There have been a few items over the past couple of weeks that have come by and tickled me.  These aren’t the only ones by any means – just the ones I opted to share.  It’s quite an eclectic mix so bear with me.

1.  I had mentioned in yesterday’s post that I recently celebrated my birthday.  I’m not a big celebration girl when it comes to birthdays but I don’t ignore them either.  A nice acknowledgement is good, I appreciate a gift here and there and of course my birthday lunch at WEBS.  On everyone’s birthday they get to pick where we order from and their lunch is covered by everyone else.  I don’t expect the staff to pay for my lunch but I did get to pick.  Twice.  I just couldn’t decide  I received a few lovely and thoughtful gifts from friends and family over the weekend ahead of Birthday Monday.  I had a lovely gift from Steve waiting for me before I left for work and the kids made me lovely cards.  The day started great and only got better when I walked into my office and discovered this:

My very own mini fridge!  You would have thought I was on The Price is Right and the announcer had just said “A New Car!!!!”  I was downright giddy!  I’d been talking about getting a little fridge for the office for awhile but never got around to it.

The giver knows me well with the lovely bow in my beloved orange.  But this giver REALLY knows me.  Because the fridge was also filled with lime:

Diet Pepsi Lime to be exact.   It was a generous and thoughtful gift.  It makes me happy.

2.  A few weeks ago, our Store Manager Karen asked me to look at a product she had seen while on vacation.   She sent for samples and I fell in love with them.  Our stock just arrived and here is one of the new beauties we will be carrying:

Yes, it’s a hat box.  But it’s not meant for a storage of a finished hat.  It’s meant for a hat or other WIP.  This my dear readers is a very sophisticated and beautiful yarn container.  It includes a divider:

And the lid has two holes to thread your yarn through:

Now, I will admit – the design has a bit of a flaw in that you can’t slide the working yarn out of the threading holes in order to store your project but it’s a minimal annoyance in my opinion.

I love the beauty of the box.  We are currently stocking the large and small size and three fabrics.  If you all like them, we’ll add more options.   I’m working from memory so please don’t quote me but I believe the small box will retail for $20 and the large for $36 or $38.00.  They will be up on the website shortly.  The construction is well done and they just look magnificent.  It’s not often I keep what I bring home to blog about but this little beauty is not leaving the premises and will be taken out of inventory in the morning!

3.  At the complete other end of the spectrum is this:

You can’t quite appreciate what I am showing you here but hopefully this will help:

The large ball is Marble Chunky which is being distributed by Kertzer Yarns.  It’s a 200 gram ball (vs a 50 gram ball used to give size perspective).    It’s 100% acrylic, which I realize is somewhat out of the ordinary for us but there was something about this yarn that just spoke to me.  I know – some of you are wondering if I’m okay but truly, I like this yarn.  I like the big fluffy ball.  I love the colors.  I love that it is extremely versatile, has 341 yards and knits to 3.75 sts on a #10 or #10.5 (since I knit tightly I might even need a #11!).  It retails for only  $12.99 which is a great price for what you are getting.

So, besides the fact that my car thermometer registered at 99 degrees yesterday afternoon and a very cool thunderstorm swept through here last night, these are a few of the things that have been simply tickling me lately

What has caught your eye lately?  What has put a smile on your face?

Kathy