A happy surprise for me

This is an overdue thank-you to my friend Beth (my partner in crime during our college days--though if the feds ever question me, I'm gonna say it was all her idea), who sent me an amazing box full of fun stuff. It arrived on Saturday, but Blogger has been misbehaving (again) and not letting me post photos until now (grrrr)--and I wanted to include photos of everything.

I grouped the items into three photos--partly because that seemed thematically appropriate, and partly because if I used separate photos for everything I'd end up with gobs of pictures (and a lot of white space!) in this post. Here's the first set, what I call "More Fun than You Can Shake a Stick At." It contains two way-cool mummy-shaped candles, a Badtz-Maru eraser, Halloween cat stickers, and a tea sampler (which I am very much looking forward to, uh, sampling).

The next set is "Stuff I Will Probably Have to Share with my Eighteen-Month-Old." Admittedly, the book, Dog Food, by Joost Elffers and Saxton Freymann, is specifically for her. The glow-in-the-dark magnet letters are officially for me, but because of their tremendous educational value--and the fact that Sylvia seems to have inherited my obsession with magnets--she will surely get her hands on them soon; ditto for the magnets with quotations from Napoleon Dynamite and the animal- and food-themed magnets.

Here are the items that fit in the category I call "Knit-o-Rama." There's a set of itty-bitty #1 double-pointed needles. Time to start some socks with those! What's this? Sock yarn, too? There's a ball of Austermann Step sock yarn in a beautiful green-purple-colorway--right up my alley. This yarn has aloe vera and jojoba in it, too, which makes it super soft (and apparently the aloe vera and jojoba stay in it through at least forty washes--nice!). I can't wait to try it!

My days of storing my circular needles in a gallon-sized ziploc bag have ended, because Beth also sent me a beautiful circular-needle case. It's hand made of wool in Nepal, and it's exactly the sort of case I've been looking for! And last, but not least, she also sent me a pair of #15 straight needles. But these aren't ordinary needles--they are those nifty light-up-tip needles that everyone is talking about. I first encountered these in a shop in Vermont nearly three months ago and was intrigued by them. Since then, I've read several reviews of them, and the verdict is overall pretty favorable. I've been thinking about picking up a pair for myself...but Beth beat me to it!

Beth and I have been friends since our first year of college, and we were roommates during our last year. Even though we live in different parts of the country and see each other only every few years, we still keep in touch regularly. I've convinced her to join the ranks of knitters, and now she wields the sticks, too (though she's managed to exercise enviable self-control and avoid building a serious yarn stash...maybe I will have to do something about that...) When I win the Powerball, I'm going to build my dream house, then build one right next door for Beth, so I can hang out with her all the time. Yes, she is that cool.

Thanks, Beth!