Blogging and real life

Ta da! Lookie what I did today - I met up with Hedgehog at the V&A - we had a nice few hours of chatting and browsing the exhibits - and she graciously put up with my kids for the entire time. (More on the visit to the V&A on my family blog.) One of the things we did was have a little exchange of gifties - as it happens, she was my partner in a recent bag swap organised by Barbara - so I was able to give her her bag (yes, well spotted, it's also the April Challenge Bag from the BQL Bag Challenge, made with fabrics specially chosen to suit her preferences, which were given as "bright colours") with a few other bits and pieces inside. In return, she gave me this lovely selection of goodies - homemade Lingonberry jam (very Scandinavian!) , some Finnish napkins and some Finnish chocolate. The jam is in the larder (as we have jam open already) and the napkins (great design, eh?) in the cupboard, but the chocolate, I'm afraid, is no more. Geoff liked the chili one the best, I was torn between the white and the chili, Sarah liked the white best and I think Alex liked the one with hazelnuts best. But we agreed that they were all yummy.

Also acquired at the V&A were this bag - how could I resist it, given that it's patterned with, well, patterns? I also got a little packet of Japanese stickers, which I thought might be useful for cards and so on.



I also saw a couple of other great bags in the V&A shop - the one on the left, I adore and would really like to own - it's made of woven plasticised sewing measuring tapes - isn't it fab? However, it's not £80 fab - not to me, anyway. And the bags on the right had a much lower price tag - 75p - because they were made of newspaper and rope. I almost bought some of them to use as gift bags or something but in the end, I resisted. I did, however, take a photo in case I want to attempt to make one myself in future...



And finally, I arrived home to two lovely packages - the first, from my double inchies ("twinchies") swap on FiberArtBits - aren't they lovely? A great selection of little bits, aren't they? Not sure what I'm going to do with them yet, but I will think of something, I'm sure. And on the right, a piece of hand-painted fabric and a piece of hand-made soap from the lovely Vicki - and there were three little pressed flowers included as well - a touch of Virginia spring (though I notice there are only two in the photo) - aren't bloggers really really nice?