Gifted Gorgeousness, August 2016

My update is late, and I didn't even need a shoehorn this month! (No idea what Gifted Gorgeousness is? Click the logo above!)

First of all, if you don't already know, the incredibly talented Kim at Wisdom with Needle and Thread has been having a year-long party for her Big Birthday...but instead of getting lots of gifts, she is giving them! I was one of the lucky recipients of her generosity and skill! Just take a look at the little guy who showed up on my doorstep:

This little frog is one of Kim's delicately painted Limoges porcelain boxes. I'm over the moon to own one, as I drool every time she posts one of her porcelain painted creations on her website! Here's a picture of the little guy with the lovely card and a cute pattern that he came along with, so you can see how tiny and precious he is.

And here is the box opened, atop some very cool fabric and floss Kim also included:

Excuse the lens cap...I had to prop him open to get a good shot of the inside of the box. Thank you so much, Kim!! I can't say he has kept away all my frogs so far (I've had to rip-it, rip-it a couple times since he arrived), but who knows how much worse it would have been without him!! :D

I also got a couple other "gifts" in the mail in the past month. I won a giveaway on Goodreads....

This was a fun read about a working girl in 1938. She starts off as a secretary, but a chance meeting allows her to rise up through Manhattan society. She's the queen of snappy comebacks, so it was a very entertaining read. I gave it four stars out of five, since the process of reading was very pleasurable, but kind of like eating a truffle...while you're eating it, it's delightful, but when you're done, you don't really feel like you've gained anything (except calories, LOL!)

My gift for completing my sophomore year of Loopy Academy also arrived. (And I still need to show you those projects!)

This was kind of a saga because I accidentally put my husband's old work address on the shipping form, and then we left for Europe for two weeks. So when we got back, I had to track it down. If the recipient had written "Return to Sender" and put it back in the mail like you are supposed to, I probably would have gotten it sooner. As it was, I had to sneak into a secured office building and bang on a door, get a phone number, and call a few times to finally get the person who had the package! I keep saying I won't do junior year of Loopy Academy because it's all I can do to get the projects done in time, but we'll see....

And now, here is some actual, honest-to-goodness work that *I* did using something that was gifted to me. My mother-in-law brought me this beautiful yarn from the Shetland Islands, and I found the perfect shawl to use every last bit of it (well, at least the one weight and two colors she brought!)

This is with only one more ball of the blue to go, and then the edging gets put on with a different color (like I said, perfect for the four balls of one color and one ball of another that she brought me!!)

Hmmm, maybe I will actually try to do some gifted *stitching* next month....