I stumbled across free instructions on Ravelry for matching mittens, using the chart from the purchased hat pattern. I wasn't sure I would have enough yarn so I knit the two cuffs at the same time and finished with literally a couple of feet of yarn left over. I'm pretty sure I've got enough of the other colours.
I've decided to start attending a monthly group at a quilting shop and went to my first session today. You can work on whatever you want, so I took along the borders for my Let it Snow quilt. I went with the solid blue in the end because the batik I bought last weekend was too directional. I am a bit disappointed at having to use plain fabric but I couldn't justify buying a third lot of fabric and the colour is fine. So I sewed 18 snowball blocks today and pieced them into four panels. I then started to piece 3.5" squares of plaid fabric into panels to bookend the snowballs and once again proved I can't count. I thought I had cut plenty of squares to piece four plaid panels and have squares left over. Not only had I not cut enough squares, but I belatedly realised I actually need eight panels, not four. So I've only cut about 40 squares when I actually should have cut 96 squares. Good thing I don't work in a bank.
On my day off I put what is probably the ninth coat of paint on a pair of brackets that I'm going to mount on my bedroom wall in mock support of the ceiling beam. I picked these up on a bric-a-brac table at a fete and they are meant to hold up a curtain pelmet. They were originally painted gold but I wiped them down with sugar soap wipes and started painting them. After a couple of coats not only was the gold still showing through but the paint started to turn green. Three more coats and I gave up on my lime green brackets and gave them a good spray with sealer. That turned them a very attractive mixture of brown sealer and green paint that almost looked like I had done a verdigris effect on purpose. Thankfully the sealer has mostly stopped the reaction with the gold paint, and four more coats of paint finally turned them white. I am choosing to ignore the hints of lime green inside some of the deeper crevices...
I moved the brackets out of the way and started repair work on my 1/12th scale French Loire chateau gatehouse which had lost its railings and the tip of the turret in the house move, plus some of the 'stone' coating had chipped off. Luckily I still had plenty of the stone coating so I mixed more up and patched the breaks, and reglued the railing. I've driven in a couple of nails to try to give the railing a bit more stability.
My new job is going fine and Friday I was told that I've passed the first qualification stage successfully so that was a nice way to end the week. It's a bit scary because being qualified means that a portion of my work won't be checked any more as I am deemed competent to do it on my own. Of course I promptly hit two cases that had things I had never seen before so I ended up sending one of them for check anyway like a chicken - cluck cluck cluck. Perhaps I need to ease into standing on my own :)
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