As i'm officially a bowls widow for the majority of the afternoon and i'm fed up of revising i decided to crack on with the alpaca wrap . Apologies for the not so great photo but i'm experimenting with the blog function on my mobile phone. So far i'm finding the yarn an absolute joy to knit with, it's so soft and lovely i can tell that when it's finished i'll love it and hopefully so will any yet to be born children of my family.

very quick update as i'm currently up to my eyeballs in university work and revision, the silk sock did fit in the end and quite comfortably in fact. i started on the dreaded second sock and am pleased to say i haven't as yet developed second sock syndrome though with all the other things keeping me occupied there hasn't really been time. as well as the silk socks i've started on a pair of mitten come gloves (the broad street mittens from knitty.com for those interested) in a lovely shade of almost denim blue rowan designer double knit and as i speak am currently casting on for a wrap from the debbie bliss home book in a dusky lavender alpaca silk which arrived earlier today from an ebay seller which i got for an absolute bargain, so not only am i a happy knitter i also plan to be a very busy one over the next few weeks.

the first silk sock is finally finished, and after sewing up the toe last night i looked triumphantly down at my work and was amazed at just how enormous the thing looks, i'm just hoping it will actually fit. in fact i'm pretty sure it will i'm just not quite used to knitting something so large and keep thinking that surely nobody has feet this big. anyway if it doesn't fit i just intend to go and sit in a corner and cry somewhere, the constant revision and studying has zapped me of any strength i may have had and if i have to read through my nursing code of conduct one more time i really will lose my mind.mif i go quiet for a week or so it's only because my exams start next week and sadly that doesn't leave too much time for knitting or even writing about it.

i finished twinkletoes a couple of days ago and am just waiting for the slipper bottoms so i can sew them on and finish off properly. like the blurb on the pattern says they knit up very quickly and would make a great last minute gift. the only thing i didn't like was the yarn, calmer's lovely to touch and wear but it's a pain to knit with. because it's a yarn made up of two separate lengths it has a tendancy to unravel while you work which i found a pain especially when doing the cable cast on for the ties as i'd try and make a stitch and find only half my yarn coming out the other side. looking at the picture they look so tiny! like slightly overgrown baby booties. all the time i was knitting them i kept worrying about them not stretching far enough to accomodate my somewhat lengthy feet so i was surprised and very relieved to find that they fit very comfortably on my feet.

and as promised a picture of my latest scarf, apologies for the weird looking photo. the light just wasn't right when i took it. i promise you though the colours are a lot nicer than they look on there. i'll try again next time the camera comes out.

had a real nightmare day for travelling today, what's normally an hour and a half to two hour round trip into university and back toook me four hours today due to public transport still thinking they're on holiday. i actually managed to spend more time on buses and trains or waiting for the things than i did handing the assignment into university that was the purpose of my trip. normally when faced with this sort of situation i knit and i do so furiously, travelling projects grow at a rate never before seen just to give me something to do with myself until i calm down enough to not want to scream at some poor individual working for the transport company who had nothing to do with the power lines blowing down or the leaves on the line. but today no knitting took place, i feel quite ashamed of myself really. especially seen as my travelling project is the boyfriend's silk socks and he's starting to drop subtle hints that maybe i should be somewhere near finishing the second sock instead of struggling somewhere around the gusset of the first. i can't help it though - they're just so boring to knit. he will only wear ribbed socks it seems, anything with a more complex pattern than that it seems is just too "out there" i don't mind rib, it's a nice change from the ultimate monotony of stocking stitch, but he also won't wear brightly coloured socks. so i'm knitting a pair of socks, for a man with man size feet, in 3 by 3 rib, in navy. the sheer boringness of sitting down to knit these socks makes me want to cry at the moment, especially seen as i have the attention span of a gnat, when i'm knitting something like socks or a scarf if there's no exciting pattern to concentrate on i need a yarn with a bit of something special to it, something varigated in colour or thick and thin. anything to keep my attention for more than a few minutes.

i cast on for twinkletoes today http://knitty.com/ISSUEwinter06/PATTtwinkletoes.html yes i realise i really am a big kid, but as i never had ballet slippers as a child (mostly due to me being the biggest tomboy alive) i'm making up for it now, plus my feet are always freezing so i decided a pair of slippers might be a good idea. even better was the fact that by starting this project today i finally got around to learning how to crochet, or at least enough to do a crocheted cast on and i'd say that's a pretty good achievement.

boyfriend very kindly took me to a llama and alpaca farm this morning and that's obviously where the pictures came from. luckily there's one about an hour or so's drive from us on a working farm near sheffield. llamas have always been one of my favourite animals and i really enjoyed being able to see them up close today, even though most of the animals were being a little shy (this may have had something to do with the herd of rather vicious looking and sounding geese that seemed to want to claim the perimiter of the paddock as their own and honk if anyone dared to get too close to the fence, visitors and residents included). and being the big kid i am i came away from the farm with a cuddly toy llama (i'm sure this had nothing to do with the fact i've promised to marry the man who buys me a llama, but anyway as the actual animals themselves weren't for sale i had to make do with the stuffed fluffy variety). i was also quite impressed to see that some of the alpaca's wool had been spun and was for sale in the gift shop, somehow though i managed to resist making a purchase this time around, or at least until i can find something to do with it and so justify my purchase (i'm still very much of the mentality that stash purchases need to be justifed, i can cope with having numerous balls of yarn hanging round the house when i know what i'm doing with them. i can't quite get away with numerous balls of yarn with no set purpose. partially because i still feel the need to rationalise my knitting addiction to my other half) ok so i'm not quite a stash fiend just yet but give it time and i'm sure i'll be up there with the best of them.

