The Ultimate Knitter's Christmas Present

You really can't top this.  My husband made a cedar chest for me for Christmas.  What's cooler than that- it's all recycled materials.  The chest is constructed log cabin style of stacked 2x2 cedar rails that came from some remodeling that was done to our house.  The old, weathered outsides were planed off, revealing beautiful salmon/toffee colored wood.  The darker stripe around the side is purpleheart that was from an old fence.  The lid and bottom have wider cedar planks, which came from an old telephone pole.  And the two rose colored strips on the lid are from a wine vat.  I believe all the cedar is local Western Red Cedar, as it grows to massive size in this area.  I'm surprised at how strongly the wood smells, for having been previously out  in the weather for years.  I wore a scarf the other day that had been in the box for three days, and it took hours for me to figure out that the soft cedar smell that I kept getting a whiff of all day was the scarf around by neck. (No- I'm not slow.  We live in a cedar-sided house in the northwest, start fires in the wood stove with cedar kindling everyday, and do numerous crafts that involve hording interesting pieces of wood in our home, so there's a lot of it around!)  After winter is over, I always wash all of the hand knit mittens and hats to store for the summer, and the box is plenty big for all of it.   -M