I mailed the last of my family’s gifts out this evening. I do have a few other packages to go out, but one is waiting on an item [and I’m prolonging the Christmas excitement for the recipient, she’s heading out of town before I could get things to her so it’ll just be there when she gets back] and the other will go out on Wednesday.

I got the first gifts I’ve been allowed to open early last night [gifts are starting to trickle in from our families but those go under the tree to be opened with TheBoy’s family on Christmas Eve/Day.] Last night we had our Guild meeting her at the apartment and I was presented with gifts from M, S, and E. M spun me some beautiful suri alpaca yarn which she then overdyed a grape-y purple and added some pale purple beads to it. It’s so soft and lovely and I just need to figure out what to make from it.

S made me many lovely stitch markers and if we got more sunlight there would be a better photo of them here. Since we don’t, here’s the best I could do:

E presented each of us with a 4 ounce baggie of Merino/Tussah blend and a challenge. We drew names from a hat and have been challenged to secretly dye, spin and then knit an item for our recipient from this same beginning point. Without conversing about it amongst ourselves. I have from the 21st of December to the 21st of March to complete this task and I have to admit I think it will end up being a lot of fun. Now to figure out what colors of dye I might need to purchase. We’re allowed 5% “foreign” material in our project apart from the dye.  I won’t be blogging about the procedure until after March, but keep a look out on that.