Mystery Quilt finished and some more knitting

Last Autumn I pieced a Mystery Quilt designed by Kaaren of The Painted Quilt. I knew immediately it was going to be a birthday gift for Mr K.'s best friend.

When I could climb the stairs again to my upstairs sewing room, I machine quilted it. At first I tried a special quilting thread, but every crossing over seam allowances caused giant loops of the needle thread on the reverse. Adjusting tensions didn't help so I changed to Essential Threads and unpicked the first attempts.

The birthday was this week so I can show the finished quilt.

I really like the simple houses but my favourite in this quilt are the Flying geese.

The 4-patch rows at the top and bottom are my own addition. I wanted to add some length without making the quilt any wider. I also chose a simple narrower border instead of the wide one of the original design.

There is some knitting I haven't shown you yet. There was this pretty pattern for fingerless mittens in French. Melanie and I wanted to try it. Melanie made a Google translation into English but it didn't make much sense, so I brushed the dust off my school French and found out what it really was about. After that I made an unofficial English translation I knew Melanie would understand, and so she did. Her bright red version is at the end of this blog post. My version is naturally a cheerful brownish beige, a very lovely alpaca yarn:

It is too cold to go out in these just yet, and they would be too warm worn on top of my leather gloves. In a few weeks maybe?

After finishing these I knitted two pairs as a custom order for a dear friend 

and her friend.

As you can see, the colours are from my palette, a deep coffee brown in merino wool and a pale beige in 50/50 alpaca/wool.

Then I used up some yarn ends and knitted these socks for a little boy.