Anniversary gifting

I realize the last week has been all "my partner this, my hunny that, my boyfriend's so cool, blah blah blah," but the fact of the matter is that he IS, and it's our anniversaweek. I glow about him pretty much always, but this week, I'm doing it more often.

Anyway, we're in the habit of giving each other birthday and xmas gifts, always very personal, and usually handmade. For example, it's been at least two or three gifting times that E gave me tickets to a show and the newest album by that performer (first was Madeline, second was Nana Grizol). For things like our anniversary or Valentine's Day, we like to do things together to make it special, which may or may not include making/buying things. For our first Valentine's Day, E surprised me with this, pinned into a large cigar box that says "The heart is a muscle the size of your fist." This year, I made him a mini-book of 52 reasons I love him, with the reasons pasted onto each card in a deck, and bound with binder rings. I really love that our gift-giving isn't out of obligation. It's always about what we want to do to celebrate each other, and I gotta say, he gives me lots to celebrate about.

This week was a few bundles of surprises, beginning me cooking a pancake breakfast in bed on Monday. He went to Atlanta to take a friend to the airport on Tuesday and came back with a book I've been wanting to read (really, it's a book that I wanted to write, but it seems someone else already did an awesome job). I spent the last few days making a needle case out of materials he likes, which was actually an afterthought. He had planned to make himself a glasses case, but his dyed yarns didn't come out like he wanted, so it never really took off. So instead, I sewed him this one:

The outside is brown corduroy and the inside is green microsuede. The mushroom top is also the microsuede, and the stem is corduroy inside-out. The eyes are tiny beads, and the stitching around the edges and on the glasses and mouth are single-stranded black embroidery thread. It's open only at the top.






 E found this locally produced wool roving that's dyed a complicated and beautiful set of purples that cannot begin to be shown in this photo. It's in a cute project bag, and he's working on making me a drop spindle! (Our drill's battery craps out after about five minutes with the circular bit.)

That's some pretty awesome metametacrafting. Making the drop spindle to make the yarn that will be made into something else. Now all we needs is the goats/sheep to make the yarn! Alpacas? Bunnies? Anything snuggley.