"Happy birthday!....I ..er.. made it myself..." *insert awkward silence here*

I think it's probably fair to say that there's very little I enjoy more than finding the perfect gift for someone else. In the olden days, by which I really mean roughly 1995 to February 2010, I would find myself gathering little snippets from random conversations and pasting them into my "birthdays and christmasses" mental scrapbook ready for the next appropriate gifting opportunity.  Ah, so delightful to just use my actual memory. Then I got an iphone. And now I just have "notes" to do the remembering for me. The end result is the same, but it feels a little bit like cheating.

Anyhoo, I have NO notes for my best friend.  She is the girl who has everything.  Pretty much.  Now, given how I love a crafty project, I've taken to presenting her with nowt but homemade bits and bobs.  What a fortunate individual... Most recently she was the lucky recpient of this natty little item, the cabled cushionette:

Not bad for a first attempt and done from a completely-made-up-off-the-top-of-my-head pattern! She professes to love it, and as she lives down under (so I have no real way of knowing one way or the other!), I am happy to imagine it taking pride of place in her apartment. I would have whacked it up here sooner but didn't want to ruin the surprise for her as the cushionette sailed the high seas to Oz.