Today’s Fortune: Family is more valuable than money. But you will have both.

This fortune is very true. I do get 12 quarters every week for my allowance, but my family and friends are much more valuable than all the money in the world!

Lots of my Ravelry friends have been sending presents to me and Mom, so it has been Christmas for a while at my house. We like celebrating Christmas for several days. Mom was in a Christmas Santa Swap with her tractor girls. We got the best package in the mail while we were gone to North Carolina!! It was from our dear friend SugarMomma, whose real name is Kim. She sent us the best stuff ever!

It had some really good wrapping paper on the box. We tore the paper off before Mom could get a picture of the box all wrapped up. It was pink with snowmen on it. Here is what it looked like (it is a little crumpled up, but you can still see how fun it is):

There was so much stuff in the box, it took us a long time to open it all!  There were lots of fun little things…  Fun scrapbook papers and sticky notes in our favorite colors, yummy chocolates and a great big tub of Swedish fish!  There were sock monkey key covers, too.  I was hoping Mom would give them to me, but since I don’t have keys, she said she was taking those.  She did let me keep the monkey castanets, though!  I have been making a very joyful noise with them!!  Mom says my joyful noise is giving her a headache.

There was pink stripey John Deere tractor fabric that Mom can use for small projects, and some very pretty black fabric with red butterflies on it.  Mom said she would be making herself a summer sundress with that.  I hope there will be enough left for her to make a dress for me to send to Dharma!

Puglet found all kinds of new friends in that box!  There was a Halloween pumpkin bear that has legs that light up if you put batteries in him.  There was also a very cute handmade sock monkey witch and a fun sock creature with long stripey arms and a long skinny tail!

We have a year-round Halloween corner in our dining room, and these new friends made themselves right at home with our felted witch, our black kitty, and our autographed copy of  “Sock Monkey Dreams.”

There was more good stuff inside the box!  Mom got some bamboo knitting needles in a size she uses all the time… it is good to have more than one pair, because then you can work on more than one project at a time.  She also got a copy of Family Knits, by Debbie Bliss. Mom has about a thousand knitting books, but this was one she didn’t have, and she was so glad to get it.  It has lots of good patterns for everyone in the family.  I hope she will make me something out of it.

Then there was the yarn!  Lots of yarn!  There were four skeins of oatmeal colored cotton yarn called “Elann Sonata”, a giant skein of purple yarn called “Noro Iro”, which is what Mom made her Gi-Noro-Mous Coat out of, and two little skeins of yarn that we found out Kym had spun herself.  Mom really loves the handspun skeins and says she is saving them to use as special trim on special projects.

Kim had also hand knitted some special gifts for us!!  There was a Noro Infinity Neckwrap that I got to wear, and a really nice lace scarf that Puglet tried on.  Mom said that these were hers, but I think we look really nice in them.  I hope she will share them with us.

But the very best thing in the box was my new friend Rufus!!  He is a sock monkey that SugarMomma knitted from a pattern she made up herself!   Mom asked me why I was calling him Rufus, and I told her, “Because that’s his name.”  Sometimes Mom asks really silly questions.  Rufus is awesome!  He really likes it here at our house, and we love him a lot!

Mom took a picture of us with everything that was in the whole box.  It was so much stuff she almost couldn’t get it all in the picture!

SugarMomma sent us the best swappy package ever!  We are so lucky to have such good friends!  And look at all the new family members we have now! My fortune was so right.  Family is far more valuable than money!

Thank you bunches, Auntie Kim!!  You are the best!