Knitting Olympics and lucky me

Things are going well with the Knitting Olympics, this is the progress so far on the purple retro bag. I bought a stain and varnish for the handles, and sandpaper and tack cloth. It really adds up just to treat this little bit of wood. Too bad I don't have a workshop for that sort of thing. I considered approaching my dad with the project, but I kind of wanted to do it myself, as part of the challenge aspect and all that. I did consider painting with acrylic paint but I thought I might be disappointed with the flatness. If I don't like the stain I'll go over it with black paint before I varnish. The main thing is that I think the light pine colour doesn't really go with the purple, plus it's not in very good shape, with patchy unfinished areas.

Bradley's Olympic mittens are going really well. I can't wait to wear them! I know I keep saying it, but you don't know just how nice they are, they're made with a lovely soft light Wool Gatto, and the colours!!
Here's a detail. It's hard to get the colours in the picture just right, the dark stripe is actually a dark burgundy.

And along the hopefully not too annoying "I'm so lucky" vein, look at the glorious package Manda sent to me! She was sorting out her fabric supplies and offered to send fabric packages to commenters on her blog. Naturally I piped up and look at what she sent! So much more than I expected, wrapped beautifully in a soft dark blue floral pouch she made, and with little extras, zippers in my favourite colours and beautiful buttons. I was so pleased with this package I can't tell you, it was an emotional moment.Here is a detail of my favourite ones. How lovely are these?? My favourite patterns are of flowers, plants, leaves and things like that, but even better, the one on the bottom right has birds too. Thank you so much Manda, I'm working on a little surprise for you too.