Bag Swap Booty Shake!!

Here am, doing a happy dance! SKIPPITY! HOPPITY! SHUFFLE! SHUFFLE! BOOTY SHAKE!! Why, you may ask, am I alarming the neighbours by doing my Happy Dance? My bag swap parcel arrived to day - all the way from Norway!!! YAY!! I didn't actually see the postie deliver my parcel (for which the postie is probably VERY thankful! Tee! Hee! Hee!) but my beloved GB brought this in from the front verandah.


Oooooohhh!! I LOOOOOOOOVE getting parcels!! (Bills never come in parcels!) I fought my way into the envelope, careful not to tear the stamps and I found ...


WOW! How spoilt am I?!! Let's see, there's a wonderful hand-made card, two stitchery designs all traced and ready to stitch (now that is really spoilt - no tracing!! YAY!) some Norwegian chocolates and ... another layer of wrapping! This is better than playing "Pass the Parcel" at a birthday party!!

I paused at this point to read the card and discovered my parcel of goodies had come from Inger Lise in Norway - THANK YOU INGER LISE!! She said she'd popped in to visit my blog a few times to see what colours/designs etc I was into and she wrote the card in front of the computer, with my photo on the screen so it was like talking to me - how cool!

So then, I unwrapped my last surprise (So I thought!) and I found ...


What a great colour and the wonderful patchwork is sooooo neatly machine stitched that it almost looks bought! I was pretty chuffed with my ruby red bag ... but then I discovered that the zippers were NOT just for display, they actually unzip! And what did I find behind the zippers??


A fuzzy, wuzzy, cutesy bear!! Tee! Hee! Hee! But wait, there's more!! Hiding behind zipper number 2 was ...


A girly bear!! Awwww! Isn't she sweet!! And if you look closely, you'll see that Inger Lise has stitched "Your Secret Swap Partner, Lise" along the side of this panel so I will always remember the VERY clever crafter who sent it to me - as if I could forget!!! And the extra-special bit about these clever hidden panels? They make the bag bigger when they're opened out so I can fit more goodies in there! Hmmm, I think this would be the perfect bag to take to the patchwork shop next time ... "Oh, wait, I can buy even more yummy fabrics because this gorgeous bag that Inger Lise made me EXPANDS!!!" Tee! Hee! Hee! Thank you soooooooo much Inger Lise! I just LOVE this bag! It must have taken you hours and hours of stitching to create it, not to mention being clever enough to work out how it all goes together! I'm feeling VERY SPOILT!! And a big thank you to Linda, too, for organising this fun swap. This was the very first swap I've ever signed up for and I told myself that if it didn't work out too well, I wouldn't sign up for any in the future. Well, I'm guessing my future will include LOTS of swaps to duplicate the fun this one has been!! I think I just heard GB faint in the next room! Tee! Hee! Hee!

Oh! And I don't know whether regular readers will remember me saying right at the start of the swap that I had received an email from my sneaky swap partner and that after some amateur sleuthing (and a lot of blog reading!!) I thought I had worked out who my partner was - well, it turns out I was right! I had narrowed it down to either Stina or Inger Lise and finally decided it was Inger Lise. Maybe I should become a detective ... NAH!!! Then there'd be no time for stitching!! Tee! Hee! Hee!

And posties world-wide must've been on the ball today delivering parcels for Linda's Bag/Bucket Swap, because I got an email from the wonderful Jeanette in Finland to say that the bag I sent her had also arrived and she loved it! PHEW! It was a bit nerve-wracking making something for a fellow-stitcher when I wasn't entirely sure of her tastes, so I'm very pleased Jeanette liked my little 'Shop Til You Drop' bag. My original version of this, made as the sample for the pattern, is my most used bag - it's just such a handy size!! I hope Jeanette finds it handy too.

Now, I was going to share my renovation story with you, but I've run out of time and room for today, so will try to get back tomorrow. Don't forget - you still have a few days to leave a comment on the post two back to be in the running to win one of two copies of my new pattern. All you have to do is tell me about your little angel. But for now, I'm off to tackle the weekly grocery shopping with my 'big' angel GB, so I shall sign off. Til next time - Bear Hugs!

CHEERS!
KRIS