Happy Mail

 And this is yarn, and it all came together yesterday. 

First up the Book and Yarn club from Beth at Beehive Yarns. This quarter it was Alice in Wonderland and here's what was in the box.

As always click to enlarge if you want to see it more clearly. Tea, in a lovely tin, and it's ordinary tea, not one of these herbal or fruit teas that other people love and we can never get any taste from, some rhubarb and custard flavoured (?) shortbread, and I'm sure you haven't missed the beautiful Alice mug to drink the tea from. Alice is on one side and the Queen of Hearts on the other. A lovely edition of the book with a cloth cover and the original Tenniel illustrations inside. A small project bag, some Alice in Wonderland themed stickers, heart shaped needle keepers, a playing card stitch marker, a bookmark and a pretty card with pattern suggestions on it. And of course the yarn. One of the pattern suggestions was for a very nice pair of socks but as so often with beautiful sock yarn I tend to think it's too nice to waste on socks. We'll see. 

Also arriving yesterday were the quarterly deliveries of the Henny Penny Makes Club. First up was the Little Grey Cells Club; this quarter themed around Murder on the Links

Excuse the presence of my foot. I love them, especially the middle one but as they are so colourful I cannot place them next to last quarters in my blanket project which I think is gong to mean buying something neutral to go between them all and calm them down. This will also mean unravelling most of what I had done so far, which is a pain, but I want it to be right and look nice so I will bite the bullet and basically start over. in Due Course. 

Also arriving from Henny Penny Makes were the Seashore themed minis and the three months look like this. L to R April, May and June. Two of the June ones look so similar I wonder if there has been a mistake but there is no time to query that before we go away so maybe when we get back....

Meanwhile I had a bit of a mini club related disaster yesterday. I had decided to do a crochet square sampler blanket,  having recently acquired a book of over 100 crochet square designs. However I discovered - I was going to say quickly discovered, but believe me it wasn't quickly enough,  that the squares are too big to make from a 20g mini which was a total pain. I will have to have a rethink on that one. If the squares were all made from the centre out it wouldn't be a problem because I could just make them the size they came out, but some of them are done in straight lines and although this would presumably present no problem  to an experienced crocheter, who would just do a bit of arithmetic in their head, and make the foundation row a lot shorter, I cannot do that - and in any case I cannot help feeling they would turn out quite small. So it's back to the drawing board with those, trailing clouds of disappointment in my wake. 

I am more than a little concerned because that is a lot of wool in, and there is nothing out bar a teensy tiny project and I'm not going to get much done this month at all as we're now away until 22nd of the month. (Wonders; how many pairs of socks can I knit between 22nd and 31st July? Answer: probably not enough!) 

That said we have no more plans for going away now, apart from a couple of weekends in the autumn,  so I can play catch up for the rest of the year. 

We leave tomorrow morning at really stupid o'clock and I am very much hoping that this trip at least will go smoothly. I'm sure it will be fabulous and I hope it will be warm! I am all packed and ready bar deciding whether or not to rely just on my smartphone or whether to take my tablet as well. Decisions, decisions.