Thanks for all the compliments on the neckwarmer! The stitch pattern is Gothic Lace, from The Encyclopedia of Knitting by Lesley Stanfield and Melody Griffiths.

I received from my partner Wignatz a few days ago, but I've been too busy to post pictures until now.

First, the lovely extras:




Super cute badges and book lending plates, and an issue of Make! I'm pretty sure we don't get that over here, and I'm always drooling over their website, so it's very much appreciated.



And the easpy peasy item itself: a lovely bracelet! The beads are polymer clay with glass marbles and old, sciencey clipart. Sorry the picture is so bad - it doesn't photograph well and my camera is terrible.

Thank you, wignatz! I love everything.

I got my awesome package from the fabulous Reuse a few days ago! I wanted to take pictures in sunlight, but the weather hasn't been cooperating, so these were the best I could do. They don't really do justice to the fantastic items, but really, I'm not sure this level of pure awesome could be contained in a photograph anyway. Click on the pictures to see them larger.



The bubble mailer everything came in, decorated with nerdy goodness, and extras: Skittles, SweetTarts, maple candies, and a magic towel and magnetic clip decorated with the Canadian flag. I love Skittles, but can't get them here, so those are very much appreciated, and I may have eaten the whole thing of SweetTarts at once. The maple candies were strange, but delicious.



Everything was wrapped in tissue paper and ribbon! Opening them was like Christmas.



I got a Darwin fish necklace! We're both evolution nerds.



Action shot! I love it.



Two absolutely brilliant bracelets! The charms are, from left to right, pi, an atom (Carbon, is that you? ), a book to represent my literature nerd side, another pi, and the integration symbol. The other bracelet is, yep, pi again. I love, love, love both of them.



A terrible action shot of the charm bracelet. (If my wrist looks weird, like I think it might, it's because A. I broke it five years ago and it didn't set right, and B. because I got bit by some weird mutant insect, which sadly gave me terrible swelling and itching instead of superpowers.)



And an action shot of the pi bracelet. I've worn it twice now, and I've gotten a bunch of compliments from likeminded nerds.



I also got a really cute zippered pouch. Math is indeed very sexy.



And finally, a beautiful tote bag. The pictures is from a bubble chamber. I love these kinds of pictures. They're incredibly pretty and intriguing. This immediately became my default bag, so it has all my crap, including the 'math is sexy' pouch, in it in this shot.

Thank you so, so much, Reuse! I love everything!

(And now I'm going to go work on my crafts again so I won't end up sending a totally crap package in return... Swap anxiety systems are GO!)

I received a wonderful little owl from purlgurl today! His name is Erdos, and I love him to bits.



Shown here reclining on my calculator. (Real mathematicians don't need fancy graphing calculators, yo.) I'm guessing that he's named for Paul Erdõs, the mathematician? Because that would be kind of awesome.

There were also some pretty stitch markers and two wonderful little sock keychains. Thank you so much, purlgurl! I absolutely adore everything!

I received a beautiful embroidered bird from SarahBlais today!



Here he is, hanging out in the red corner of my desk. (Along with my typewriter, vintage clock, plate and whistle, and fantastic bowl, among other things. I have so much clutter on my desk, omg.)

Thank you so much, Sarah! I love him.

I received two lovelies today!

Here's the fantastic jackdaw from Avesthel:



Jackdaws are one of my favourite birds. They're a member of the same family as crows, and incredibly smart. (They can recognise their own image in a mirror, for example.) Thank you, Avesthel! I really like him.

The second one is from crafty gurll.



Argyle! I love argyle. The birds are so adorable, and I love the little clay charm. Thank you so much!

I received from my fantastic partner o0IrishEyes0o! I absolutely love everything - they are very much my style, and really warm to boot.

Now, pictures:



Action shot of the cowl itself. Please excuse my messy hair and dopey expression. It's super warm and I love the colours. And it has buttons! Eee, I love buttons! Especially when they look like gears.



Here you can see the buttons a bit better. Also, note how the end overlaps - that covers the gap between my coat and the cowl perfectly. How clever!



I also got a hat. It's really pretty - the yarn has a subtle shimmer, and the swirly pattern is fantastic. It's a tiny bit big on me, mostly because I have an unreasonably small head. I love it anyway.



