Christmas Swag

In terms of presents, the Christmas sea­son has been good to me. Even though I decided not to do gifts for any­one this year, that doesn’t stop peo­ple from buy­ing me things. Along with a Mexx gift cer­tifi­cate, Eagle vs. Shark on DVD, and an elec­tric hot rod that I can build, I got some great gifts.

My first Christmas stock­ing since leav­ing home. I used to have a stock­ing that my grand­mother knit back when I was one (if I remem­ber cor­rectly), which had my name on it, and Santa bend­ing over putting some­thing down, but look­ing at the viewer as if he was caught in the act of deliv­er­ing presents.

Instead of a star or angel on top of the tree, it would be my stock­ing. Since my grand­mother was very much Chinese and not born into this cul­ture, I always imag­ined her say­ing, “Silly white peo­ple and their silly myth­i­cal fat peo­ple”, while knit­ting it.

I wear this cash­mere scarf pretty much every day now. Cashmere has the amaz­ing qual­ity of being so warm that it makes your body feel cold when you take it off, even if you were boil­ing. I had been eye­ing the scarves at Club Monaco for some time, but I just couldn’t jus­tify the out­ra­geous cost, so I was super excited to get this. Practical, styl­ish, and very expen­sive.

These Tea Forté trays came from two sources; two bone white ones were stock­ing stuffers, while the four terra cotta orange were sent all the way from Los Angeles by Maeko, one of my loyal read­ers. In addi­tion to being great for pre­sen­ta­tion, they also dou­ble as a used-tea bag tray. And since I can get at least two steeps out of one tea bag, this comes in very handy.

Chocolate. Lot’s of choco­late. I love how the pouch is really Santa’s bag of goodies.

This origami cal­en­dar has instruc­tions on every day/page on how to make some­thing dif­fer­ent. The best part is that the pre­vi­ous day serves as the origami paper used to fold the next day’s project, so there’s no waste. I haven’t been using the cal­en­dar, because I don’t want to ruin it even though it’s tech­ni­cally only applic­a­ble for a year. That’s how much I like this present. That, and the fact that I want to keep the instructions.

This candy cane was hand-made, which is pretty much unlike every other candy cane I’ve ever seen, hand­fuls of which are often thrown together. It’s also some­what big, and uncon­ven­tion­ally coloured. Unfortunately, it broke dur­ing trans­porta­tion, but it’s so big that I’d have to break it to eat it any­way. I can’t wait to eat it and see if it’s also uncon­ven­tion­ally flavoured.

A glass teapot from Teaopia. Right off my wish list, but Louise didn’t even know. So far, she’s bought me a bloom­ing flower tea buds (along with steep­ing pot), Numi organic tea bags, and a tea steeper where the leaves are added and the tea strains through to the cup when placed on top. All of which I love. I must be the eas­i­est per­son to shop for.