I won an award

So, after rather a long week, which started with the burglar alarm going off at 5am on  Monday (don't ask, suffice to say, it wasn't a burglar...), I was delighted to discover on Friday that I've won a blog award!

This is what it said:

Liebster is German for dearest, beloved or favourite. This award is bestowed on blogs with less than 200 followers but deserve more attention.

What a great way to support fellow bloggers you admire!
Here are the rules that come with this award: 

• Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog.
• Link back to the blogger who awarded you.
• Give your top 5 picks for the award.
• Inform your top 5 by leaving a comment on their blog.
• Post the award on your blog.

So, first of all, thank you to PixieMum, who gave me the award. She's one of my fellow Archers Listeners, and also a (retired) librarian. So in other words, extremely cool. 


This is my award:

And my five are:


Nicsknots - which is all about her shop selling handmade bags (which are really cool) and Phoenix cards and the things her family get up to. Oh, and chickens! We used to go to knitting group together, back in my former existence in Lincolnshire. Almost all of my knitting bags were made by her.


BlueADT Knits - who I also know, and met absolutely ages ago at the Knitting & Stitching Show at Harrogate, and who does a LOT of crafty things. As well as blogging about her lovely dogs.


KnitYoga - who I met ages ago. I first started following her blog because I admired her knitting expertise, and she has now branched out into various other crafts. I've linked to her old blog, as she is in the middle of changing blogs.


KnittingontheGreen - yet another blogger I've met! She posts a mixture of knitting, books and there was some gardening a while back, all of which I enjoy. Oh, and she's another Archers Listener and a librarian too...


Bleak Midwinter - I haven't met Katarina, but I did do a secret pal knitting exchange with her once several years ago and have read her blog ever since. She does beautiful knitting, and I also enjoy admiring the yarn from a different country...

Tentacles of the slime monster

The OH thought my spiced parsnip soup bubbling on the hob looked like a slime monster's tentacle was about to emerge from it. I think he's been watching too much Doctor Who.

See, it looks totally normal once it's been through the food processor and is cooling down ready to go in the freezer. Recipe here.

This week has been a bit crazy - knitting group got hastily moved to a new location as the pub we usually meet in closed down about 2 hours before we were due to meet! We ended up meeting at a different pub, which isn't a permanent move as it's very busy, so two of us went to investigate another potential venue after the meeting. We're going to try that one this week...

Then the night after that I went to a talk about the history of gin (!) at the Wellcome Library with a friend from work. It was great, and felt deliciously bad to be sat drinking gin in a library - everyone got a free drink before the talk! Meant I didn't get home until nearly 10pm though.

Then the following night was my church home group, which is always lovely and chatty, particularly as we hadn't met since before Christmas, so I didn't get home until nearly 11pm that night.

So not much knitting happened last week, thank God for a freezer full of batch meals and fortunately the temperature has finally fallen and we've now had a frost, so there wasn't any gardening to do. I did get the Isabella jumper blocked and I'm really pleased with it:

 I love the way the colours work, and it's ended up fitting well - I was worried about the sleeves not being long enough so knitting from the top down was definitely the way to go - I've ended up with 3/4 length sleeves as I wanted, and 7g of yarn left over!

 The bottom is supposed to be knitted as a hem, and you then turn up the bottom and stitch it so that the holes form a picot edge. I decided I didn't like that effect, or the way it made the jumper shorter, so I've just left it as a rolled up edge with a decorative (!) row of holes along it.

Not sure how much time I'll have again this week - I have knitting group at home one night, then craft group at work another night. There are a lot of beginners at craft group at work though (I've now signed up over 10% of the staff!) so I spend most of the time teaching and not doing my own project.