the alpaca wrap's been finished for a few days now (no picture cos, let's face it. moss stitch is pretty dull to look at and this is a 2ft by 5ft 8 splodge of moss stitch) and has hardly been off my shoulders since - why is it autumn comes on so quickly? so with that done and placement out of the way now my main focus has been my broad street mittens and with most of today dedicated to it (so much so i'm being a slob and neglecting the housework) i've just about finished these as well - i've one and a half fingers to do and the mitten shell before i finish, but i'm pretty confident that if i'm not finished today i will be by this time tomorrow.

so with the prospect of no long term projects on the go i'm looking round for other things to knit, on my to knit list i have sweaters, shawls, socks, hats and i dread to think what else right now. in stash i've got two balls of lace weight wool from handpaintedyarn, one i've known for a while will be made into a forest canopy shawl, the other a lovely vibrant green i've been looking for something a little bit special for, yesterday i think i may have found it in the shape of muir

anyway, you heard me correctly - after three months my clinical placement is over and i'm back to university on monday. i'm a little sad to go because the staff all looked after me so well, and the patients were all so interesting, i already know where i'm going next for a few weeks before christmas - all i can really say is it's going to be a challenge.

and one last thing before i go (taken from metro.co.uk):

Hospital accused of knit pickingMonday, September 17, 2007

A hospital has banned patients and visitors from knitting – for health and safety reasons.
Managers at Congleton War Memorial Hospital in Cheshire fear that children could be hurt by knitting needles.
Patients' groups branded the decision 'pointless and insane' yesterday, saying people had used a knitting box left out in reception for the last three years without any problems.
Hospital officials said knitting material was still available on request to 'older people'.

just a couple of pictures of recent finished objects, first up his and hers hats: mine, the purple one on the left - woollywormhead's ribbed beanie, and the lsb's in blue (what else) on the right - polly's old bean hat. both done in colonia140 from handpaintedyarn which is fast becoming one of my favourite yarns to knit with.







next up we've got my freshly finished cascade scarf from get knitted in sea and sky colourway. very nice to knit even if the picot cast off took me close on 24 hours solid to finish (ok maybe not quite as long as that, but it did take me most of saturday afternoon and well into sunday afternoon to do).














the alpaca wrap is now less than one ball away from completion, and the first glove of my pair of broad street mittens has about half of it's mitten shell done so far, it's been a good few days for knitting.

given that british summer's only just arrived and knowing it's not going to last long i thought it best to start planning my winter wardrobe - starting with banff, last year's effort (ice maiden) is still waiting for a cooler day and more time to block and sew up. the second pair of broad street mittens are on the needles, this time for me and in pink four ply - origin unknown. picture to follow when it's done.

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.

As promised a picture of my alpaca (courtesy of mayfieldalpacas.co.uk) his name's marco and i think he's gorgeous. He's also a suri alpaca so i don't know how practical his dreadlock like coat would be for yarn but i've fallen in love with him anyway. Sadly not that much knitting's gone on lately, the journeys to and from work have mostly been taken up by bouts of revision wherever possible. The ward i work on has been far too busy lately to sit down and do anything besides grab a very quick cup of tea as and when you can hence the lack of updates here (they never tell you just how hard this business of working for a living is, especially on a student nurse wage. But i won't get into the dire financial situation the majority of trainee nurses find themselves in.) All my projects are coming along just currently very slowly, i'm sat right now in fact with the alpacs wrap on my knee which is somewhere between half and three quarters finished, the second silk sock is about an inch off the heel and the second broad street mitten is awaiting a couple more fingers and a shell and that's done. I'm hoping once tuesday's exam is over and done with my rate of knitting might reach its usual levels again. I was quite amused by the latest shreddies advert which shows the breakfast cereal being knitted with love by a group of knitting grandmas (doesn't do much to smash stereotypes, but what the hey) and leeds is having some sort of knitting festival so the local knitters apparently have all manner of odd knitted objects on needles right now including vegetables (if any of that's incorrect i'm sure one of my fellow knitting tykes will correct me)

