My first attempt at the faceted rib socks. So far i'm quite impressed with it, particularly as this has been something of a problem yarn to find a pattern for. The colours are gorgeous but the rapid changes make any intricate pattern get lost. The slipped stitches however just help this sock flow nicely. Things are still pretty busy at university, made slightly worse by the fact that in just over a week's time I'll lose my study days when i'm back full time on a ward. This time on a specialist unit for young men with learning disabilities who've either committed crimes or have challenging behaviour. Not my first choice of placement as by my own admission i don't know a great deal about learning disabilities, but one benefit is it's a brand new unit with a state of the art dedicated activities suite. So it should be interesting to say the least.

The first and last photo of my conwy sock. As you can see the yarn is lovely - the colours are great. But the pattern is completely lost in it. I've got the ball winder next to me and as soon as i've written this post the sock's being frogged. I'm quite disappointed really as a lot of work's gone into it already and it's a shame to have to lose it all, but at least it gives me the chance to look through lots of lovely sock patterns and indulge myself while i find something more suitable.

Lsb's newly finished toefutsie sock. Because his feet are so big i've had to squash it up to fit it in the picture. The yarn's lovely and soft, though not as soft as some of the colourways but still a joy to knit with. I'm currently lying semi comatose on the sofa after having spent all day studying and trying desperately to research various things for the mountain of work i still have to do. On tuesday i sat down to write a short summary of a research article i have to appraise, short being under 500 words. By the time i'd finished i had 1300 or so words written of the 2000 word assignment i have to write. Only long winded me could actually manage that, but on the bright side it does mean one less thing to have to do and a bit more time knitting over the christmas holidays

I'm a bad knitter, and even worse blogger. I have assignments and textbooks coming out of my ears right now so I currently have even less free time than normal of late. The only things really getting done are my traveling sock projects - the latest of which is lsb's toefutsies socks, which are lovely. I started them late on Sunday night and have mainly been concentrating on them on my morning commute. I love the shade names South West Trading give these yarns, this one is shade 720, named "sweep you off your feet" which for those of you who are familiar with this yarn will know is a rather lovely combination of various blues, and those of you familiar with lsb will know he very rarely wants anything knitted that's not blue.

The first Conwy sock's been frogged and waiting to be re-knitted. Everything aside from the size seemed to be perfect, the decreases along the back of the leg on 2.25mm needles just seemed to make it far too small to fit my perfectly normal ankles and over my heel. I've decided instead to just forget about the shaping on the leg and stick with the original number of stitches. 

Last Friday was World Mental Health Day, which involved me spending the day at university doing all manner of odd and rather fun things in the name of promoting positive mental health. I was quite impressed by the hobby stall that had been set up, and while they didn't seem to have any knitting going on there were lots of other lovely crafty things like quilting on display.

Lsb's finished gentleman socks. It turns out there was enough yarn to finish them but he decided he liked the mismatched stripes so all worked out in the end. If only my academic work was as easy to sort out.

I had two rather large bloke looking builders staring in amazement at the above sock on the bus this morning, which rather amused me as they were the last people i would have thought of to take an interest in what one of them described as being like a funny looking spider. The reason why i was knitting on the bus at some ungodly hour is because i started back at university yesterday, which means three days a week of getting up before dawn and not getting home until long after the sun's set. It also unfortunately means an enormous work load and very little time to knit, after christmas once the first lot of assignments are handed in things should calm down slightly, in time for the blind panic at the looming prospect of being a staff nurse in only a matter of months. But hopefully in between bouts of running round like a headless chicken i'll find time to knit something more challenging than stocking stitch socks. The next socks due for a possible completion are lsb's gentleman socks. The first of which is done but not kitchenered as the yarn intensive nature of the pattern and a large man's foot are making of cautious that there might not be enough yarn to finish off. So the second sock has reversed stripes, which he seems to like, so all is good. After that my reward for studying hard will be an hour or two spent on my rainbow conwy sock and them i refuse to get distracted anymore and have promised myself i will finally start my broad street mittens.

Me wearing woolly wormhead's funky flapper, done in shade 7 of debbie bliss soho.