I gaze longingly at the Secret Pal swaps at Crochetville. They sound very interesting. But I’m restrained by a couple of things….

-> Just to mail a package from here to the US (for example) requires at least $11 (if it is to arrive in my lifetime). And that is just for envelopes. I haven’t enquired yet about boxes. So even if I sent just empty boxes twice, I’d be at the spending limit (if I understand it correctly). A lot of the supplies I buy costs much less than that…unless it is in bulk, then I shudder to think what the postage would be…You might remember the green unholy mess that I bought back in June:

-> Most (if not all) SP packages seem to include yarn and/or other crochet accessories. I can’t think that what we get here will actually be worth sending out to anyone…Not yarn or hooks, definitely. That only leaves endless amounts of my own handmade stuff, which would get boring after a time, I should think! Has anyone been in a Secret Pal swap which didn’t involve yarn/hook items?

-> Given Crochetville has about 3 and a half participants from India, how “secret” a Secret Pal would I be, anyway?

If you are still reading this and haven’t rushed off to to strike me from your blogroll subscriptions, maybe you could tell me what you think….I should stick to RAOKs and Christmas in July and the occasional doily swap, I think.

Update:
I’m hugely gratified by the number of comments I’ve got on this post. So many of you have taken the time to write in, and with so much thought behind your comments, I love reading all of them.

Most people seem to agree that swaps are great fun, and I think so, too. To reply to one point raised by Veronica, although I needn’t give my return address on the packages, I’d still have to stick Indian stamps on my stuff and that would be a dead give-away! It would be fun to play the guessing game, but only if there was more choice in the guessees (new word alert!!!)
Hmm.

I think for now I’ll stick to RAOKing and swapping things I could actually use (NOT afghan squares!) RAOKs and wishlists seem to be a bit more flexible for my purposes at this time. I should have great fun building up stacks of bookmarks, doilies (now I have an excuse to make more. YAY!) scrubbies, dishcloths (maybe not, they seem to use cotton yarn….How about socks? I know exactly who can tell me more about these…)

**goes off mumbling**