My kit!

I wasn't home yesterday because I got special permission to leave Hogwarts for the night and travel home to see my parents. My mother has spent the last two weeks in South America working as a Healer in rural Muggle communities, and she came home yesterday, which was also my parents' wedding anniversary. My father had bought us front row tickets to see the Weird Sisters, so of course everyone was very excited (and very, very tired today). They played for three hours, and we stood and danced the whole time.

And, as such things tend to go, I arrived back at Ravenclaw Tower to find that Nate, Megaera Black's owl, had come by with my parcel. Naturally, Dorian was quite excited about this visitor (and quite indignant that I'd left him home alone overnight). I'm not sure what he and Nate got up to but there were both feathers and fur on the floor around my bed. I had an early Transfiguration class, but I couldn't wait to open my package--and what an awesome surprise it was:



Believe it or not, she fit all of that into one box. I had said that I wanted a surprise kit, and that's definitely what I got. It was a combo of a Dye kit and a Sock kit. I got some beautiful KnitPicks Imagination Sock yarn in Pixie Dust (which actually looks a lot more Ravenclaw-y than I would have guessed.) I, er, bought myself some of the Imagination when I was getting things for CGP's kit, and just started knitting with it last week. It's lovely yarn. (I bought the "Wicked Witch" colourway, and I'm making the Bellatrix socks out of it. Appropriate, no?) Meg also sent me two skeins of the Bare superwash sock yarn one skein of Bare superwash, and one skein of Bare Merino Silk (which explains why I kept thinking, "This one feels different for some reason!") and dye in Sapphire Blue and Silver.




The bag she sent was also really cool:



There were also lots of really neat accessories: A mini sock keychain in Ravenclaw colours, a set of magnets for chart reading (which I need, because I am USELESS at that), a Ravenclaw keychain, a Care of Magical Creatures magnet, some Bunny Butt Apothecary hand stuff (an etailer I've heard loads about but haven't tried yet!), a Ravenclaw tie crest, some delicious looking chocolate rock candy, 2.75mm KP Harmony needles, a yummy bar of cherry-scented soap, and a really neat pendant shaped like a Scrabble tile with a tiny piece of the story on it (It's one of the Hedwig parts, which is SO cool). She managed to fit most of this into a little wooden chest.




In the midst of all that awesome, the stitch markers stood out:


(I love owls.)

To go along with my yarn and dye, I also received a copy of The Yarn Lover's Guide to Hand Dyeing. I've had it recommended to me several times by friends as one of the best books for dye beginners, and I'm really excited to read it. When I opened the book, there was one last surprise--a copy of Kate Gilbert's Bird In the Hand mitten pattern. I've been ogling this pattern for months now, and I actually bought the yarn to make a pair for my mom for Christmas on the weekend. What an awesome surprise.

Thank you so much to Megaera and Maylee! This was an awesome surprise kit, and I can't wait to get knitting and dyeing!