Itty Bitty Easter Swap

I am currently wrapping up my gift for the Itty Bitty Easter Swap in the Itty Bitty Knits Forum group on Ravelry.  The forum is a group for fans of Susan B. Anderson's Itty Bitty books.  It's a very active group with lots of chatter and fun.  We hold swaps every couple of months, usually for special seasonal events.

The swap is secret, no one knows who has weho, so by posting here, I won't be giving anything away.  I am so excited to share with everyone all the fun I have had putting this package together.

The main premise of this swap is to knit an Easter themed item from Susan's collection of patterns and to provide your partner with the yarn to complete one additional project of Susan's (also with an Easter theme).  You could choose to knit a hat and provide a kit for a toy, or vice versa.

Since I just finished knitting two bunny tail hats, I decided to knit a dotted chicken.  This pattern is available from Susan's Itty Bitty Nursery.  I finished up the toy at the end of the Ravelympics, so he's been done for a while now.  The book shows two dotted chickens together, and they just looked so happy.  It felt like a shame to only send one chicken.  He might get lonely right?

I decided to knit one dotted chicken and then provide the yarn for the knitter to create another dotted chicken in her own style.  I have to mention that my husband insisted the dotted chickens head ruffle be red.  He doesn't usually give much input on that sort of thing, but he told me, very matter of factly that chickens do not have blue or green or purple head ruffles.  He then sheepishly admitted that he had never seen a dotted chicken before either, but I took his advice and went with the red head ruffle.

I am also providing the yarn for a grey bunny tail hat, from Susan's Itty Bitty Hats.  I think grey will be very cute!  The pattern recommends Rowan RYC Cashsoft Baby DK, which I couldn't find.  Hopefully Rowan RYC Cashsoft  DK will be okay.  I'm not really sure what the difference is, both seem to have the same content and both are machine washable.

After you gather together the 'must haves' for a swap, there is always lots of other fun stuff you add in to make the package special.  Receiving a swap gift is the best thing ever.  I LOVE giving gifts like this and it is just great to receive a package like this too.  I usually get all teary as I unwrap.

I won't share everything I have included for my swap partner, there are a lot of little treats - candy, pencils, a notepad, some little toys, a book and of course some yarn.  I chose some great colours of Universal Yarns Deluxe Worsted Tones.  I love these blues!

This bag is filled to the brim with goodies.  Plus I have a some more things that wouldn't fit inside (the yarn kits aren't even in there!). 

I can't wait to finish packaging all this up so I can get it in the mail this weekend.

I'm going to post a link to this post in the Itty Bitty Easter Swap thread of the forum, so Welcome to everyone who visits from there.  Please stay and visit my blog for a while!