Blog statistics...

If you've got a Blogger blog like me, have you tried looking at the stats for it (on the control panel)? Mine are most amusing. I can see which sites have referred people to me (usually Ravelry), what people have searched for on Google and then found me ("lopsided cake"!) and which countries the people who read my blog are in. Which seems to be a fair few scattered right across the world. The only continent not represented is Antarctica!

A bit more knitting time this week, and I managed to get the baby cardigan finished off and blocked. I would highly recommend this pattern - it's fun to knit, only the top of the hood needs sewing up and it's very clearly written.

I got some digital kitchen scales last year, which are now proving useful for weighing odds and ends of yarn as well as cooking ingredients. I have 54g of the variegated purple cotton left, i.e. just over half a ball, which should be enough for a very small tank top or I might do a bigger one with stripes?
 

Some more yarn arrived, this time some acrylic for a tea cosy requested by a friend at church. She had requested cream and terracotta to match her kitchen and I struggled to find some terracotta at the cheaper end of the spectrum. Eventually, this came from Knitwell, who also seem to have quite reasonable postage - I investigated a few other places for cheap acrylic but the postage was much higher. It's Hayfield Bonus DK, which does feel rather acrylicky, but I doubt a teapot is fussy about what it feels like. I'm using the Terrific Tea Cosy pattern by Martin Storey.

The amaryllis put on a spurt this week, I took the first picture yesterday for the blog, and ended up taking the second picture today as it had managed to grow a couple of cm overnight! And the sun came out today so it's easier to see.

We went off on an outing to a garden centre yesterday, and went to the Longacres one which is a bit further away than the usual one. I was pleasantly surprised - it had considerably more plants than the one closer to home and they also seemed to be cheaper. We had lunch there too but the café wasn't as nice as the other one though. Amusingly we drove past two other garden centres on the way there, which makes about 5 garden centres in the space of 10 miles - do they really have enough business?!

Anyway, I'm pleased with our plant purchases. Not only were the rhubarb plants cheaper than elsewhere (the reason for the trip in the first place), we found a lovely Dogwood to go in the back garden, as well as a holly and I unearthed a Euonymus reduced to 99p in the sale section!

We also got some compost and propagating trays for use in the next few months when I want to grow some more plants from seed. And the OH found this in the pet section:

A squirrel proof bird feeder, which we're also hoping will be pigeon proof. We've been attempting to feed the birds here for months now, but the old bird feeder kept being inundated with pigeons, some even tried clinging to it and doing a humming bird impression to get seed out, and this scared away the smaller birds. As we live in a conservation area with a lot of woodland we've also been having trouble with squirrels and it was getting annoying having all the bird seed gobbled up by vermin! Hopefully this will do the trick.

Any human heart arrived at the library and I've been reading it this week. It's OK, not that interesting though and not really grabbing me. I don't really care what happens to the character and, as it's written in diary format and he's only just gone to university, there's a loooonnnnggg way to go yet. I have a feeling I'm not going to get it read in time for reading group in February...

And I've been doing a bit of clearing out. I've put some knitting magazines on Ebay to see if they sell, so if you're interested, look here.