It's here!

*warning! this post contains a lot of italics, exclamation marks and general excitement!*

This afternoon, while K was having his nap, I was doing a bit of sewing (more on that later...) when the doorbell rang. 'Could it be the postman with something that won't fit through the letterbox?' I thought. And yes, it was! That's right, my monkey swap parcel has arrived! I was so excited. I even made H stop what he was doing and come and watch me open the parcel...

When I saw the stickers on the presents inside I couldn't believe my luck. My goodies had come from Sarah at paper-and-string! I've been reading her blog for a while and love all the fantastic stuff that she makes, though I often think her blog should be called felt-and-buttons really. Looking at the monkey swap photos on Flickr I had noticed that no-one had received anything from her yet and I couldn't help wondering if I would be the lucky one. And I was!

So, would you like to see what I got? First I opened the green package and found this great pink mini-tote, complete with felt monkey face and cool polka-dot lining:

But that's not all. Inside the bag was this fantastic zippered pouch!
Isn't that wonderful fabric? And it's beautifully lined with felt too. I've been thinking for a while that I ought to have a go at making a zippered pouch to keep little essentials like lip salve, eye drops and name stamp in, to make changing bags easier. So I know exactly what I'll be using this for!

And as if that wasn't enough, there was a whole nother package to open! And inside was...

... a lovely felt monkey, complete with a little letter to me! How cute! She (I'm pretty sure she's a she) doesn't have a name yet but needs to get one soon - we already have 2 monkeys known only as 'monkey' around here so a third would just be ridiculous...
Oh, and look at how her tail is attached (sorry the photo's not very good):

Oh, the excitement of it all. I'm really quite tired out! Just in case you missed something, here is all the booty again, plus the cute little card that Sarah sent:
I was so thrilled by it all that I had to take it with me to yoga to show Lisa and Heidi! They agreed that it was all super-cute and incredibly well-made. Thank you Sarah, so much! I'm definitely a lucky monkey today...