The hug box and other mysteries

I got a phone call tonight from sherlockfan, very excited about the parcel that she’d got this morning, so I can now reveal the secret of the hug box. Recently, while on holiday in France, sherlockfan had a fall which put her in hospital. Her holiday was cut short and she had to be medevacced back to New Zealand. Luckily, she’s recovering well now, but for a while there all her friends were worried about her. So as a get well/glad you’re recovering/sorry your holiday was ruined/welcome home gesture, otakuu suggested we organise a “hug box” for her – a parcel filled with little gifts from all her bookcrossing friends. I volunteered to be the collection point, and everyone sent their gifts to me so I could make up a big parcel to send up to Wellington. And from her reaction tonight, I think I can say that it was just as wonderful a surprise as we’d hoped it would be.

It’s so nice to know you’ve made someone’s day a little bit brighter!

In other Bookcrossing news, I’ve been doing really well with catches lately. The other day I got a catch for one of the books from the Next Stop bookshelf which we’d registered with pre-numbered labels the first time we went down to the Regent booksale, and which was still sitting there a year later when we went back for this year’s sale. It’s not there any longer, though – it’s been caught by an English tourist who’s taken it back to Sheffield and is going to release it there.

And today I got a catch for Ancestors by Robyn Davidson, one of the books I released for the 150th celebrations. It’s been caught by someone from Canada, so hopefully it will be doing a bit of travelling too.

The third catch isn’t really mine, because I didn’t release the book, but it started off in my hands, so it’s still pretty cool: I sent Boy Overboard by Peter Wells to GoryDetails a couple of years ago, and after she’d read it she released it in a town in New York. Nearly two years later, it’s finally been caught!

I’ve almost finished the bottom half of the advent calendar cross-stitch! There’s just a bit more backstitch to be done at the top, but I need to roll the fabric on a bit to get to that part (I’m using a scroll frame), so I thought I’d take a photo now while you can see the bottom bit:

Once I’ve finished that section of backstitch, I can get on to the more interesting picture part again.

Currently reading: Legends edited by Robert Silverberg