Exciting!

Santa, I am so sorry it took me this long to post! The thing is, I never open the gift if I don't have time to post immediately, so the gift has been sitting in my house unopened until today... All this time I was looking at the return address and thinking the name sounds familiar. Santa, is it possible that you're a writer who I sent a few books to years ago on redditgifts? If so, you are the only one who ever did an unwrapping video for a gift I sent, and it's still one of my favorite posts any of my giftees ever made :).

Thinking my santa might be that cool person who made the video post just made my anticipation grow a lot. Luckily today is Saturday and I finally have time to open the cute little box! I had a really hard time figuring out what side I needed to open but once I started cutting tape the front side sort of opened on its own to show some lovely wrapped gifts and a card!

As I open the enveloped I see a lovely Christmas card with a cute painting of a bird and some flowers, But when I open it and start reading the message it says "Unwrap the gifts before reading further" pretty much immediately. Of course I hastily close the card without reading any of the words following that sentence!

Both gifts are wrapped in a super cute way, but I just can't resist the bigger package that says 'Ready? Tear it!'. You don't have to say that twice, Santa! The torn paper reveals a wonderful book about pattern making for sewing :D. This exact book has been on my wishlist for a long time, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to love it! I don't think it was on a wishlist my santa saw, so I'm impressed with them already!

But there's one more gift, in a gift bag with really cute stickers, so adorable. I actually took the pictures before realizing there was a bow and another sticker on the other side of the package, so trust me it's even cuter than you see on the pictures! When I open the bag I find... another bag! This one is a very cute fabric drawstring bag that seems to be full of a lot of different things. It says on the bag "handcraft needlework & supply" so it looks like the second gift might fit with the first ;).

But that doesn't seem to be exactly it: when I open the little drawstring bag a few items fall out: some embroidery thread, a little book, some needles, a ring that also seems to be some kind of thimble (?) and a small bonus chocolate that made me smile :). The little book says it's about "Sashiko", which I have to admit I have never heard of before. Sashiko seems to be a specific embroidery/quilting technique described in the book, and the needles are especially made for this technique. It's fun to learn about something completely new. I've done one quilt before with a similar technique, using a running stitch to "draw" something, see the pic I added here. But when I made that quilt I had no idea what the hell I was doing so it's fun to learn more! This Sashiko definitely different from what I did, because I used teeny tiny needles. I wonder how these needles will handle. Can't wait!

Of course now that everything is unwrapped I am extra curious what the card said, since I wasn't supposed to read on before! In it my santa explains why they thought I would like Sashiko, and they're definitely right on the money with that :). They also give me a tip to wax my threads, which I did do for that quilt I made and it definitely made a difference, so I will definitely do that again!

Santa, thank you so much! Do let me know if you've made any Sashiko stuff, I'd love to see it :).