fun with swaps!

i've been having such a fun week with two swaps. a fabric swap with nettie, and celebrating handmade: the swap.

nettie and i are swapping some adorable japanese fabrics, hr fabrics, and some flea market fancy!! i feel so lucky to be doing this with nettie, and it has been so much fun!! thinking of all these fabrics just makes me feel so giddy! :)

for the celebrating handmade swap, i'm swapping with jessica yen, and it has been another wonderful experience. there is such a sweet story behind this swap, but it is kind of lengthy, so i hope you don't mind me sharing.

to start out, jessica emails me and tells me that she doesn't have any kids. since this is a swap where we are making a handmade toy she asked if she could gift hers to a little girl that lives next door to her. the little girl is here with her family from iran, and when i read that i started to tear up. i was born in iran when my parents were there with boeing back in the 70's. we had to leave quickly when the shah was taken over, and have never been able to return to visit. i've always had a longing to someday go there. (not right now though with all their political issues) but isn't that some coincidence?

and there is more!!! then jessica emails me a few days later, she tells me about how she just got back from dinner with some friends, and that they gave her a red envelope for chinese new year. jessica then explains to me how the elderly give the red envelopes to the kids for chinese new year, and how her grandmother did that for her. now this was dear to me as well since i lived in shanghai, china for a few years and knew exactly what she was talking about. i taught at an international school since my parents lived there while again, working for boeing. she then emails be back and tells me her brother is living in beijing right now, and she lived there a couple years ago, and that she loved visiting shanghai and is more a southern chinese girl! and of course since i was a young adult living there i have many more memories of china, than iran, and loved every minute while i was there.

hopefully you didn't mind finding out so much about me in one post. :)

little red riding hood~ i thought since little red riding hood is a western fairytale, it would give the little girl something she can take with her when her family returns to iran, that will remind her of living here.

i hope the little girl likes little red riding hood.