i also managed to finish another scarf in the car on the way home (picture to follow later when i feel like getting the camera out again), that brings my total of finished objects to three in the past week, which i don't think is too bad for me, the girl who had a sweater on needles for over a year and a half (and it's not even truly finished now, still waiting for the inclination to block and sew it all together) oh how i do procrastinate! but i digress, three finished objects in a week is very good for me, and serves as a good distraction from having to do any actual work. it's been wonderful actually, it seems i can get out of gardening duties not just because my hay fever's playing up, but by simply picking up needles and wool. i tell you, the art of knitting gets more and more useful each day. made an attempt to teach my boyfriend how to knit as well seen as he's been expressing a genuine interest in the craft, the only problem is he's a lefty. now being of the ambidextrous persuasion myself teaching a left handed person to knit shouldn't be such a problem. except all the other knitters in my family are right handers and so i've only ever been shown how to knit in a right handed manner and i find it impossible to learn to knit from a book, the diagrams always seem to confuse me, i think like most people i learn better when sat with someone and observing what they do. my only option i think may be to show him my way to knit, or pack him off to someone able to demonstrate a left handed method. i like this business of imparting knowledge, it makes me feel useful.

the ultimate unfinished object became a finished object last night. and not before time either, there were actually times during the knitting of it when i became convinced i would either lose my sanity and become one of my own patients wailing over and over about how the scarf's out to get me, or my long suffering boyfriend would decide that actually he'd suffered more than long enough at this point and get up and walk out vowing to himself never to get involved with a knitter again as they're just too much hassle. and i'd be left with an eventually finished scarf and only my cats and stash for company as i resigned myself to growing old alone.after i'd finished the scarf i naturally sent a very triumphant text to my mother to let her know my achievement (after 20 years i'm still running home to mummy whenever i do something well for praise and congratulations.) and after the obligitary pat on the back her next sentence read "i've got another 2 balls of that colour so you can make the shrug" i almost replied to say i'd have them, but thought better of it. my sanity is very very freyed right now especially seen as i've had around two weeks notice to prepare for my practical nursing exam which by the way if i fail i have to redo otherwise i don't get to do the second year of my course, that's two weeks to prepare and study every practical nursing skill i've learnt over the past year, including the ones they've not even fully taught us (long story short the tutors have said they will assess the mental health students on mental health specific skills and everything the adult students have been taught as well, despite us being told that psychiatric nurses don't do that). so anyway my sanity is very very freyed currently and i'm debating sticking to the more knitting as therapy end of the scale for the time being.

i decided to spend at least some of my easter monday getting on with the dratted scarf. i'm just under halfway through now but not without a struggle. i made the mistake of getting too confident again (either that or it was something to do with me getting distracted shouting at the tv and its lack of punk bands on a supposed a to z of punk) i think i actually had to unpick more of the scarf than i've even knitted today as i somehow managed to lose two stitches and on tinking my way back to where the mistake had happened found myself losing another. even i'm not sure what i'd done, or even how i'd done it which i suppose for me is nothing new. when i first started to knit like many beginners i made mistakes left right and centre, the only difference was and i suppose still is that my mistakes are so unusual that my mother who's been knitting since long before i was born doesn't have a clue what i've managed to do and at times i'm sure she's flung my projects accross the room in frustration.

i managed to finish another maya scarf, this time for my boyfriend, a picture of him modelling it will follow just as soon as i've got his permission to post it. i'm quite pleased with the results and decided to start a third one in purple for me this time. got as far as casting on and starting the first row before the end of my needle flew off and the stitches followed. it serves me right for knitting on horrid plastic needles i suppose, glued it back together as a temporary measure and hunted around online for some 8mm needles, in wood this time. the idea at first was to treat myself to some peace fleece needles but as i couldn't find anywhere in the uk selling them i ended up settling for some plain bamboo ones instead. if anyone can point me in the direction of somewhere in the uk selling peace fleece needles i'd be very grateful.

knitting, and camping.

finished my first attempt at the maya scarf last night. i don't seem to be doing too badly at the moment for finished objects, though the number of unfinished objects never really seems to decrease. it's the first official day of my easter break from university today, a time that i really wanted to spend knitting. unfortunately though with exams creeping up increasingly quickly it looks like most of my fortnight's going to be spent with my head stuck in a book. i did manage to take some time out yesterday from both knitting and cramming like mad to put a tent up. i should probably explain at this point that well over a year ago my boyfriend got it into his head that it would be a good idea to buy a tent when he passed by a camping supply shop one day. a week later the tent was bought and has been sat at the top of the stairs and various other places round the house since then just waiting to be erected. finally yesterday seeing that the weather was at last decent enough to venture outside i was reluctantly dragged away from my needles to assist with trying to put the tent up, in the back garden of all places. a back garden which i might add is actually about as wide as this tent, which also happened to be side facing so once the thing was semi erected the two of us clambered in to check out our handy work. i don't know if anyone else has ever tried this but trying to enter a tent through a flower bed that happens to have a big pointy branched bush thing right in front of the door is no easy feat, especially when you consider that neither myself or my boyfriend are short people. eventually though we were in and after sitting down inside for a well deserved five minutes rest and a ribena break we thought we'd better take the tent down again before the neighbours thought the two of us had gone completely mad. unfortunately taking it down turned out to be the hard part, well not so much the taking down part more the managing to squeeze this rather enormous tent back into the teeny weeny little bag it came from and the wind deciding to start whipping everything all over the lawn. i'm sure it made for something of a comical sight to anyone looking out of the window. and after much persuasion the tent finally found itself packed away and i retreated back indoors to finish off a red maya scarf to cast on for the blue one the boyfriend's been pestering for for the past week or two.