Last weekend the organisers of the Knitting & Stitching Show graciously gave me and my friend L press tickets and we had a great afternoon wandering around about a million stalls full of gorgeous yarns and fabrics at Alexandra Palace.

The show was incredibly popular. I was told Sunday was the slowest day but it was busy to the point of being a bit exhausting. I’ve never seen so many knitting and sewing lovers in one place!

In addition to the shopping there were classes (which unfortunately were mostly full by the time I heard about the show) and galleries. But mainly I wanted to shop!

Here is the floor plan so you can see the incredible scope of the show.

We were first drawn to Fibres Exotica, which had the most vibrant silk yarns I’ve ever seen. This picture just does not do it justice at all. I bought some AMAZING cobalt blue yarn here and I thinking I’m going to make a neck cozy something like this.

Next we went a bit crazy for the designs of Purl Alpaca Designs.Don’t you just love that jumper?

We also fell for the incredibly soft, rich colours of Manos Maxima from Crafty Yarn. I bought the fiery red and I don’t know what I’ll do with it yet. Maybe socks?

We were also really impressed with the Toft Alpaca Shop. What is it about alpaca? I didn’t buy anything here yet but I’d love to make this jumper. You can buy the yarn with the pattern online.

I was over the moon to find Eternal Maker, a West Sussex fabric shop that imports fabrics from some of my favourites, including Anna Maria Horner. They have an online shop too!

Coats Crafts is also a brilliant shop, with FreeSpirit Fabrics. They have a great site with loads of free patterns.

We also found Loop, an Islington knitting store I haven’t been to yet, which had some gorgeous yarns as well.

And are these the biggest knitting needles you’ve ever seen? I’ve never seen anything like it!

The show is coming to Dublin and Harrogate if you’d like to go!

Yesterday I got a lovely little bit of recognition for the blog by none other than The Times! I was incredibly pleased to be included in the Top 20 twitter accounts to save you money by Laura Shannon. The Times website does cost money now, you know, so to save you some I’ve pasted the whole entire article into this post.

This blog takes a lot of time sometimes and while I really enjoy it it is nice to have someone come along and give me a pat on the back like this. Yay! And I’m in such good company too.

Read on for the list and for goodness sake go follow these tweeters if you want to save some money!

We cook pizza a lot around our house because making the dough is so much fun and it feels a bit healthier. This weekend, in a bid to use up the massive supply of onions and potatoes we always seem to have (courtesy Abel & Cole) we decided to try cooking a potato pizza something like the one Helen at Food Stories wrote about recently. E met Helen at a blogging event a few months ago and I’ve been addicted to her blog ever since, but this is the first time I’ve tried any of her recipes.

Here is Helen’s pizza:

Here is ours:

The combination of my unextraordinary camera and yellow kitchen doesn’t help matters but it’s clear who is the expert.

Looks aside, the pizza turned out lovely. I think we used too thick a crust (all of my baking proportions have been off since I bought yeast in a can instead of sachets) and not enough potatoes. But on the plus side we added goat cheese which was brilliant.

We ate it with simply cooked spinach (see above). I’m sure my mother is very proud!

This is a great recipe to file away. It’s delicious and with the exception of fresh rosemary, you’ve probably got everything on hand already (and if you don’t potatoes and onions are cheap.)

What a busy, busy, BUSY week! I want to write more and get more GREAT DEALS up on the site, especially when I have so many new visitors dropping by because of the Disney on Ice contest! But work has been a bit crazy and time has been short and life goes on.

I did want to throw up a quick post though to talk about some things that are making me happy this week! First up, my shipment of gorgeous Anna Maria Horner fabrics arrived. These didn’t come cheap (especially after customs fees that I completely failed to factor into the equation) but it is hard to get them here. Aren’t they stunning? There are cotton voiles and flannels from the Little Folks range and cottons from the Good Folks range. I can’t wait to start sewing with them!

I also learned today about the knitting and stitching show next week at Alexander Palace. I’m really excited about this. Most of the classes are sold out but I think it will still be really fun to wander around and do a little shopping! I’m going to be a bit cheeky and see if they’ll give me a free pass as press (unlikely) but I plan to go either way.

