Oh boy oh boy, have I been busy. In fact I hadn't realised just how long it had been since I last posted. So a quick recap to start with, the gentleman sock: still soldiering on, just about to start the heel on the second sock. Not cable socks: managed the rib and two pattern repeats before frogging, it just didn't look right, so instead it's become my first toe up sock in the shape of the pablo blue sock which, when I have time and peace and quiet to do it isn't coming along too badly. Not only is it my first attempt at a toe up sock, it's also my first attempt at a lace sock, and the first foray into lace knitting since the disaster with the forest canopy shawl. 

Aside from the knitting I've been extremely busy on placement having managed to obtain my own caseload, spend the entirety of yesterday in lots of very important meetings and today get to find out first hand all the bits of the mental health act I'd only read about. And that's only in the past couple of days, so excuse me while I pause for breath and try not to keel over

I look as if I've had a red cat sat on my knee.

I've now officially stuck more pins into a foam board than I ever will needles into patients.

I'm rather fed up of sewing in ends, mattress stitch and seaming.

If you hadn't guessed I'm sewing up a jumper. My very lovely, very red, extremely long overdue Ice Maiden. This is a pre-blog project that I started almost three years ago, finished the pieces for over a year ago and have been putting off blocking and sewing up ever since. I've managed to force myself to sit down over the last few days and get it finished, I'm nearly done and at the stage of thinking "never again" or at least contemplating shrinking myself down to rather more slender proportions so that seeming won't take quite so long in future. 

Actually that's not something I should joke about, as a future nurse whose dream job is either in eating disorders or child and adolescent psychiatry, and more importantly someone who's happy with her body and weight, I'm finding myself increasingly disgusted at the media's attitude to body image. I realise that were I a celebrity I'd automatically be labelled as lazy or on the verge of letting myself go for saying that I like the way I look. I turned on the TV a day or two ago to find some children's programme or other playing where the presenter was talking about body image with a group of pre-teen girls, some as young as 8 wearing full facial make up and talking about manicures and various other beauty treatments they have on a regular basis. And then some statistics flashed up showing the results of a survey that had been carried out indicating a high percentage of these girls were unhappy with their looks, associated thinner with happier and wanted to emulate glamour models and it girl types. I can't be the only one that finds this so wrong, and as a nurse I can't help think that if we could just stop putting all this pressure on our children we wouldn't be in half the mess that we are. Rates of self harm among under 16's is just going up and up, eating disorders among children and teeangers (particularly among boys) are on the rise and all we as a public can do is say "oh dear". 

Anyway rant over, pictures of my latest finished object to follow once I've got myself, the jumper, lsb and a camera in the same room at the same time.

A very overdue update, I've finished my placement and about 5 minutes ago I finished my last essay of the year, it's now just awaiting printing off and handing in. I've also got five knitting er I mean reading weeks before I start my next placement - which actually sounds rather exciting (a community team for people with a history of disengaging from conventional mental health services).

I've managed to be quite productive in my time off, I finished the first rainbow sock but it's rather dull being stocking stitch throughout so I can't be bothered posting pictures right now. My next target's going to be finishing the second of my slalom socks, which I seem to have stalled on at about one and a half repeats down the leg. I genuinely love this pattern but given that lately my only free time in which to knit has been while travelling to and from work and the slalom sock is just a little too fiddly given that I have the memory of a fish (anyone remember Dory from Finding Nemo? Yep, that's me) so have to have something in which to keep count of my rows.  So with more than five minutes free time over the next few weeks I might actually get somewhere with the second sock and not feel quite so bad about the small amount of knitting I seem to be doing lately.

I really can't believe it's been close on a month since I updated, but things have been so busy of late. Obviously as I said before we had a bereavement in the family last month, and that upset life a little. This past week hasn't been such a good one either, I started a new placement - which always seems to mean I catch either a cold, sore throat or the flu. This time it was a cold that knocked me for 6, with only the energy to very weakly work on lsb's heel less socks (of which the first one is finally finished - never again. The pattern's lovely, but 3 pairs of socks in a row in the same pattern is a bit much. I want a rest) as always picture to follow when the camera's working which of course it's not, as I've still been unable to replace the battery.

It's also been a bad week as I was recently told by someone I worked with last year that my favourite patient has died. I know it's probably unprofessional to admit to having a "favourite" patient, but I don't know how else to describe this man, and I'd just like to pay tribute to him if I may. This man was a very unique individual, a mellowed out former hell raiser left over from the asylum days who had more scars from fights and scrapes than your average boxer, who always had a story to tell, he'd seen it all in his time and stood as a testament to how the so called "good old days" weren't actually that good at all for the patients who were subjected to what we would now consider barbaric and inhumane treatments. He always had something entertaining to say and whether it made sense or not he always brought a smile to my face and he knew it. He had no real family who cared about him which always upset me, but given that he'd spent most of his adult life hidden away in an asylum it shouldn't have really surprised me. He had the most beautiful singing voice I've ever heard, and his renditions of Danny Boy brought a tear to my eye. I was genuinely upset when I was told of his death because it was so sudden and he'd been so very young in my eyes to go, but I feel so blessed and so fortunate to have known this man because I know there'll never be a character like him again. And with the existence now of newer drugs and better therapies I'll never again see someone with the level of long lasting side effects as I saw both in this man and in his peers. I will genuinely miss this gentleman and will always remember the lessons that I learned from him.

