monday doing a stranded knitting swatch! (I'll post pictures of that once I find my camera cord...it's kind of funny looking.) My biggest problem now is deciding which colors to use. I do want to use the Ultra Alpaca Light, because the past two times I was at my LYS, it screamed out at me. I want to do a brown/blue colorway; ideally a dark brown light blue. I'm trying to figure out if the 'stonewashed' is a pure gray color, or if it's a grayish blue. If it's greyish blue, then I'm thinking stonewashed and woodland mix, but I need to check the colors in person.

As far as One Skein goes, there are just so many patterns I want to make! I love the cable footies(R) and both the cable hat(R) scarf(R). For me, the scarf kind of sells the book. I love cables but haven't yet made a cable scarf because I didn't know about reversible cables and I didn't have the time to knit a tubular scarf. I need this book! I'm just counting down until my birthday. =]

Allright, that's it for tonight I think. I know, still no pictures, I'm sorry, bad blogger, no cookie. I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween! I did nothing special, and got no tricker treaters - which was good, because we had no candy. Sometimes a quiet night at home is best.