Thank you Secret Pal!

This is really late, so massive apologies for Maylin, who stepped in as my "Angel" in the One Skein Secret Pal exchange after my original spoiler mysteriously vanished! Maylin has been great. Anyway, this parcel was despatched to me yonks ago, but took absolutely ages to get here (thanks, Royal Mail!), and once it had arrived I'd lent my camera to my Mum so couldn't post about it! Finally, I have the camera back, so here we go!

It was all in a box, absolutely PACKED with things - this photo shows:
- soaps - olive oil and hemp (which is just the sort of thing I'd have chosen for myself!)
- two scented candles - a big one in the tin on the top right, and a smaller lavender one.
- a notebook and address book
- fridge magnet
- glow in the dark pebbles (so cool!)
- a place card holder for dinner parties etc (can also be used for holding a knitting pattern!)
- chocolate (well, there has been a considerable delay between the parcel arriving and my camera coming back, which explains why the chocolate doesn't feature in the picture...)
I'm not sure how well they come out in the photo but several of the items are from the M.I.L.K. project, which are really sweet photos. M.I.L.K. stands for Moments of Intimacy, Laughter and Kinship and the photos are quite moving and very cool!

The parcel also contains two skeins of Maylin's own handspun, in a wonderful shade of purple (much more purple than it appears on my screen anyway!)


And, finally, a One Skein Wonder! I'd seen this pattern but never got round to making it - now I have one to wear! I'm not sure what the yarn is she used, but it's great to wear and fits perfectly. Not that you can tell in the picture below where I ran into the usual problems of living on my own and the atrocious daylight at this time of year!

Anyway, this shot came out better! Aren't those colours fab!
Thank you Maylin! You've been a wonderful Angel!

CHRISTMAS
I'm now getting on with Christmas preparations. It's all a bit crazy, the supermarket last night was complete hell, it looked like a famine was about to break out and people were panic-buying like mad (why? We're not about to run out of food!). There were fights breaking out in the car park as people tried to park (I gave up and went and parked at the railway station and walked back!) and the queues at the checkouts were all at least 20 trolleys deep. People are always so arsey at this time of year. At least it's not just here, sounds like it's just the same (only rather warmer!) with Happyspider in Australia. Or I could have small children to take care of, I swear Anne and Nic must be saints. I have enough trouble just organising myself.

And another thing I hate about this time of year:

the weather. Grey. Dingy. Drippy wet. Bloody freezing. Freezing fog when you want to drive anywhere at all, never mind long distances. Although Farli has provided a very useful link to Chris's British Roads database, which I wish I'd known about ages ago as it has little pictures of all (?) the British motorway junctions, so you have some inkling what it's going to look like before you get there. Look, you can even look at pictures of the M1! Maybe now I can stop having nightmares about junction 24/24A of the M1, which I regularly drive round two or three times in the wrong lane.

Right anyway. I returned home to find rather a lot of emails waiting, which I haven't really got time to do anything about now as I have a friend coming round for mince pies. Which don't exist yet. But that's OK as he's currently in the air somewhere between New York and Heathrow, so plenty of time for mince pie making, especially with the current fog/traffic/airport chaos. And I need to make the spare room habitable as Mum is coming tomorrow. So the laptop is being relegated to the study and is being ignored over Christmas!

So, wherever you are (and I bet the weather's much nicer there!) have a FANTABULOUS CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

and I'll be back sometime.