All You Need is Soup

Kinda like the Beatles song but not quite....

Brrrrr where did August go?! Come back!! Don't get me wrong, I love Autumn, I really really do, but I'm just not ready for it yet, like the majority of people I know. It's been really rather cold, and given that it's August I can't legitimately put the heating on, right?

Sometimes all it takes is soup. Using this recipe (my absolute favourite by the way) I made lentil and bean soup yesterday before hubbie arrived back from an exhausting (in a pleasurable way) weekend at the Reading Festival. So being a good little wifey I welcomed him back with a clean house and some hot soup (procrastination from the thesis really can transform a person I've found...)

We got the lovely Le Creuset bowls as a wedding present, this is their first use!! The lid is particularly inspired as it keeps the soup warm whilst I faff before I sit down, and prevents me from spilling anything (no mean feat). And here's the soup itself:

Nom nom nom.

I had a lovely weekend at the spa for our friends' hen do (somewhat more civilised than the Reading Festival activities!) with a relaxing facial, pedicure, and lots of jacuzzi time. Bliss. When I got back on Sunday the Thesis was the last thing I felt like doing so I delved back into Mollie Makes Crochet......

I used Drops Safran yarn with a 3.5mm hook, these were the only colours I had so it was an easy choice. I wasn't so sure about the combination at first but now I really like it, it's different to other versions of the pattern I've seen this far. AND even C liked it (he has a slight doily phobia for some reason, I'm working on it). He even let me put said doily under his precious whiskey decanter (another wedding present) high praise indeed! I have been sworn to a 'no more doilies' mantra, but I'm not so sure about that...

I made another version of Regina's wonderful cake (here) this time with plums, absolutely scrummy! I really am becoming a procrastination master... but that is no good! I have so much still to write, edit and rewrite that I think my mind has just shut down. I feel like the girl in this picture I bought from my favourite artists in Berlin (here), weighed by time and drowning...

On a more cheerful note, after the wedding of our friends this weekend C and I are off to Berlin on Monday. Again! He is at a conference and I am slumming it in his hotel room and using the library, very excited to be back, it seems like a minute since I left though! I'm still working on my shawl for the wedding and hope to have a ta dah moment by Friday otherwise it looks like I will be very cold on Saturday...