Finally tomorrow I and I are going to a fun event I’ve been invited to by Mission Foods called We Will Wrap You. The event is promoting their new range of wraps developed by the cast of the musical We Will Rock You. I think it will be really fun because we get to see the show!

Okay, I’m now off to send a couple of work emails (bah!) and then to bed. Two days to Friday thank goodness!

We’ve been baking our own bread for about a month now and I’ve really enjoyed it. This week E requested a bloomer, so instead of our standard wholemeal loaves I looked up a new recipe. Oh my goodness it is HEAVEN! I’m eating a piece right now, warm, with butter, and it is so decadent. Our best loaf yet.

I adapted this recipe from BBC Good Food but I bought a new kind of yeast that doesn’t come in sachets so I had to modify it. I also used a tip from Budget Bytes, one of my new favourite food blogs, which recommended putting a pan of water in the bottom of the oven to create steam.

Here is the result. E actually said “oooh!” when I pulled it out of the oven, and it’s quite rare for him to get that excited over anything that is not related to Manchester United.

I’ve also been working on the quilt. I decided to try to quilt it together with a star pattern, which is taking ages but I’m so far happy with. As you can see I’m using tape to guide my sewing which was recommended by a friend.

Here I am at the very beginning of the weekend. Doesn’t a weekend hold so much promise at the beginning? And then before you know it it’s Sunday morning and the whole thing feels practically finished already. This weekend is something rare: we don’t have family or guests or DSD with us so we can do what we like – sleep in and hopefully accomplish a few things!

Here are a few weekend goals:

Creative
*Finish the quilt
*Finish DSD’s sundress I’m sewing out of my old curtains (esp now that it’s not summer!)

Household
*Clean the floors (hoovering and mopping)
*Scrub the bathroom

Organisational
*Sort through emails (personal and blog)
*Catch up on google reader

Those are the main things, there are a few other bits and pieces. What are YOU going to get done this weekend?

Before I sign this off I wanted to leave you with these lovely flowers! Interflora sent them to me – they are meant to match the colours of my blog. Thank you Interflora! It is always so nice to have fresh flowers around the house.

I have been avoiding this because I know we spent too much on groceries during the period I tracked but I reckon it’s time I actually finished off my month for on this blog.

But first! Here is the finished quilt top. Now I just have to figure out how to sew the whole thing together. The back is the same as the border here (red, blue and pink pinstripes on white). Someone reminded me after I bought the fabric that that won’t stay white for long if it actually is used as a baby quilt, but oh well. It’s really quite warm, we tested it on our laps!

So on to the painful bit! At least I know the figure to beat. So what am I going to do about it? Well we’re keeping the Abel & Cole – we just really like it and we’re eating loads more fruit and veg. So that is about £100/month. After that I think we just need to plan ahead more and stock up on basics and things like chicken breasts during sales. I’m thinking of starting a price book too. I haven’t been tracking since this ended but I’m going to try to pick it up again properly in October.

Total: £204.69

15th September – £20.72 – Abel & Cole delivery
14th September – nothing!
13th September – nothing!
12th September – £5.50 on stuff for massive curry
11th September – nothing!
10th September – nothing!
9th September – nothing!
8th September – £3.97 – Abel & Cole delivery (you get your fourth box free)
7th September – nothing!
6th September – £3 for three boxes of cereal
4th September – £4.37 for pizza toppings
3rd September – nothing!
2nd September – £3.36 for two boxes of cereal
1st September – £26.25 for Abel & Cole delivery – fruit and veg, milk and eggs, plus pork mince for burgers (plenty will be frozen for another time) and more bread flour
31st August – £6.29 for massive block of parmesan (went on last night’s courgettes and pasta)
30th August – £4.25 for goats cheese (half off! to go on beetroot salad and baguettes) and £.89 for the baguette
29th August – nothing!
28th August – nothing!
27th August – nothing!
26th August – nothing!
25th August – £23.73 for Abel & Cole delivery, which included salmon and mussels (but we had a £10 off voucher)
24th August – £3.20 lunch stuff
23rd August – £28 misc lunch and dinner stuff (E didn’t save his receipts so this is an estimate)
22nd August – £5.20 baking stuff for chocolate chip cookies
21st August – £37.24 (guessing again here, as I also lost my receipt. argh!) mainly on fajitas stuff and also rye flour which we will someday use to make sourdough starter
20th August – nothing!
19th August – nothing!
18th August – £20.13 Abel & Cole order – fruit and veg, milk, eggs and bread
17th August – £5 on 2 x 500g steak mince, £1.50 on 2 x 750g tomato sauce
16th August – £1.80 on stirfry stuff for dinner, £.98 on cereal
15th August – nothing!

