Ahoy, Mateys!

Well, I don’t know how the other boxes are faring, but poor Henry the Navigator has had his first adventure. While I was lolly-gagging about in bed this week (with a fever, not with any company, dirty minded mother!), seems poor Henry was being held hostage in the depths of that scary, uncharted territory… my local post office. Shoot, Henry thought he’d done something when he’d discovered his way ‘round Africa and established trading routes with the Indies, but boy he learned a lot in [insert scary, ominous music] the back room, where commoners fear to tred.

Luckily Kari and Amanda were on his trail and roused me from my sleeping-sock knitting-drooling coma to tend to our wayward sailor. And we all know nothing makes a girl feel better than knowing she has sock yarn awaiting her!

So, with much finagling, bartering, pleading, whining, and such silliness, I was able to convince the post office that yes, in fact, I was back in town (since I was standing in front of them) and that yes, I’d like my mail (that they were supposed to deliver four days ago). Seems there’s a policy that “held until a specific date” actually means “held until we have a slow day and decide to send the new guy back into the dark corners of our fine facility to find stacks of unpaid bills and unclaimed fruitcakes from four Christmas mailings ago.” Well, Henry finally emerged, we dusted off the fruitcake droppings and got to the serious business of cracking him open.

Wanna see?

Henry comes to us from Minneapolis, one of my favorite cities. Seriously, have you been there? It's so clean. It's like all the citizens stay warm by picking up every stray gum wrapper on the sidewalk. Amazingly cool place.

Well, I'll certainly never shoot Henry's travels for National Geographic, that's for sure. So since this photo doesn't let you tell at all what goodies were waiting in the green tissue paper, let me tell you about them...

• a toe-up pattern which looks detailed enough for even me to follow
• one of the mini keychain sock blockers (which may be the perfect size project for me to actually finish before Rhinebeck)
• a blue chibi (which I needed and was on my "to buy" list... good call, Kari!)
• a cute, snarky notepad which says "she liked imiginary men best of all," (not necessarily, but I do think imaginary ones are the only ones that I can put up with for longer than a month)
• and of course, chocolate! This may be the first time I've managed to photograph the chocolate before eating it.

Hmmm, but wait, what about the yarn? Yeah, I know you're all just here for the yarn porn. Well, don't worry, I gotcha covered.

Sunshine Yarns Black Olive Stripe... very cool. I did some Google sleuthing and have found a pair of Jaywalkers in progress with this but I may just do something wild and crazy and use the pattern Kari sent me. Toe-up makes me a little nervous, but since it looks like my sock training partner has braved that adventure already, I'll just sit behind her in class and copy her notes.

So, all Yarn Aboarders out there, sorry about my post office kerflunkal. Henry and I are going to explore Buffalo a bit today before he wings his way onto the next locale. Who will be getting sock yarn next? Stay tuned...