My baby pink toefutsies, started this morning. They don't look quite so bagpuss like in real life but as i'm sat in the train station in the middle of a 2 hour round trip to the library to return all my uni textbooks the light isn't brilliant, in fact for some reason everything has a strange yellow tint to it for reasons unknown to me.

The faceted rib socks are coming along quite nicely, and so far I'm impressed. The pattern really seems to suit the yarn, I'm not sure why the colours are all muted - perhaps it's just my monitor, but in the flesh it's actually a very bright sock, which of course suits me fine as my taste in socks seems to be the brighter the better. The slip stitch pattern also makes a very thick fabric, which will hopefully make for a good pair of winter socks provided they're not too thick to fit over my heels. I've been half hoping that they might turn out a little small so I have an excuse to make a Jaywalker scarf after being inspired by seeing a scarf done in Lorna's Laces shepherd's sock rainbow on ravelry where the colours looked fantastic.

I've also started looking at a few larger projects as well, I find socks and other small projects quite satisfying and more suited to my lifestyle at the moment. But with a bit of luck this time next year I'll have a job and won't have to do quite so much studying so I'll have more time to knit, and knit larger more satisfying things. Lsb and I sat down a few nights ago to peruse the latest Debbie Bliss magazine and between us managed to come up with 2 or 3 projects each that may be going on my to knit list (all of them cabled I might add, which seems to be my new thing). I'm looking forward to having a bit more time on my hands as I'm so busy at the moment it's unbelievable, though out of the two assignments that have to be handed in in January I have just over half of one done and just under half of another which makes me feel a little more relaxed. For me the first two weeks of the year tend to be the worst as every tutor seems to throw an enormous amount of work at you before you've even had time to figure out what each module's about. To me my head just goes into panic mode because everything seems to be due in at the same time and there never seems enough time to get everything done. After the first few weeks everything starts to fall into place and once I actually sit down and start writing I tend to get work out of the way fairly quickly. Of course that's half the battle as I'd much rather be knitting, or running, or climbing things. Hmm as you can probably tell concentration isn't one of my strong points when it come to things I'd rather not do. I love pretty much every element of my clinical placements, I just hate the academic bit.

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.