Goodies from New Zealand!

The other day the postman brought me this lovely parcel of goodies from Hanna of Craftykin. I had commented on all her wonderful opp-shop/thrift shop/charity shop finds, and she offered to send me some! I offered to send her some Japanese craft books and odds and ends in return and so a swap was born... Here's what I found when I opened the parcel:

I couldn't believe the number of things that she managed to fit in that parcel! Let's have a closer look...

A tea towel destined for my kitchen, and some great vintage linens calling out to be re-purposed into, well, something. The detail in that embroidery is beautiful.

Some child-orientated goodies - K is loving that little sheep finger puppet...

A set of five little cards made with the coolest vintage flower prints. Hand-made by Hanna maybe??

Some lovely ribbon and lacy edging, plus a tiny pair of scissors. So cute.

And look at this! A little booklet of patterns for soft toys, even older than the dinosaur one I have :-) It's got some great ideas in it, although I must admit that the doll on the front scares me a little... Plus a little purse that definitely was made by Hanna (it has her cool Craftykin label inside) and a little tissue case - I didn't even know that they existed outside of Japan!

Thank you Hanna, for suggesting this swap and for your kindness and generosity. When a virtual stranger thousands of miles away offers to send you a present out of the goodness of their heart, it does a lot to help you believe that the world is not such a bad place after all...

An early Christmas present

Recently I commented with envy on the lovely 'opp-shop' (charity shop) finds that Hanna at Craftykin had discovered. Meanwhile, she was interested in the great craft books available in Japan, so we decided to do a little swap. I sent a parcel to her last week but of course, forgot to take photos of what I had included. Luckily it has now arrived safely in New Zealand and Hanna has written a great post about it, with lovely photos, here. Her pictures and comments make it all seem so exciting, even to me who knew what it all was! Thanks Hanna, I hope you enjoy it all.

'Where in the World...?' Postcard Swap

Last month I joined in a postcard swap organised by Jo at A Bit Of This And A Bit Of That. I sent out 4 postcards and have so far received 3. Everyone I swapped with lives in the States but was assigned a more unusual country to send a postcard 'from'.

Here's what I got...

Thanks everyone! I was allowed to send a card from the country I'm actually in, and made one with a photo I took at Himeji castle last year:

I wonder what kind of swap I can join next...

Introducing Mr Squishy

My parcel from Kristen has finally made its way through the Icelandic ash, so I can reveal the details of our pincushion swap! The pincushion above is the one I made for her, using the same Kokka fabric as I used for this zippered pouch and a couple of vintage buttons from my mum's stash.

I knew that Kristen was a knitter not a sew-er (I hate 'sewer', it looks like, well, 'sewer'...) so I wasn't really sure what else to send with the pincushion. In the end, I choose these little goodies:

Some cotton wool (?? obviously not 'cottonwool', but what do you call 'wool' that is actually cotton?), just because I loved the beautiful colour; some buttons covered with traditional Japanese fabric; some funky flowery ribbon and a little book on crocheting soft toys. I don't suppose Kristen reads Japanese but I think the instructions are easy to follow if you can already crochet. And if not, well, I hope she enjoys looking at the pictures of cute little Japanese toys :-)

Anyway, my parcel from Kristen arrived on Friday and I was Very Excited. When I opened the box I saw this little head peeping through the packaging...

...and it turned out to be Mr Squishy! Look at his lovely heart eyes and long dangly legs - I don't know if I can bring myself to stick pins in him.

Next it was time to open all those tempting, sparkly presents...

... some lovely soft tartan fabric (very appropriate, coming from Scotland), the teeniest-tiniest pencil-shaped buttons in a cool little paper bag, some green boiled sweets and a Crunchie! A Crunchie!

*** Note to future international swappers/gift-givers: expats love to receive food! ***

What a lovely collection of goodies! Thank you so much Kristen! And thank you Claire for organising the swap. If you're interested, you can find more pictures from the pincushion swap here on Flickr too.

I wonder what swap I'll take part in next....

What we've been up to lately

Not blogging, obviously! I'm not quite sure where the last week has gone...

The new school year starts in April in Japan, so I started classes at university again last week. Apart from that there have been no major changes around here but somehow the time has just slipped away. Here are a few of the things we've been doing...

A barbecue with Vivian and friends, the first one of the season. Eek, that was almost 2 weeks ago now! If the weather is OK we might have one here on Sunday.


I finished off my pincushion for the swap, and sent it off with a few other little goodies. There will be pictures later but not until it has been received. I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise!

K's love for Bob the Builder continues, and has now extended into colouring:


H has been busy in the garden, raking all the dead grass out of the lawn. Hopefully it'll soon green up now...



K and I have been investigating all the slides in the area and this one, next to the City Office, wins first prize:

Dinner with Nicole and her dad last week produced this picture that I really like...

Last weekend I met Lisa for lunch and then we went on to a flute concert that one of my students was taking part in. The whole orchestra was made up of flutes, including the very cool-looking bass and contra-bass flutes. No photos though, sorry :-)

Meanwhile, back to K!

We've been trying a few crafty things lately, including pasting...

... and playing with rather sticky playdough.

Nicole finished packing up her house on Wednesday and came here to stay with us until her flight home next Tuesday. We had lunch out together when she arrived and it's been nice to relax and chat with her over the last couple of days.

Oh, and we've been planning holidays too! K and I will be spending the whole of August in the UK and H will be coming for about 10 days in the middle of the month. H will go with us as far as Tokyo when we leave and then he's planning a few days in Bangkok to visit an old friend. He hasn't had a Proper Holiday (not including the UK) for ages, so I'm really glad he's going to do that.

Otherwise most of my time this week has been spent fretting about an upcoming interview for local TV, and picking up Lego.

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...

Monkey news!

I've just heard that Strawberry Monkey has safely arrived at her new home, with Katharine at Woolly Wotnots. It seems that she travelled well and she now seems to be settling in and making herself at home! Katharine makes the cutest little knitted collectables and sells them on Etsy and Folksy. I'm particularly keen on the latest addition, Bert the Monkey...

Throughout the monkey swap I've been concentrating on getting my things sent, and hoping that Katharine would like them. It's only recently that I've really realised - hey, I have a surprise parcel coming in the post! I'm sure it'll be here any day now, and I'm really quite excited!

If you're interested in seeing what everyone else has been receiving in the swap, you can check out the Flickr group which Claire set up. Truly Monkey Magic!

Monkey goodies

The parcel I sent for the monkey swap should be arriving at its destination any day now, so I think I'll show you what I sent. It's a secret swap, so the recipient won't know to look here for her goodies anyway. And I just want to show you!

I made a sock monkey! Are you surprised??

I think this little strawberry lover is a girl monkey, don't you?
And to keep her company on the trip I added a few little monkey buttons:

Do you recognise the material I used to cover the buttons? It's what I used for the lining of H's birthday book cover.

I felt quite pleased with my little parcel when I sent it off, but now I'm not so sure. Today I saw Sarah at paper-and-string's post about the monkey swag she has received. She got some sweets, a wind-up monkey and 3 (three!!) sock monkeys! Oh dear. I do hope the woman who gets my lowly offering is not too disappointed...

Top secret monkey news

I have signed up for my first blog-based swap, and it is monkey themed! It is top secret, so no pictures of what I'm making or info on who I'm sending it to yet, but here is Claire's blog where it all started. I will post here again when it's all finished. Isn't it exciting?

In non-monkey but nonetheless top secret news, I have finished H's birthday present (some would say this is still monkey-related...). It hasn't turned out quite as well as I had hoped but I'm hoping he won't mind too much. All will be revealed tomorrow!