Better shot of the stitch pattern.



And finally, cute little wristwarmers. They are really thick and warm. I'm actually wearing them right now. I adore them.

There was also a tonne of chocolate with peanut butter, which we don't get here. I have a feeling that won't last long.

Thank you so much, IrishEyes! I love everything and know it'll come in very handy now that we finally have freezing temperatures again. This package was a fantastic Christmas present. I hope you get my package soon and like it as much as I liked mine. (I also hope my advance Christmas package gets there soon. Bloody postal service.)

[pattern:]

I made these for a swap. My partner asked for something cosy to wear while she read, so I came up with these slipper socks. If anyone's interested, I could write up a pattern.



(Terribly sorry about the blurry photo. My camera is rather bad.)

My partner studies geography, so I chose colours that reminded me of maps. The colour pattern itself was inspired by globes. You have no idea how long it took me to come up with something I liked that didn't require me to either float the yarn for more then four stitches or weave in a billion ends. I rather like the end result, however, and it was a really fun knit. The yarn is also really fantastic.



I like seeing the insides of stranded projects, so I thought I'd show you mine. I'm pretty happy with my floats. This was only my third stranded project, so I'm very happy about the lack of horrendous puckering.



And here's an action shot. Now, the picture is by the receiver, antarcticraft, because these were huge on me. She did give me the permission to use her photo, though.

Stats:
pattern: My own, tentatively called Mappa Mundi
yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK, a touch under one skein each of brown (21), blue (19) and green (25)
needles: 3.5mm (US 4) bamboo DPNs
amount of fun had: Several metric tonnes

Sewing machines scare me. My mum's serger is especially intimidating. Too many parts. (This obviously doesn't apply to cars or computers, because neither of those scare me at all. )

I can't wait for partners! Especially because it's been snowing pretty much non-stop for several days now. (We got something like eight inches on Sunday alone.) Here's the view on our street from yesterday:



Yay, winter!

So I came home from school today and checked the mailbox. There was a little slip of paper letting me know there was a large envelope waiting for me at the post office. I immediately dumped the rest of the mail back in the box and dashed off to the post office. You should have heard the squees.

The envelope was indeed my package from the fabulous antarcticraft! I absolutely adore everything, so expect a lot of gushing and exclamation marks and pictures. Click on the images to see the larger version.



Everything was wrapped so nicely, with this fantastic ribbon. Also note the Alice card and the adorable little 'Handmade by antarcticraft' tag. Both are now on my wall.



The smallest package contained these fantastic Alice in Wonderland magnets! I've scattered them all over my room, like little surprises for whenever I turn my head. (The Mad Hatter and Alice having tea are attached to a tin that used to contain Earl Grey and now contains buttons, for example. )



In the green package was this. It's the Librarian from Discworld! He's so cute, and I'm sure he'll do a fantastic job keeping my books in check. Here he is in his natural habitat.



In the largest package was a huge tote for taking books to and from the library. (To give you a sense of scale, that's our dinner table. No, seriously.) It's pretty and sturdy and huge and has pockets on the insides! I sense that it's going to be rather useful in the future.

What does the embroidery say? This:



Which I totally am. The stitches are so perfect! I'm always awed by embroidery, mostly because I have neither the talent nor the patience for it.

And like that wasn't enough, there were more things nestled inside the bag:



The book is Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. It's definitely going near the top of my to-read pile! The ribbons? They belong to these:



Two fantastic bookmarks! The 'curious' one is already marking the page in one of the books I'm currently reading. (Artemis Fowl And the Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer, fyi. I always find out when a new part is out by happening upon it in a book store. )



And finally, some American sweets. I love Starbursts, so they're mostly gone already. I've never tasted peanut butter, so obviously I had to sample the peanut butter cups. And then have another to make sure. My verdict: strange, but good. Sort of sweet and salty at the same time, maybe. I'll try and save the remaining ones to use as NaNoWriMo incentives.

Thank you so much, Jacquelyn! I absolutely adore everything! Swapping with you was a joy.

(In completely unrelated news, the new Kaiser Chiefs album is really, really good.)

I've sent! Antarcticraft, keep an eye out for this:



It should be there in a week or so.