i really hope people will forgive me for not having updated for the past week and a half but i've been so busy of late that sitting down to type this is the first time i've sat down today, and probably the first time i've drawn breath in even longer.

working on a psychiatric intensive care unit is so much busier than i'd ever imagined, the rates of admission and discharge are pretty high, and as if that wasn't enough i had to deal with my first missing patient (who thankfully turned up, and is by this time hopefully on their way back to the unit). i should probably explain a little bit for those people who aren't really up on modern psychiatric hospital layouts - the psychiatric intensive care unit (or picu) is a special locked ward where people who are very acutely ill are cared for when they can't be managed on an open (or unlocked) ward, usually all the patients on this type of ward are held there under sections of the mental health act, for a variety of reasons a list of which is probably about as long as my arm - the short version of which is that the patients there are generally ill rather than bad, and in most cases the locked door is to protect them from themselves rather than to protect society from them. there's usually set goals for a patient to achieve in order to be discharged from a picu and from there they go onto open wards if they still need hospitalisation and occasionally patients are discharged back into the community, into their own homes with a support package from community nurses and social workers. it's quite an interesting area really and one i'd hope to think about working in full time someday.

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'.

in the light of day the heel less socks were just too mismatched to use as even walking socks as i get the feeling that were i to be involved in some climbing/walking related incident i would die of sheer mortification if the paramedics attempted to pull my boots off. i remember being told that you should always wear matching underwear when you go out in case you got hit by a bus, i don't remember anything about socks though, but there you go.
i've managed to get through half my week of night shifts so far but with minimal knitting, though i often sit and knit on my breaks during the day i find myself feeling just a little bit more than self conscious doing it in the dead of night when there are no patients around and besides myself only two other people about (not counting the ghost, yes i said ghost - we apparently have one). i'm averaging a few rounds per night on another pair of so far heel less sleeping socks (in dusky pink opal) which will this time be my walking socks provided i don't come across some yummy pattern that i just have to do in this colour, ah i'm so fickle i know. i'd say this was something of an achievement to manage between hourly checks, jumping up everytime you hear the noise of a patient out of bed, nursing patients on 1 to 1 observations, washing and drying patients laundry, tidying up, ohmysweetjimmorrisonmyportfoliosdueininlessthanaweekandihavehugebiggapsandnoonetosignthingsoffi'mgoingtofaili'mgoingtofailargh!!!, and many other duties besides. i'm starting to like night shifts despite the fact i went to sleep at roughly 9am this morning and was out of bed and into the bath by just before 2.30pm and i'm starting to feel just a little sleepy despite pouring my third cup of strong coffee down my throat as i type this. i blame this on the fact that someone tried to steal the lead roof from the house's bay window while i was at work. the lsb sent me a text very early this morning simply asking me to ring him, which is worry in itself, the man had his mobile phone there in his hand and knew i'd finished my shift so it must be at least a little serious for him to not want to tell me in a text. so all the way on this noisy bus ride things are running through my mind as to what it could be and exactly how bad it all was, had he finally had enough and decided to leave me for a woman with less crazy hobbies? was his mum ill? had i unintentionally run up a huge phone bill to australia? no, it turned out half the lead roof was on the front lawn when he went out to the car this morning and he was having to try and ring someone up to get it mended. so each and every noise this morning has jarred me from sleep thinking it was someone coming back for the roof. or that's my excuse anyway.

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)

the alpaca silk wrap's not coming on too badly, had the chance to get another ball knitted up while the long suffering boyfriend was bowling. i've also just been a rather naughty girl and spent a small fortune on the knit tin, but i got a very lovely skein of woolly wormhead yarn for a scarf which i've actually been after for a while, the skein i chose was lilac and gold very pretty though i was originally after a green one (lime green jelly) but sadly it was sold out i'm quite happy with the lovely angel delight skein i chose with the help of the long suffering boyfriend. i went onto the site to show some buttons to the long suffering boyfriend for his broad street mittens and came away with the buttons i showed him, some more in a smaller size, the knitting accessories tin, a skein of yarn and two or three button jars. oops! still it gives me a little something to do on the journey to and from my placement from next week. as of tuesday i'm back out on the wards doing proper nursing, i can't wait in a way as i love what i do when i'm out working with patients, i love learning about their illnesses and their lives especially as so many of those i work with have been in hospital since their late teens and early 20's and it's possible to see the long term effects that psychiatric medication can have over 40 years or so. but i'm also so aprehensive about the experience as i've never worked full time in a nursing role for three months constantly being assessed by mentors. and while i've so far passed all the exams and assignments i've had the results back for i work so much better in practice when i don't know the staff are breathing down my neck scrutinising every move i make, very nerve wracking, but i shall pull through.