The first part of my angels rest socks. After a few repeats the pattern's quite easy to remember and I think the pink girliness of the yarn suits the lacy pattern. I've had rather a busy weekend which has included such lovely things as receiving two skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock rainbow as a birthday treat from my mother which will shortly be put to good use once I've decided what to do with it. And of course munching on slices of my yummy pink birthday cake. Of course it's also involved lots of things that aren't fun on your birthday weekend like writing a 2000 word assignment - which thankfully is now done, one down one to go. Now back to the needles and fun stuff.

Today's my birthday. The best bits about which have been leaving work and walking through the most enormous pile of crisp autumn leaves i've ever seen and of course the rather lovely cake above. I suppose the set of harmony knit picks straights that lsb gave me was quite nice too.

The bagpuss like toefutsies are no longer bagpuss like. In fact they're in a frogged pile on my living room floor waiting to be turned into Angel's Rest socks. I discovered a few things this week, that working on secure units where the government say you have to wait a week for a set of keys is not fun, and neither is having to knit on dpns the length of cocktail sticks on said unit to avoid the risk of a patient stealing them and using them as a weapon. I can't actually knit on anything so short for any length of time without either getting very painful hands or making lots of mistakes. So I'm rather grumpy from lack of knitting, but I've been able to understand a bit more about what it feels like to be a patient in one of these places. You need a set of keys to do anything and move anywhere round the unit, and as for the knitting needles - I'm having something I enjoy and that makes me happy and acts as a pretty good support activity when I'm stressed or upset taken away from me "just in case" and that frustrates me, and I only have to deal with it for eight hours a day, five days a week. It's something that's opened my eyes this past week and thinking about things like that is seeming to make me better at what I'm doing at the moment.

My baby pink toefutsies, started this morning. They don't look quite so bagpuss like in real life but as i'm sat in the train station in the middle of a 2 hour round trip to the library to return all my uni textbooks the light isn't brilliant, in fact for some reason everything has a strange yellow tint to it for reasons unknown to me.

The faceted rib socks are coming along quite nicely, and so far I'm impressed. The pattern really seems to suit the yarn, I'm not sure why the colours are all muted - perhaps it's just my monitor, but in the flesh it's actually a very bright sock, which of course suits me fine as my taste in socks seems to be the brighter the better. The slip stitch pattern also makes a very thick fabric, which will hopefully make for a good pair of winter socks provided they're not too thick to fit over my heels. I've been half hoping that they might turn out a little small so I have an excuse to make a Jaywalker scarf after being inspired by seeing a scarf done in Lorna's Laces shepherd's sock rainbow on ravelry where the colours looked fantastic.

I've also started looking at a few larger projects as well, I find socks and other small projects quite satisfying and more suited to my lifestyle at the moment. But with a bit of luck this time next year I'll have a job and won't have to do quite so much studying so I'll have more time to knit, and knit larger more satisfying things. Lsb and I sat down a few nights ago to peruse the latest Debbie Bliss magazine and between us managed to come up with 2 or 3 projects each that may be going on my to knit list (all of them cabled I might add, which seems to be my new thing). I'm looking forward to having a bit more time on my hands as I'm so busy at the moment it's unbelievable, though out of the two assignments that have to be handed in in January I have just over half of one done and just under half of another which makes me feel a little more relaxed. For me the first two weeks of the year tend to be the worst as every tutor seems to throw an enormous amount of work at you before you've even had time to figure out what each module's about. To me my head just goes into panic mode because everything seems to be due in at the same time and there never seems enough time to get everything done. After the first few weeks everything starts to fall into place and once I actually sit down and start writing I tend to get work out of the way fairly quickly. Of course that's half the battle as I'd much rather be knitting, or running, or climbing things. Hmm as you can probably tell concentration isn't one of my strong points when it come to things I'd rather not do. I love pretty much every element of my clinical placements, I just hate the academic bit.