Bed rest is for wimps

So apparently its more a case of I have glandular fever. As in, right now. As in, ill, infectious and not allowed to interact with other human beings. Well, bugger.

Ysterday I got a letter from the doctor (yet another different one, I'm collecting the whole set) stating that for the next three weeks I can't go to university, I can't go to work and I can't have any form of social life. So glad I hadn't bought tickets yet for any of the Christmas events I wanted to go to. Oh, and there goes the lovely deadline the day before my birthday. I was looking forward to doing nothing on my 22nd and now I'll have at least a 3 week extension. *sigh*

Hey ho, I'm not gonna let it get me down, so I'm spending today looking for a Christmas tree to put up tomorrow! Yay!

P.S. Finished Dad's socks yesterday, will take a photo Christmas day, when there is actually a foot or two in them.

I have been ill. Apparently. Hmm.

I have been in and out of various GP's surgeries and hospital waiting rooms this week since finally getting round to telling my doctor (well, a doctor, my doctor has been off so I've seen 3 different people this week) that I've been feeling tired for the last 3 months. I'm not the kind of person who generally goes to the doctor and I can't remember that last time I took a day off sick, so I've been pretty much ignoring it over the summer and telling myself that feeling tired wasn't a big deal, but it has eventually come to my attention that its affecting my work. I think in the last design unit I was putting the blah feeling down to lack of creative inspiration, but now that I'm doing practical work that requires knowledge rather than imagination its getting obvious that I'm struggling to concentrate on things I can usually do easily. Finally toddled off to the doctor once my supervisor noticed me staring at a coat pattern for about half an hour without picking up a pencil and threatened to send me home if she saw me again before I had spoken to someone.

Amazingly, I wasn't told to go home and stop being a hypochondriac and was instead packed off to Bournemouth Royal for blood tests, and just got the results today. Thinking about it over the weekend, I was expecting the most likely thing to hear was 'You're slightly anaemic, eat more red meat and stop buying chicken just because its the cheapest thing in the supermarket'. I was certainly not expecting the tests to come back positive for glandular fever. Huh? Ok, fabulous, its common among young people and not overly serious, but really, I've had glandular fever recently and haven't noticed? Isn't there supposed to be a sore throat involved at the very least? How did I miss that one? Hey ho, I'm off for more needley goodness in a couple of weeks to see if its gone or if its still an issue. Oh, and I have slightly abnormal liver functions as a result so my doctor has advised me not to drink. I pouted at him and told him I would moderate myself but he shouldn't expect miracles in the run-up to Christmas. Ha, I laugh in the face of danger.

No knitting photos I'm afraid, sitting around for hours in waiting rooms is wonderful for knitting progress and I've nearly finished sock 2, but it shockingly looks exactly the same as sock 1 so doesn't make for very exciting photographs.

Christmas knitting is well on its way (hurrah), this is sock 1 from Yarn Harlot's Earl Grey socks for my Dad. It looks huge, probably because it's largely stocking stitch and the last socks I made were ribbed, but I think it should fit. This only took me a week, very pleased with that, since I remember my ribbed socks taking fricking ages. Sock 2 will take longer (though I HAVE started it) now that I've started my next unit on the costume course, but still, it's going well so I may just finish it in time to make myself some mittens and a jumper to celebrate/hide from the winter.




















We're now a week into our making project at uni, and I'm torn between being excited about it, and being extremely pissed off, almost to the point of making a formal complaint because my unit leader is being such a useless twat (ahem). Everyone had their designs and their model's names handed out on Wednesday, except me. She forgot about me. Seriously. Once I finally did have a design, I was told they had run out of male acting students, so I would have to fit mine to a first year costume student, so there's every possibility that it won't actually appear in the costume show. Now here comes the fun part. Nobody bothered to tell said costume student that he was modelling for me so he didn't come in to be measured last week. If it wasn't for the fact that I already know him, he still wouldn't know now. As it is, I won't be able to measure him till tomorrow which puts me at a four day disadvantage to everyone else in the class. *fume*
On the other hand, I'm dead excited because the cutting workshops have renewed my love for the eighteenth century. Mmmm, sack back dresses and square cut coats, yom yom yom. All perfect seams and pleats as far as the eye can see. Precision cutting is why I want to do costume. Everyone else was staring at me wierdly when I admitted how happy flat pattern drafting made me.

This is the design I will (eventually) be making. It wasn't my first choice, but it's grown on me now, especially since Francis (my model) is flouncy and over the top and absolutely PERFECT for this character.

Confessions of a Rapunzel hater

Ok, I have to admit to something embarrassing. A couple of weeks ago I realised why Rapunzel doesn't fit. If any of you have read the pattern, you will now that the moss stitch section is actually fair isle moss stitch. It's not in a pattern of any kind, just every other stitch, in the same colour yarn so I decided it was kind of pointless to go through the fiddly process of learning fair isle which wasn't going to be that noticeable. I just left it out. What didn't click in my inexperienced brain was that fair isle has lots of little threads woven across the back. Which stops it stretching so much. Which changes the gauge. Ah.

Boy do I feel foolish.

Mind you, what I said about not knitting without doing the maths first still stands, even with the shoulder seams in the right place, the sleeves are too long, something of a rarity for me. Once I pluck up the courage I will take it into university to attack it with the overlockers and pray it doesn't unravel.

On a brighter note, I had my hand-in today! Yays! No coursework for the weekend and my Christmas gift yarn has arrived from cnyttanpatterns.com. I've been very good and not even unwrapped the package for the last 3 days so I'm making up for it tomorrow by spending the entire day on the sofa knitting, watching DVDs and eating cake. Oh yes. It will be magnificent.

Happy Hallowe'en

Ok, a bit late I know, but I was at work last night and I have been studiously designing all day. We had a Hallowe'en theme night last night and I was the only barmaid who bothered to get dressed up (well, made-up). Most disappointing. Took me about an hour to do this, and about the same again to take it all off again at the end of the night, and I am TX from Terminator 3, NOT Seven of Nine - that got so annoying by the end of the night.

















All that trouble to run around behind a bar all night. Mind you, I have so much coursework to do that if I hadn't been working I probably wouldn't have gone out last night at all, so it can't be all bad.

I am still not knitting, honest, this is just something I forgot to blog when I finished it at the start of the summer holidays.


















This was started aaages ago, last summer when I was getting bored and annoyed with my gloves and I had time to kill in New York and decided to go hunting for yarn shops. The yarn is alpaca and the ball band is...around here somewhere I'm sure..., the needles were just a last second grab because I only had DPNs with me and I'm so pissed off that I chucked the packaging away ecause they are the most beautiful needles I've ever usedand if I knew the brand I'd go and buy the entire set right now. Hey ho, probably best I can't find them again, gone slightly over budget this month anyway.

Less than a week til the deadline, then I can start knitting again! And reading, and watching TV, and going out, and generally enjoying life. Sounds like a distant dream really...