Goodies!

Occasionally lovely packages arrive in the mail ... sometimes it's a matter of having considerable patience and sometimes, it's just a nice surprise. The picture here of various Mary Kay, and some Avon, cosmetics was a promise waited for until I'd nearly given up believing in the goodness of the human heart. But I hadn't -- quite -- given up. I'd seen a note by a woman who said she wanted a quilt, reallly wanted a quilt! She offered to trade the cosmetics, since she's been selling both Mary Kay and Avon products, for not one but two quilts. I agreed. I have [still] too many quilts crowding the shelves of my few closets. So there were two relatively dramatic twin size quilts I was not unhappy to send to a loving home. And the woman promised a shipment of cosmetics, creams, lotions, fondations, etc. But it didn't come and didn't come and didn't come. And I thought ... umm, have I been taken? But I didn't write a nasty email. So one day, there came a package will all sorts of wonderful stuff to make me -- if not beautiul, to feel beautiful Faith restored in people's honesty!
The way I got interested in the Swap-bot site was reading a note on a quilter's blog. I've since semi-remembered it was Helen Conway's bog and I've wound up corresponding with her. In which she wrote glowingly about the wondeful package of quilting fabrics she received in a swap. I thought, I'd love some of that! And I've received several nice fabric swaps but this is the nicest yet -- the theme was green [could you have guessed?] and she was a bit late in sending it so she added some wonderful varigated thread and the [green handled] sewing machine lint brush, a delightful gadget! Plus a bunch of lovely green fat quarters -- one piece of which went into the quilt I showed in the last post. How lovely to receive such generosity on a sweaty summer day!

And not to forget a favorite friend, Lynn from Boca Raton. We have nearby birthdays and I always forget hers and she mine but then she sends me things I do not deserve. Recently it was the American Quilter's Society desk calender. I've been using this annual publication for 10 or maybe 15 years, keeping it on my desk at work so that I can study a different quilt every week -- some are very inspiring, some I dislike, narturally. But now I won't find myself scrounging for a copy of the calendar at the lsat minute in November/December as usual. I have it for 2008, thanks to Lynn. How wonderful!