The Mystery Parcel in the Mail

So, you don’t know me, began the message, but you’ve kind of turned up via my incessant sewing-blog-following.

Honestly, the writer had me at So.  I love a mysterious message out of the blue; it’s even better when you keep reading it and discover it’s genuine and not some annoying spam disguised as a vaguely-coherent ramble.  This message fell well and truly into the former category, which is just as well, otherwise this would be a completely different blog post in which I rant about spam instead of one where a mystery parcel arrives on my doorstep.

The message went on and the writer revealed herself as a fellow once-upon-a-time blogger who sews, but whose life had rather gotten in the way of her sewing.  Instead of donating her stash of fabric (you know, that thing I’m incapable of developing), she wanted to send it out to people who would then make something from it and send her a photo… and she was asking me if I’d like to receive some in the mail.

Well, when a mysterious internet stranger asks for my address, who am I to say no?

I’m not going to lie: for a moment or two, I wondered if it was an oddly-sophisticated attempt at stalking.  Then I took a look around at the world and realised if someone was going to go to the effort of stalking, they’d probably choose a far more interesting subject than a grammar-obsessed, hat-wearing blogger.  So I said ‘Yes, please!’ to my unexpected benefactor and promptly went and camped by the letterbox for a week.

At long last, the parcel made its journey from the other side of the country and arrived, presumably quite exhausted, at my doorstep.  It was packed full of as much material as possible and the bounteous collection looks a little like this:

So many gorgeous things!  There’s a knit for when I finally summon up the courage to tackle such fabric and some amazing prints.  I have no idea if what the floating creature is on the red fabric (at the moment, it’s a toss-up between a pig or a hamster) but I adore it and can’t wait to turn it into something that’s part of my everyday life.  My absolute favourite, however, is this one:

I would never have had the confidence to choose a print like this – I usually stick to silly thing like prints of well-dressed ladies scattered amidst giant glasses (see one of my blog banners for proof of this) – but I love this abstract print to little bits.  This is one of the benefits of having someone else choose fabric for you: you end up with something marvellous that you would have walked past in a shop if left to your own devices.

So it seems I have acquired a mini-stash, thanks to my benefactor from Sew Celia!  It has arrived just in time to become part of my Delightful Dozen Project, so you can expect to see the material turning up in very different formats as the year progresses.

What sort of things should I make with the fabric?  Let me know in the comments!