Secret Pal Birthday Goodies

It's been over a month since I received this fabulous package from my SP8 Secret Pal, but I'm just now getting around to blogging about it. It's not that I'm not grateful - it's just that the computer, the camera, the internet connection, and I haven't been in the same place very often.

So I received an e-mail from her, telling me about a "surprise" at River Knits. Then I came home to find this in the mailbox:

There's all sorts of good stuff here. Yarn, Kool-aid for dyeing, notebooks and index card holders, cool portable nail files, and some really yummy scented peppermint soap. She says the "Bass Pro Shop" tape measure is a vacation souvenir - I wonder where she went?

I know exactly what I'm going to do with the yarn, too. I don't buy magazines very often, but by delightful coincidence I'd just picked up a copy of Spin-Off that had an article on dyeing your own self-striping yarn. So as soon as I manage to get a peg board, this yarn and the Kool-Aid are going to become self-striping socks. I can't wait!

Then I went to River Knits to claim my surprise. It was a gift certificate! I intended to save it for something later, I really did, but then I noticed that Elizabeth had a display of Cherry Tree Hill yarn by the cash register. One thing I've learned is that it's important to pick up good yarn when you see it, because it may never appear again. So within 10 minutes, my gift certificate had turned into this:

I don't know yet what this is going to become. Socks, probably, but we'll see what happens. Right now I'm just enjoying the colors. So it was a VERY happy birthday, thanks to my Secret Pal!