i found myself just having to break off from knitting my new cold weather hat to post a picture of the lovely yarn i'm working with. it's one of the two skeins that came from handpaintedyarns, the one that i just had to treat myself to as it's such a pretty purple and it was the last one there and just begged to be taken home, the shade itself is called amethyst and as you can see from the photo it's a mix of various shades of purple, the occaisonal spot of deep dark green and navy blue. it's a joy to knit with as well, pure wool, not as soft as the merino i've used for the love heart cushion (which is done and awaiting stuffing and embroidery) but still beautiful anyway, it reminds me somewhat of debbie bliss' maya/soho with it's occaisonal movements from thick to thin and back again.

in other news i met up with my friend who'll be receiving the love heart cushion for her birthday, for lunch yesterday. she's back in yorkshire for the summer, normally she resides in glasgow which i'm now convinced must be the coolest place on earth as her course has a knitting group - which i suppose is possibly to be expected from an art school, but still pretty cool. it almost makes me want to either pack my bags and move to glasgow to persue my long forgotten dream of becoming an abstract painter in order to have other people to knit with, or start up my own knitting group at university. despite the proximity of my university to places like up country and bobbins (i think i have that right, rather famous wool shop in whitby. the one the long suffering boyfriend tends to whisk me past) knitting doesn't seem a particularly big thing, in fact sadly i think apart from some students in the school of art and design i may be the only student who actively knits (i know from talking to other students on nursing courses that many of the students with children knitted for them when they were babies but no longer knit).