Surprise!

Yet another wonderful surprise arrived in the mail today from my SP9 Pal, and I'm simply overwhelmed at her kindness. (Note that I'm committing to a "her" here, finally, instead of my former "his/her" designation. It suddenly hit me that quite awhile back, before my second SP9 package arrived, my pal mentioned that her husband had a Godiva chocolate shop near his office. While I'm as open-minded as the next gal and fully realize that not only women have husbands these days, I've decided to go out on a limb and assume that my pal is a female. Of course, it only took me a month and a half to realize this. I blame Baby M. Placenta is made of brain cells, as a friend of mine likes to say, and my powers of cognition truly haven't been the same since giving birth.)

Anyway, take a look at what arrived: patterns for these two gorgeous afghans from Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer over at Wooly Thoughts.




















This first pattern is for Curve of Pursuit, an afghan/wall hanging that represents four dogs chasing each other's tails around a field. I first saw this afghan featured in Mason Dixon Knitting under their log cabin knitting section. I then saw a completed Curve of Pursuit over at Bente's Blog and decided I had to make one myself one day.




















Of course, once I got over to Wooly Thoughts and got a look at all their other amazing afghan patterns (many, like the two above, based on mathematical principles -- how cool is that?), it was a safe bet that I'd find more to fall in love with. This pattern is called The Best of both Whirls, and while it looks for all the world to be a series of interlocking spirals along the lines of an Escher drawing, it's really formed by a series of triangles that build one upon the other. Brilliant.

I must admit, I'm still fairly stunned that my pal has been so wonderful to me. I've participated in a variety of swaps before and for the most part have had very good luck in the partners I've drawn, but never to this extent. My partner has been both generous and truly considerate; she even offered to spin up the fiber she sent me because she read about my injured finger and thought I might not be able to do it myself. I'm really looking forward to our reveal in January so I can thank her by name. For now, though, this will have to do:



HOLIDAY KNITTING UPDATE:

• MIL's hat and scarf set (finished months ago, thankfully) are all wrapped.
  
• FIL's second mitten is finished! The pair just needs to be boxed up and wrapped. Woo-hoo!
  
• I've picked the yarn for Baby M's scarf -- neither the green Nature Spun nor the grey alpaca, but three colors of Knitpicks Palette to hold together to form what I hope will be a subtle shading of browns to go with the *sigh* leopard-print lining of her winter coat. Can you tell that I didn't pick out her winter coat? MIL has all the good intentions in the world, and it really is a cute (not to mention WARM) coat, but leopard print isn't usually in my fashion repertoire. What goes with leopard print except more leopard print?
  
• Mom's felted bowl is felted and drying over its form as I type. Tomorrow I'll fill it with truffles and wrap. Sweeeet!
• All other felted bowls are filled and wrapped, and most of the Christmas gifts have been organized into large bags according to when we will be seeing the recipients. One bag goes to MIL and that side of the family; another bag goes to Mom; a third goes to my extended family. That just leaves a pile of presents under the tree for us, though I'm keeping them away from the tree until Christmas Eve to avoid any "accidental" openings by Baby M. While she's too young to really understand about presents, she's definitely old enough to rip up pretty colored paper.

And now I really need to go to sleep. Staying up till 3am thrumming mittens with company coming tomorrow probably isn't the smartest thing I've ever done, but at least the freakin' Christmas presents will be finished in time for Christmas.

And to all a good night!