handmade joy exchange 2017

Back in 2012, I took part in the Handmade Joy Swap organised by Anne of the beautiful blog, My Giant Strawberry. So when I caught her blog post just in time, about hosting it again in March, this year, I had to join in. My poor blog hasn't been receiving much attention from me. First, it was due to a lack of decent internet connection and then, general busy-ness with a 1 year old and now my dear Macbook is poorly and I'm not a fan of phone blogging. But I will try, so do bear with me.

Well, here I am, five years later, on another continent, with two more children but with the same love of handmade goodness.

I was to create something for Cindy, a talented artist from the US. I decided on a little print, using fairly bold colours and some humour. Along with this I added a handmade notebook with her name on it, in Arabic. Seeing as I was sending it from an Arabic-speaking country (with French being the second language of Algeria), I thought it would add an unusual twist to the items. It took me back a bit. With all the knitting I've been doing, it has been quite some time since I've created any crochet-embellished stationery. 

It took a little while for my package to reach Cindy. She had a little waiting game going on. I was just so relieved that f2f it finally got there. I got my beautiful swap package from Karen in Connecticut. It reached me about two and a half months later (Algerian postal issues!) but it most certainly brought me joy when it got here. 

I received this cute little card with a beautiful stitch holder inside. It was pinned to a piece of vintage linen that had been hand dyed in indigo! 

And the star of the show was a gorgeous project bag, perfect for a sock project! Karen, a fellow knitter, had noticed my knitting projects on instagram and sent me something she thought I could use. She was right!

I love the vintage style of the entire bag, from the fabric to the zipper and it is just beautifully stitched. She also added some extra little goodies! Do check out Karen's etsy shop where she sells lovely naturally dyed pouches, beautiful tote bags and the cutest of needle books!

I think it's just amazing that packages of joy travelled to various parts of the world through this exchange. 

Are you creating a little joy for yourself or someone else? See Anne's Handmade Joy Exchange celebration post here.