Lunaria

I'm taking a break from swapping after the 1st of the year - and having completed my 500th swap! Swapping ruled my life for a while - and it has been great fun.Time for a different obsession! posted Dec 1 2008

Middle-aged mama, college age son. Love my job ( health care) but wish I could retire and do crafts all day! I hate housekeeping. My house is always a disaster. I've learned to make peace with dog hair dust bunnies, but NOT with the clutter.

I believe in thinking outside the box, promoting world peace through being kind to those around us, and I love people who are a little quirky and eccentric.

THINGS I LIKE

TEA
Swapping tea has introduced me to a whole new world, and I've gradually become somewhat of a tea snob, and now prefer high quality loose tea to bagged tea. I even use pretentious words like "malty" and "nutty" to describe tea :)

I still enjoy ordinary tea too, any kind except rooibos, caramel, licorice, or vanilla. I hope when you swap tea with me you will send tea that YOU like, not your castoffs.

I collect unusual teabags from all over the world, and children's books with tea themes.

I can always use Tea sacs (Paper tea filters for loose leaf tea)and Single cup Tea infuser baskets.

Always glad to receive:

• handmade and fancy papers,
• dark chocolate
• hazelnuts and almonds
• mango anything
• Handmade envelopes
• *and I can REALLY REALLY use your leftover ALL-WOOL yarn for making small felted objects
• embossing powders, ink pads, etc, partially used is fine
• knitting and crocheting supplies of any kind
• background rubber stamps and texture plates/mats

• cutesy, country, fussy, or girly stuff
• things with artificial colors and flavors
• stickers
• things from dollar stores (except Daiso! I love their stuff!)
• plastic stuff

• Soft/dusty purples and roses (and even better if they are shimmery/iridescent)
• soft greens (and the names for the soft greens: celery, peridot, celadon, sage and moss),
• black and chocolate brown together
• metallics,
• monochromatic effects ( several shades of one color together)

• combinations of reds/ oranges/ golds/ black

• Not a fan of primary colors or pastels.

Just starting to do a lot more knitting, and felting knitted items. Also I like to work in Polymer clay (textures and colors), recycled/found object art, glass bead earrings, rubber stamping, handmade envelopes, mini-collages, matchboxes, tea-bag folding, and all kinds of papercrafts. I want to learn how to make japanese- style lanterns/lamp shades from papers and polymer clay.

TV: Hardly watch TV. American Idol and House in season. If I could stay up that late, I'd watch Craig Ferguson/Late Late show every night. He's a hoot, and cute, and I'd marry him but I'll bet he's trouble!

Movies: Quirky indie movies are my favorites. Have a Netflix queue of 200+ movies!

Books: I listen to audio books from Audible.com on my little mp3 player. My favorites are stories about other cultures. For a while I was on a binge of novels and memoirs about China and India; now I'm on a binge of 18th century historical stuff ( John Adams, Tale of Two cities). I think I'm a cultural anthropologist at heart!

Music: eclectic, from opera/choral music to electric blues to contemporary folk. Leonard Cohen, Swell Season, Martha Wainwright, Norah Jones, KT Tunstall.