Yesterday Was a Very Good Day!

The title pretty much sums it up, so I'll get straight to the good stuff! Lesley from Wool and Company sent me a gift as a Thank You for doing Mystery Stole and look at what she sent:

Its a beautiful sterling bracelet that says EAT SLEEP KNIT! She also sent the tiny sheep which was the subject of a brief scuffle between myself, Mickael, and Caleb. I won (HA HA!) Thank you so much Lesley, I love it!

Earlier yesterday I had run out to pick up a couple of things at the Hallmark store and I found something I have been looking for for almost four years. When Mickael and I got married, we had some Tupperware canisters. They weren't ugly but they weren't pretty either. They got the job done of holding my staples* and keeping them fresh, but they didn't look like much sitting out on the countertop. I had looked for some new canisters when we moved up here but couldn't really find any that I liked, that would be perfect for our kitchen, so I just kept using the Tupperware. Yesterday, I replaced the Tupperware canisters! We have a few Chicken and Rooster things in our Kitchen (including the ever popular Chocolate Chicken: a cookie jar we keep filled with chocolate) and when I saw these, I knew they were perfect.

Aren't they cute? I love how the knobs on the lids are painted to match the chickens on the side of each canister. You can't see it in this picture, but the lids are red, which is the main color I'm using in the Kitchen right now. I knew there were the perfect canisters out there somewhere!

*An interesting little tidbit we learned from Judith MacKenzie McCuin in the spinning class at MDS&W was why "staples" are called "staples." In feudal times you would get your flour, sugar, salt (staples) from the lord of the manor. Everyone was under the feudal system (OK, not everyone, but English speaking everyone), so it worked out pretty well. With the rise of the merchant class and trade guilds in the Renaissance, many people moved into the cities and could no longer get these items from a feudal lord. The Stapler's Guild were the men who sorted the wool locks by staple length. This was important to do before it was combed for spinning because combing separates the shorter locks from the longer. If you don't sort out the locks ahead of time, you lose a lot of wool. Anyway, the Stapler's Guild bought these basic items in bulk, so if you lived in the city and had no feudal lord, you could get them from the guild. This is why we refer to flour, sugar, and salt as Staples. I thought that was pretty interesting.