Yay!

Today I finally got around to publishing my Backwards Mitten Recipe on Ravelry.  It's the pattern I used to make Ian's mittens and yesterday I wrote it up before sending it to Morag of Vintage Purls to make sure she was happy it wasn't infringing on her Bug Out sock pattern at all (those socks inspired the original mittens).   She replied that she was happy with it so now it's up!   It's free, but the only test-knitter was me so there is a possibility of errors in there which I will fix immediately I'm made aware of them.
These are the 3 mittens I made in the course of testing this pattern.

 The Bug Out mittens (chart is Morag's, go buy her pattern, it's wonderful)

George's Skull and Crossbone mittens; charts are included for this one.

Ian's Squirrel Mittens which he adores!  Chart not included as it's not mine.  
If you knit it up let me know what you think; I put a fair bit of work into these and as far as I can find the way I've done it is unique.

Patchwork Prism QAL got a bit further today; I've done the layout, pinned things together and taken a reference photo and yesterday I ordered the backing fabric which is going to be flannel to make for a nice snuggly lounge quilt.

I'm loving it, it's mostly from stash, though I had to buy some more brown and green as I have very little of either in my stash.   I'm hoping to get started on the sewing later this weekend, but I do have some other things to do too.

I had a request from one reader for a closer shot of the necklace I wore last week, so here it is.

100% silk handspun and Navajo plied then knit into this lovely necklace.  Probably my favourite piece at this time of year.

As some of you probably know I'm a gamer as well as a crafter and at the moment I'm playing Assassins Creed Revelations on the Xbox.    I'm really enjoying it; I'm looking forward to the third one due out in October.   In the meantime I'm on my second time around ACR and have just got all the books in the game which are one of the collectables.   I've still got to find quite a few data fragments yet and have about 3 buildings to buy so I'm currently avoiding my next quest in order to get money together.   Also want to turn the rest of the cities to Assassin control; got about 6 at the moment.     The main problem with it is that like the internet it's a real time suck.

I'm joining in a sock knit along, the Patchwork Sock KAL to work through some of my leftover sock yarn.  I'll be keeping a butterfly of each one for any repairs to the socks I've already knit, but here's my yarn pile

I don't need to keep bits of all of it, but the Opal, the pink and the Regia are all existing socks so I need to be able to darn them if need be.   The socks will likely be fraternal twins, but I'm looking forward them.  I cast on this afternoon in the Opal yarn; 12 rows of ribbing before a colour change.

School Camp for George is next week so an early start on Monday to get to the railway station.  It'll be his first train ride and they're going to Arthurs Pass for 2 nights.   George is really looking forward to it and I think we've got most of the stuff ready now; not sure how it's all going to fit in the one bag; the sleeping bag takes up half of it then there's clothes, blanket, towel and pillow!

On Saturday I'm spinning at Riccarton Mall with 5 ladies from my guild; I'm pretty proud of myself for this as I organised it!   My thanks to Lesley at the mall for letting us have space there, we really appreciate it.  As a result of this and getting ready for camp and Thomas having a Judo competition this weekend there won't be much time for anything in the next few days!  Luckily Mum and Dad are coming over to look after the boys while I'm spinning.

Unfortunately this will also affect tidying for the carpet going down, luckily we still have a couple of weekends after this one to get organised; we're going to need it.   I have started on the sewing room, Bernie is back in her box and any sewing I do in the next couple of weeks will be using Ellie instead as she's much more portable and I can use her in the dining room.   I need to clear the desk, table and 2 chests of drawers.   Luckily though the bookcase is wall mounted so everything on that can stay put.