i really knuckled down yesterday to finish off lsb's not quite straight scarf (picture to follow once it's blocked), so i'm feeling rather proud of myself that i finally managed to finish something in between all the exam preparation and other academic stuff i've been having to occupy my time with of late. though i can console myself with the fact that i've worked hard on two assignments and handed them both in a couple of weeks before they were due, so giving me a little extra time to crack on with banff, i hope.

as promised a few pictures, first is my finished version of kyle from rowan's little book of big accessories, i found it a lovely quick knit - the whole thing took a couple of hours on two evenings to complete, and i'm informed that big knits are in this season.





























and a couple of pictures of what i think is my favourite unfinished object of the moment, the lsb's not quite straight scarf in my favourite colour. it's very easy to knit but the diagonal pattern makes it seem more complicated than it is.







this would be my attempt at banff, it's a somewhat stalled unfinished project at the moment for no real reason, it's an easy but not overly boring pattern, and the yarn's lovely. i think i just don't have the time to sit down and make a really good go of getting stuck into big projects like sweaters.

i write this to you from my sick bed, this time i've been struck down with tonsillitis for what must be the third time this year (i suppose it's my own fault really, when you make the decision to spend your life caring for sick people you're bound to get sick every so often and so lose the right to complain about being ill) the short version of which is that it currently looks like i have a golf ball wedged at the back of my throat. anyway that's pretty much why i've been quiet over the past couple of weeks.

i've been just as busy as usual if not more so on placement recently, which has left me with very little time to do any knitting but somehow i've managed to finish the replacement for the felted scarf and start a not quite straight scarf for lsb in a very lovely purple (yet more handpaintedyarn, colonia140 translates as amethyst) which is very nice, and makes a change from blue, but purple's my thing! anyway, in between bemoaning my partner's choice of scarf colour and being taught how to run a ward i've been spending lots of time wrapping hannukah presents ready for tomorrow night (so happy hannukah to my jewish readers) so i intend to eat my latkes, play lots of dreidel and just generally have a good time.

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.

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.

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.