Nante kouun nano - How lucky!

I'm sure someone who knows Japanese like my friend Rebecca will correct me and say that nante kouun nano doesn't actually mean how lucky. For the moment I am willing to believe what google tells me. I have been lucky and won a competition over at DMaxi's Under Me Oxter blog. It was a ban-zai competition where you had to write a haiku to win a wonderful Japanese themed prize.

Luckily skill at writing haiku had nothing to do with winning as the winner was drawn at random. For what it's worth here is my sock knitting themed haiku.
Click of dpn
Knitters defence
Against cold feet
You should hop over to the blog and look at the other entries though as there are some really clever and funny ones. Anyway despite my lame haiku the luck of the random draw was with me and the postman arrived with this fantastic prize.

The photo shows the lovely haul of goodies. The photo was taken in my new light box studio which I'm hoping will help me take better photos of my yarn and projects. It's so dark at this time of year that a light box is needed to get photos of projects.  The book is lovely and I really liked the lovely photography of all the projects. Let's see if it inspires some zen sock knitting. I hope so since my last attempt at sock knitting inspired some rage that a calm zen master wouldn't at all approve of. The book had a nice surprise of some beautiful origami paper lurking in the origami sock pattern page.

There was also a ball of Japanese Noro sock yarn featuring my favourite colour purple. I think this is probably too lovely to be made into socks and will likely see a future life as a scarf or little shawl, maybe the famous Ishbel. The sushi sock roll is so much fun! Apparently you're supposed to rip out the rectangle of knitted material as you knit the sock. That might keep me interested long enough that I finish the socks. As if that wasn't enough the prize also had a lovely silk needle roll, a load of colourful stitch markers and a row counter. I don't actually have a row counter so this handy gadget might save me some heartache when I lose the bit of paper I had been writing down what row I was on.  Which happens a lot round here.

So I'm well pleased with my prize win. Thanks a million Under Me Oxter! Oh and if anyone is wondering under me oxter is a blog so named for how the blog owner knits, with the knitting needles tucked under her armpit.