I've lived overseas now for 20 years in various countries around the world. Many of my USA friends are also school teachers. I have often sent little 'holiday' gifts to them from my travels or cute little local tokens of cute, neat, unusual things that I've found for holidays.
This year, I decided to knit everyone something for Easter. Ok, the first plan was to knit a little 'nest' and fill it with a knitted egg, two, or three and a knitted animal.. chicken, bunny, or some other typical Spring time or Easter animal.
The problem seemed to be something called: TIME
I made one little nest... and it took an entire night to knit it.. I thought.. "Humm, this knitting a little nest for everyone on my list just isn't going to work out." So, I decided to just knit the eggs and the little knitted animals instead.
Here are some eggs.. Problem is.. even they took more time that I thought was reasonable..
Can you see a theme? My desire to knit yarny cuteness is bigger than the reality of time.
So, now my new plan was just to knit and knit and see what I can finish in a two week period. I also just happened upon some cute little metal plates with adorable bunny paintings on them in a local German grocery store. I decided to buy those and use them instead of the 'knitted nests' that I had hoped to knit.
Once I realized that Easter was a week sooner than I thought it was.. Yes, I know, I know.. I really do need a new calendar.
Update: I have a new calendar to hang on the wall.
Due to my shortened knitting time allowance.. 2 weeks vs the 3 weeks that I thought that I had available- Last week, it was time to wrap everything up to take it to the post-office on base (AN AMERICAN POST OFFICE mind you) and mail my little Easter goodies to my friends in the states.
I had all my packages wrapped, labeled, and custom's forms filled out. I went to the counter and discovered that I now had two problems..
1. They had changed the little 'easy to fill out' green custom's form on me. It is now this multi-layered, many copies, very detailed form that you have to fill out. So, I was sent to the back of the room to 're-fill-out' the new custom's forms for all of my packages. Sigh
I got the forms filled out.. get back into the now very long line, then I finally make it to the front of the line again.. with my 5 very lightweight packages and the newly filled out custom's forms.
2. Once the first package was weighed, I discovered that they (USA Postal Office) have raised the rates.. apparently a LOT for small packages!!
BECAUSE.. my tiny package of one tiny little 4 inch tall bunny and one very lightweight metal plate.. (costing only $1.50 to purchase) was going to cost $8.75 to mail!!! EACH!!!
YIKES!! Now, I don't have enough money to mail all 5 packages.. oh no.. I now have enough money to mail maybe 2 or at best 3 of the packages!
So, I opted not to mail anything.. I grabbed some of the 'flat rate boxes' and later I will stuff the flat rate boxes, that I will mail at a later date 'full' of other goodies. A couple of the boxes will also have birthday gifts included in the boxes.
*I'm having difficulties with blogger uploading my photos.. so, after trying for over an hour.. I have given up trying to post photos of all of the little knitted goodies.
I'm sorry that my boxes full of Easter cuteness is going to be a little late.. but, know that I did have good intentions. Does that help?
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