I started a new pair of mittens.

I still have a hankering for some more cables so these will have a swirl of cables going up the front. I used the same stitch counts as I did for my Ambroso mittens since they fit well. You can see the start of the thumb gusset and I plan to make a flip top so I can easily use my phone without freezing my hand off. It's the little things.

I’m using Cascade 220 Quatro in Lupin Twist. I’ve wanted to use this colorway for a long time but was worried the four colors would be too busy for a garment. But it will be perfect for mittens! And the colors seem to meld together when knitted and almost look gradiated. Really pretty!

One small issue with the yarn - it's coming out of the yarn cake twisted so it's getting caught up on itself. Every now and then I need to hold up the WIP and allow the yarn to untwist. I'm not sure there's anything I can do about it, right? I think it means the yarn is slightly overplied. I don't notice anything once it's knitted though - it might be a problem with a garment though.

Oh, and let me know if you’re interested in the mittens. I’m keeping notes so I can make the second mitten and if there’s enough interest I’ll post a free pattern for them.

And before we go, here are a few things that caught my eye this week:

• This cabled blanket is amazing It almost makes me want to knit another blanket. Almost.
• The new Knitscene is out! View the preview here or browse on Ravelry. Like many of the spring Knitscenes, this issue showcases a mix of warm and cool weather projects - short sleeve pullovers, vests and a shawl as well as mitts, mittens, hats and a cowl. Mercedes Tarasovich-Clark is the featured designer. I really like her Beulah cardigan with its embroidery detail. I’ve been drawn to embroidery on knitting lately but this is the first one I’ve liked on a garment.
• I just came across Twisted Fiber Art yarns. Wow! Meg dyes self-striping and gradiated yarns (she calls the Evolution). She has mostly fingering, DK and light figering - great for socks and shawls. Several of her yarns have nylon in them - great for durable socks - and she also has the popular MCN (Merino Cashmere Nylon) blend too. Oh and she also offers mini skeins for coordinating heels and toes or small amounts of two color knitting. I will *definitely* be buying some as soon as I finish up a couple pairs of socks. I will NOT increase my stash this year. I will NOT increase my stash this year.

I CO for my Nuvem last Saturday. I knit on it during my commute all week and wasn’t sure about it. I had a hard time keeping everything together on the train – a combo of fine yarn and stitch markers – and was considering frogging it. It was so bad that I chose not to knit at least twice this week. Yeah - that bad. With the amount of stockinette this needs to be a commuting project. There’s no way 1,300 yards of laceweight stockinette would keep my attention otherwise.

Before I frogged though I decided to give a different pair of needles a try and swapped from Knit Picks to Addi Lace. What a difference! The join is smoother and the needle has a bit more grab to it. While I won’t know for sure until my commute tomorrow I think this will be a winner. And good thing because so far I’m loving the colors and the lightweight hand. I’ve knit almost 5% of the ball so I think this is likely a year+ project.

Can you believe this is 5%? It looks like nothing. I guess laceweight projects are always that way - even if you're not knitting lace.

New Blog Feature

I love how Andi ends many of her posts with links to things she discovered this week and I’m going to give it a try too.

Here are a few things I loved this week

• brittg’s arabesques pullover is half garment and half art. I’d love to do just the sleeves on a top
• Berroco released their spring 2012 booklets and they're downloadable too. I haven’t come across anything I love yet but like many pattern books I suspect I’ll discover several after FOs pop up on Ravelry
• Garnstudio announced their Spring/Summer 2012 patterns and are posting the pattern over time. There are only a few up there right now but all the pics are there. They liberally featured garter stitch yokes and mesh in garments and have a mix of accessories too – shawls, scarves and even some socks.

Happy new year!

I toyed with the idea of doing a big retrospective, but truthfully I didn't do all that much crafty in 2011. We did A TON of work on our house and that took a good 6-9 months of concentrated effort. So I ended 2011 in a good place - a house with no active renovation projects and a smaller stash because I sold quite a bit of the yarn I didn't want to use.

For 2012 I do have a few simple goals.

• Continue with weight loss. I increased last year's goal to 15 pounds and I only got to 7. I struggled for a while with this but I need to remember - I'm still 7 pounds less than I was a year ago, and slow weight loss stays off. I'm going to reset my yearly goal to 10.
• Always have a commuting-friendly project OTN.
• Shop my stash first, but don't make it a chore. If I have a great idea and the stash can't support it, allow myself to buy without the guilt.
• Continue working on weeknight meals. I still need to find my groove with that.
• Figure out how to make sewing more a part of my weekly crafting. I have a hard time working sewing into my life. Knitting is just so portable and stop and go, but sewing is so instant gratification. I need to find the sweet spot for sewing.

And lest you think this is all about things I want to do in 2012, here's my first FO of the year - Lintilla!

I love this project - the simplicity and cleverness of the pattern, the easy knitting of garter combined with the little ruffles and the ease of stopping and starting at any point (I put this project down for over a month and picked it back up without a problem).

My only regret is that it's a bit smaller than I'd like, but that's not a surprise. The original was knit in Wollmeise (575 yards per skein) and I knit mine out of Miss Babs Yummy (400 yards per skein).

One thing I like about many of Martina Behm's shawl and scarf patterns is that she writes them not in terms of number of rows or inches, but rather percentage of the entire skein. So, regardless of your yardage you can create the entire shape of the shawl and use up almost your entire skein.

My scarf used up 90% of the skein, so I had 40 yards left over. I don't think I would have been able to get another full repeat in though - those final rows were using approx 5 grams for each set of rows.

And now that I'm done with one Martina project I'm going to get started right away on another - Nuvem. It's a very different shape fromLintilla but has the same

percentage directions so I can use up most of my yarn. I'm going to make mine in Creatively Dyed Waterfalls - a handdyed heavy laceweight of purples with a bit of pink and white. It coordinates with about 70% of my wardrobe so I can envision using it as a scarf or a wrap around the office. 1,300 yards will definitely be longer term so I don't expect to finish this until next fall/winter.