I’m thrilled to of received 2 recent blog awards – thank you so much to The Redheaded Stitcher for the Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award and Rainbow Junkie Corner for the Liebster Blog Award.

I think the ‘rules’ for receiving these awards are:

Sisterhood of the World Bloggers:

• Thanks the person who nominated you
• Post 11 random facts about yourself
• Answer 11 questions from the person who nominated you (please see below)
• Nominate 11 blogs for the award

Liebster:

• Thank the person who nominated you
• Post 7 things about yourself
• Nominate 7 other bloggers for the award and let them know
• Include the award image in your blog post

So, I’m hoping this post will cover both these fabulous awards.

Ok – here we go:

Answers questions from the person who nominated you:

• Why did you start a blog? I started blogging for several reasons, I find ‘stitching’ gives me a real sense of accomplishment which I wanted to share with others by helping them to learn to sew, knit and crochet. I would also love to open a stitching (sewing, knitting and crochet) cafe one day and thought a blog would help me start the first step of the journey.
• How many blogs do you follow? I’m not really sure – I tend to look at some non wordpress based ones regularly (like Attic 24) and follow others on the reader feeder through wordpress.
• What makes you happy? My family
• What are you most grateful for? The mental and physical health of my family!
• What is your favourite food? Anything that has been home cooked! If I had to choose I would say homemade cakes. Yum.
• What sort of weather do you like best? I love the sunshine – the variety of weather we get here in the UK really makes me appreciate those moments when the sky is blue and the sun pops its head out.
• Which famous person would you most like to meet? I’m not really sure on this one – I would love to sit and craft with Kirstie Allsopp, get some valuable advice from one of the entrepeneurs on Dragons Den on how to turn my craft cafe into a reality and Lucy from Attic 24 fame to thank her for inspiring me to learn to crochet! There’s also a whole host of other amazing passionate people out there (some famous, others not), who come alive when they talk about ‘their thing’ who I would love to meet and find out more about their stories.
• Where would you most like to go for a holiday? On a trekking holiday around the world where you find your path as you go.
• What sort of books do you like to read? I love to read new authors and books from different genres, I find the books on the ‘Richard and Judy’ Book club list are normally a good placed to start .
• What style of music do you prefer? Pop
• What characteristic do you hope other people will most value in you?Trust and encouragement.

Random facts

• I love rescuing old oil paintings from the elements at a car boot sales and rehanging them in my home.
• I love canoeing on the sea, but not capsizing!
• My current buying fetish is old table cloths that someone has spent hours embroidering.
• I love baking cakes and bread.
• I really need to get into the habit of exercising! Maybe 2013 will be the year!
• I use to be a secondary science teacher.
• Favorite colour is red.
• I started blogging in May 2012 and had 33,000 views so far.
• I have 4 bantam chickens who lay the most amazing eggs.
• My daughter wants me to make a prom dress for her this year – very scary!
• I’m finding it hard to write random facts about myself!

Blogs

There are some fantastic blogs out there and rather than nominate some of those peeps that I avidly follow I wanted to pick a few recent blogs that I have just come across as i just remember how fabulous it is to be nominated for an award when you are just starting off on your blogging journey.

Limoncello

Knitting to stay sane

The Thinking Closet

Katicrafts

Little Poppits

All she wants to do is knit

Gma Ellen’s Crochet Corner

Pillows a la mode

Sew is Me

A.n.n.a

Loving homemade