It's been so long since I've joined Ginny for a yarn along! Honestly, I've been avoiding knitting because I've been sort of dreading that colorwork sweater that I've been working on for Indy, and I have a really hard time working on more than one project at a time. Fortunately I've made some good progress on that and it's really coming along (I know I'll be so glad I did it when it's finally done), and I've given myself permission to cast on with some other things that are quicker and more enjoyable. The cold weather helps with the knitting spirit too, of course. 

These mittens were for my dear friend Maggie, in return for the beautiful letter-work she did for the Tibault and Toad logo several months ago. I was able to get them done just in time to give them to her while she was visiting home around Thanksgiving. It's the Laurelhurst pattern, knit with Fishermen's Wool as the main color and Stonehedge Shepherd's Wool as the contrast, lined with some thrifted pink cashmere because who likes the wind biting through their mittens? Raveled here. 

I haven't joined Ginny for her Yarn Along for several weeks now. Truth be told, I've only been working on this project for Indy in small spurts. Usually I'm eager to work on a project during every free moment (or while bouncing a baby on my back in a not so free moment), but being my first major stranded knitting project, and it also being my first fingering weight project, the going is rather slow and not so confident and therefore not as satisfying as a simple something or other in worsted yarn (it doesn't help that I just cannot get the hang of continental knitting so I'm picking and dropping the yarn each time I switch colors instead of holding in each hand). I realized after getting about this far that I really should have done the pattern in DK or worsted and knit the chart exactly, instead of sticking to the fingering weight it called for and multiplying the pattern to make it big enough to fit Indy. But I'm at my own personal point of no return, and I'm not really the type who can put something aside and work on something else for a while, so I'll continue to trudge through this until it's done. Anyways, by the time I'm done I'm sure I'll be awfully good at colorwork and satisfied with such an intensive project.

I've also been squeezing in a few pages here and there of Folks, this ain't normal by Joel Salatin (the owner of Polyface Farm, and a self-described "Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer"). He's really my sustainable farmer hero, and if you've ever listened to him give a talk (check YouTube), I promise you will hear his voice in your head the entire time you're reading, which I thoroughly enjoy. He addresses everything from the myth of vegetarianism to how he encouraged such an entrepreneurial spirit in his children that they each had $20,000 in the bank by their 20th birthdays, as well as all of the ecological, social, and political implications of our abnormal world and how to restore things to historic normalcy. I won't tell you any more. Read it, you'll like it. You'll chuckle a lot.