I’ve been wanting to try quilting ever since my friend A showed me hers. She also told me about Anna Maria Horner. If you haven’t heard of Anna Maria and have a weakness for fabric, I’m warning you, don’t click this link! Anna Maria makes gorgeous fabrics and has a gorgeous family and a gorgeous life. She’s even been on Martha Stewart, for the love. It’s hard to find her fabrics here so I ordered an outrageous amount via the interwebs.

Today I took a beginner’s quilting class at Tikki, a cute patchwork shop in Kew. My Anna Maria fabrics seemed to be stuck in customs (curses!) but I discovered Tilda at Tikki and chose some some really pretty fabrics from her range. Ultimately my plan is to make a quilt for DSD’s room but in this course we worked on a cot size quilt to get the hang of things.

Here is a quick snap of my quilt top which is nearly finished. It is meant to be sort of random. (getting that look took some effort though!) The class was great but I’m worried that this was the easy part – assembling the quilt and finishing it seems a bit more daunting.

When I got home from my quilting class, I got another sewing project: making outfits for DSD’s collection of go go hamsters.

Despite this being a fidgity project, I’m actually quite pleased with the results. Fluffy is wearing the trimmed off bit of an Ikea curtain and Stinker and Winky are wearing my old jeans. Yes, Stinker has a collar so he can show off his fauxhawk.

Stay tuned for more on the quilting project!

We seem to eat a lot of cereal! Here is the latest:

Running total: £174.50

6th September – £3 for three boxes of cereal
4th September – £4.37 for pizza toppings
3rd September – nothing!
2nd September – £3.36 for two boxes of cereal
1st September – £26.25 for Abel & Cole delivery – fruit and veg, milk and eggs, plus pork mince for burgers (plenty will be frozen for another time) and more bread flour
31st August – £6.29 for massive block of parmesan (went on last night’s courgettes and pasta)
30th August – £4.25 for goats cheese (half off! to go on beetroot salad and baguettes) and £.89 for the baguette
29th August – nothing!
28th August – nothing!
27th August – nothing!
26th August – nothing!
25th August – £23.73 for Abel & Cole delivery, which included salmon and mussels (but we had a £10 off voucher)
24th August – £3.20 lunch stuff
23rd August – £28 misc lunch and dinner stuff (E didn’t save his receipts so this is an estimate)
22nd August – £5.20 baking stuff for chocolate chip cookies
21st August – £37.24 (guessing again here, as I also lost my receipt. argh!) mainly on fajitas stuff and also rye flour which we will someday use to make sourdough starter
20th August – nothing!
19th August – nothing!
18th August – £20.13 Abel & Cole order – fruit and veg, milk, eggs and bread
17th August – £5 on 2 x 500g steak mince, £1.50 on 2 x 750g tomato sauce
16th August – £1.80 on stirfry stuff for dinner, £.98 on cereal
15th August – nothing!

Well I’m finally working on it again. I started this scarf/hat/gloves(?) project around the end of last winter and I’m just now making real traction! E doesn’t believe it will happen but I’m promising to finish everything before it gets really cold!

I suppose I got distracted when I started sewing again, but either way I’m back in the knitting game and excited about this project. Here is E modeling the scarf in its partial state. Halfway there, wouldn’t you say??