Sneaky suprises

Well, yesterday was a nice little surprise; I received a package from my secret FOC with these lovely things in, but was confused by the lack of identity, just a return name and address. So I notified the swap organisers asking them for more info so that I could thank my partner personally, and it turns out that this is a teaser package and the name on the package is that of a big craft shop in America. How tricksey of my partner!

So I still have a package to come and the mystery deepens *lol*

I've just signed up for the 'Because we miss Happy Potter' swap and am co-organising with Superhooker. It's a good way of dipping my toe in the waters of the swap world as one of my goals is to organise one completely. And how can I resist a Harry Potter swap?

Do you know what? It snowed yesterday! Really! Snow in February! Now I know many of you will be thinking that that's nothing, but here in Numpty, smack bang in the centre of England, we hardly ever get snow! And to get it in February! Wow! It's gone now though! Mandy came up to have the wood that Chalky had pruned from our cherry tree on Monday as she's got a wood burner and never passes up the opportunity for free fuel. I made lunch for us both and we had a good natter.

On Monday I made some patchouli soap and used up alot of my vegetable oils, but only filled half of my mould, so I decided to make some more soap to fill up the rest of it. I'd used up all my palm oil, but I still had some coconut oil, some rapeseed oil, some sweet almond oil and some olive oil, so as a little experiment, I used pretty much even quantities of each. The resulting mixture took alot longer to come to trace, but is paler and seems much creamier than most I've made using the palm oil, which is really orange. I'd like to see if I can find something else to use instead of the palm oil, for the sake of the Oran utangs , but I'm having problems finding a substitute that's vegetarian. I've been trying to find a local source for beeswax which would allow to make vegetarian soap that's a little firmer. This soap is amaryllis and ylang ylang. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

The procrastination of the dress is taken to the next step. I hate cutting fabric out. I only have one place that's large enough to spread fabric out, and that's my floor downstairs, so I have to vacuum first, and then I have to fight off the advances of the minions who are desperate to come and assist me in my endeavours.

Pippin has taken to diving into the pieces or grabbing at my hands as they're trying to pin or cut pieces. *Shakes fist* damn her! But all my pieces are cut now, thank goodness; it's a cold and backbreaking task, but now that bit's done, the sewing should be relatively easy. I suspect that the pattern I have is the wrong size, (McCalls are American right? Their sizing's different) but I cut larger just in case. So now I'm looking at this pile of fabric pieces, trying to motivate myself into pinning it all together on Chia'anna.

Oo yeah, I've taken part in some sneakiness myself and appropriated the Gamecube up to my nest. M never plays it, he likes PC games, so the games we play together downstairs are usually on the 64. The Gamecube is mostly my stuff and when I want to play it is when M's watching the football or something, so I've moved it. Mwuahahaha! Now I'm being tricksey!