this morning i got the swift and ball winder out to deskein the two hanks of wool that arrived recently and i'm in love. the blue i chose for the cushion really lives up to its name of shining skies and it's so soft! i'm actually a little disappointed in myself that i didn't order a few more skeins for myself. i cast on for the cushion this afternoon and have been happily knitting away on it since, i'm about three quarters done on the first side (pictures to follw when it starts looking more interesting). i've also indulged my love of all things punk and alternative with the pretty in punk book, it arrived this morning and there's already so many great things i just have to knit, the union jack mohawk hat, stripy mohair jumper, and spider web jumper (plus it can be knitted from one ball of wool, how cool and easy on the pocket of a poor student is that!) to name but a few.

the long suffering boyfriend's taken to the garden to indulge in some gardening duties for the afternoon given that the sun's out for what seems like the first time this summer, leaving me inside as my hay fever's flared up so much today that even the plant life on tv seems to be making me sneeze. i have however managed to battle through and finish off the first heel less sleeping sock, the verdict so far's pretty mixed - i love the way the pattern looks knitted up, but when knitting it has the feeling of doing an action with the wrong hand due to the fact that at the start of every needle the first stitch is purled and in fact three out of every four stitches are purled, it takes a bit of getting used to, but switching to one circular helps with the disjointed feeling and seems to improve the speed of knitting too, the only problem being i now have a lovely callous and semi numb right middle finger from knitting with a metal circular, anyone know anywhere that make/sell good quality circulars with wooden rather than metal points? anyway back to the point. the yarn itself is pretty to look at and it makes some lovely black, blue and purple stripes but the bits of silver lurex do make the sock slightly scratchy in parts, it's possible that this could be pretty unnoticable when it's actually being worn or that it'll soften up when washed a couple of times. time will tell anyway.

i cast on for these beauties this morning, they're going to be the heel less sleeping socks from nancy bush's knitting vintage socks in opal royal. i felt the need to knit some socks without heels because i pinched the long suffering boyfriend's ski socks a few nights ago after being caught in a down pour and finding them amazingly comfortable and without heels. but just look at the colours purple, black and a blue that seems to glow in some parts not to mention the sparkle, they almost remind me of something from harry potter in a strange way, they just seem magic anyway.

the yarn for the love heart cushion's now all sorted thanks to handpaintedyarn.com and i was a little bit naughty and chose an extra skein for myself (in purple, what else) to make a lovely hat for winter. i think i intend to be a very busy knitter over the coming weeks. but how this is going to be juggled with the new harry potter book when it comes out on friday i don't know. i really must perfect the art of reading and knitting at once.

as promised a photo of the long suffering boyfriend complete with broad street mittens (or his torso anyway) he seems quite pleased with them and is actually looking forward to autumn so he can wear them. the silk socks are fresh off the needles too now thankfully, i just finished stitching the toes five minutes ago. and now with no small projects on the go it's time to concentrate on knitting one of my friends a birthday present, which i've decided is going to be a love heart cushion from domiknitrix's book, with web site embroided on the front. i should explain at this point that for those readers who haven't opened a pack of love heart sweets for a while they aren't what they used to be. at one time the hearts had lovely sweet messages like "be mine" and "i love you" on them, nowadays for some unknown reason this seems to have gone out of the window to be replaced by supposedly more up to date slogans like "text me" "fax me" and most bizarrely "web site" i fail to understand just what could be the romantic message held within the phrase web site. my friend doesn't understand either but finds these particular sweets rather amusing so when i saw the pattern i just knew she'd love a cushion with it on. of course this means a trip over to holmfirth sometime over the next week, which probably also means plenty of other lovely things added to my stash.

the broad street mittens are done, finally! after much head scratching in parts over them they were finally completed last night, picture to follow as soon as i can get the mittens, the long suffering boyfriend and a camera in the same room at the same time and of course convince him that his face won't end up splashed all over the internet. so with no mitts to knit today i finally sat down and forced myself to get on with the silk socks and i'm happy to report progress is being made, i won't post a picture because how interesting can 3x3 rib be in navy blue silk, on a man size sock? not very i hear you cry. and readers you'd be right, and it's even less interesting to knit, a true labour of love i feel. anyway, yes progress is being made i've managed to get the heel and gusset done and am floating somewhere around 3 inches or so from the heel, luckily i've just been told that i may have a very long game of crown green bowls to sit through tomorrow night so the socks are coming along in the hope that i might be somewhere closer to the toe and by definition freedom from boring knitting. after two portable projects in shades of blue i long for some real colour, varigated yarn, pinks, reds, orange anything vibrant and interesting. blues and navy blue just get monotonous and boring after so long.

well folks, i'm back and on my feet again just in time for the start of my summer holidays which can mean only one thing... knitting! in fact this morning i've been knuckling down to the second of the long suffering boyfriend's broad street mittens, progress was being made and everything seemed to be tootling along merrily until i came to the last finger and was instructed to pick up the remaining 8 palm stitches, and the last 7 back of the hand stitches, but i've only got 5, what have i done? where have i put them? did the cuddly llama next to me eat them when i wasn't looking? after a few minutes of head scratching and near hair tearing out i calmly went back over the pattern with a calculator to find either my maths is a lot worse then it was at school, or the designer slipped up somewhere because my brain and the calculator both worked out that i should have 13 stitches as appose to 15 if i followed the pattern correctly. which led to me searching through the blogging community to find out if anyone else had found the same thing (and boy oh boy are there a lot of us knitters out there in cyberspace. more than i think i realised for a hobby that doesn't seem that mainstream in many places) unfortunately it looks like it's just me who's either made this particular mistake or noticed it, i did however come across a couple more errors in that particular pattern, namely that the instruction for increasing after the cuff is off, it reads *k3 in1* when it should be 4 stitches between each increase in order to get the target number of 60 stitches rather than 64 anyway most of the errata can be found here

anyway on a lighter note, i've been promising pictures of my woolly wormhead scarf for quite a while now and here it is, as modelled by the lovely loretta llama (who it has now been established does not eat knitting stitches for breakfast) and a close up so you can see the stitches and hopefully appreciate just how lovely the yarn is, it was fabulous to work with, possibly due to it being a blend of wool and silk which made it heavenly to the touch. sadly though with it only being a one off skein (as all ruth's items are) it made for a rather short scarf. long enough to do the job of course but i'm a fan of long scarves that keep the rest of your top half that little bit warmer on cold winter mornings, or good old fashioned english summer mornings for that matter.

apologies for the lack of updates over the past couple of weeks, i've not been too well and i'm only just starting to improve (i'm writing this from my sick bed actually). once i'm well again i promise i'll start updating again.