Ooh, Shiny!!!

Meet the new baby in our driveway, my husband's brand new 2009 VW Jetta TDI. The TDI officially stands for "Turbo Diesel Injection", but I've decided it actually means "Tremendous Dollar Investment." It was time, though; the car he's been driving (a 1990 Geo Prizm we bought used from a neighbor) has over 200,000 miles on it and has been falling apart, bit by bit. To soften the pain of the price, we will be getting a good-sized tax credit for buying it, and a nice tax deduction for donating the Prizm to charity.

In knitting news, there are now 15 pairs of mittnz completed, and I've started on the 16th pair. I'm thinking I'll go ahead and finish 18 pair before I quit, so that shouldn't take too much longer. Then maybe there will actually be knitting for something for me! Well, probably not; I really need to get started on Christmas presents. There's only a little more than five stitching months left, after all!

MITTNZ 2009...I'm on a roll!

As soon as I heard that Mittnz 2009 had begun, I cast on for my first pair. Naturally, since I'm easily bored, I used a variety of patterns as well as lots of different yarns (all from stash, of course!) to make these nine pair. The two pair at top left are crocheted from this great pattern, and the pair at bottom left are from the adult version of the pattern, in the single crochet style. The teal pair at top right and the teal and variegated pair second from left on the bottom row were knit from the basic mitten pattern in Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns. The rest were knit using Kate Gilbert's Gifted mitten pattern, which has become my new most favorite mitten pattern. I've done some tweaking of the pattern (the instructions are only guidelines, right?) with just about every pair, until it's just darn near perfect (for me, anyway!). As a matter of fact, I like this pattern so much that I've continued making mittens, even though the official goal for Mittnz 2009 is just the nine pair.

Now, admittedly, the pair on the right in this second picture is NOT from this pattern, but a girl has to try something new now and then, right? That pair is actually an adaptation of a pattern in Knitting New Mittens and Gloves by Robin Melanson. But I'm back to the "Gifted" mittens pattern on the pair I'm knitting now. I wonder how many pair of mittens I can make before I go totally bonkers? Hmmm....