it turns out that actually picking up the stitches for the mitten shell was harder than i thought, i got so far across the back of the hand feeling quite proud of myself and thinking it wasn't so tough after all until i noticed that my lovely straight row of picked up stitches across the knuckles had begun to migrate stitch by stitch towards the wrist, oops! passed the glove over to my mother, because if she can't fix it who can, right? anyway she had the opposite problem and the stitches travelled fingerwards. the problem did eventually get sorted though, and i'd advise anyone doing anything similar to run a thread of contrasting colour one row underneath where you want to pick up the stitches from as a guide just in case you hadn't thought of it before (i honestly hadn't, it was only when my mum came up with the idea that a lightbulb flashed above my head and i just thought, how could i have not figured that out before?) . the mitten shell seemed to be coming on quite well too, until i realised sometime on friday night that i'd come to the end of the shaping for the shell and realised that actually i'd hardly decreased at all and where i should have had less than 10 stitches, i had over 30. it serves me right to try and knit when i'm tired, and the pattern was misleading too, still at least it gave me the chance to practise and perfect my unpicking technique.

Just finished the first of the mitten gloves for the long suffering boyfriend and while it's far too baggy for me i think it'll be just right for him (oh the benefits of having a partner with the same length hands as yourself). Just about to start picking up the stitches to make the mitten shell which should be interesting as it's not something i've done before and it seems a little trickier than picking up stitches on a sock.

had my first exam today, so that's a little bit off pressure off. won't hear about results for a few days yet so i'm crossing my fingers. in between biting my nails and fretting over correct handwashing techniques among other things i managed to finish another scarf today (shade 7 in debbie bliss soho, picture to come at some point once i have 5 minutes to get the camera out) and the mitten gloves are coming along ok to say i don't really have the time to get a quality few hours of knitting in now and then, the only thing is they're masively too big for my odd shaped hands. i should point out that i'm something of an amazon woman, in fact clothes shopping is next to impossible for me. last week for example i went to buy a new spring jacket and ended up having to buy a size maybe 2 larger than i would normally wear as the sleeves on the smaller size came to halfway up my arm, shop bought socks (ladies anyway) just aren't big enough to accomodate my long but slim feet, and while i have hands the same length as my boyfriend who's very much a grown man they resemble very long thin almost alien hands meaning that it's tough to find gloves to fit comfortably, and don't even get me started on the trouble of trying to buy a new pair of trousers or a skirt. i honestly believe i've picked the right hobby in knitting as off the hanger garments are never right. anyway i think this first pair of gloves will end up going to the long suffering boyfriend as a reward for putting up with my snapping and sheer horribleness over the past few days (exam stress and i do not a pretty couple make) and i shall just have to tweak things slightly on the next pair to make them a little better suited to my preportions.

just one last note, for those people who've contacted me lately about fawne, the pattern came from rowan #36.

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.

fawne

my third pair of fawne gloves, freshly off the needles this afternoon. they were one of the first things i ever learnt to knit besides a very simple moss stitch scarf. they've become one of my favourite things to knit i think, very simple and quick to do but also very effective looking. having a day out raiding up country tomorrow, so no doubt i'll come back with arms full of all sorts of lovely woolly goodies

the rate of knitting has gone up significantly in this house over the past week or so, if i'm not fretting about getting an assignment in, i'm fretting about why i haven't had the results of an assignment back. which all adds up to one productive but stressed knitter. i think right now i will actually knit anything and everything that's put in front of me including this...

in case you can't actually tell from the picture that's a very, very long eyelash yarn scarf. the kit was a christmas gift a few years ago from a friend and it's never really been my favourite thing to knit, but just lately i've been willing to do anything to keep my hands busy in an effort to just stop worrying.