Before I got sidetracked by that Christmas tag last night, I had some actual knitting progress to report. The sweater for Maranda’s baby still needs the ends woven in – I’m saving that for when I knit with Jeanne on Wednesday night. Sorry, Jeanne! I just can’t read and weave in ends – but I can usually talk and weave in ends. Not always, but usually. Sometimes the talking is restricted to cursing, but hey – it’s still talking. Right?

I also decided on the spur of the moment to knit my sister-in-law some felted mittens for Christmas. The present previously intended for Christmas will now be for her birthday in March. Unless, of course, the felted mittens don’t turn out.

Since knitting the mittens with some of the black or grey feltable yarn from my stash wouldn’t have been half as much fun as knitting the mittens with brand new yarn, I picked up some black and grey Lopi at the new knitting store in Coon Rapids, All About Yarn. If you want to be boggled, just check out this list of yarn stores in our Twin Cities metro area. Yup, you counted right – 27. How can a metropolitan area of 2 million people support 27 yarn stores, plus innumerable Michaels and Jo-Anns as well?? But I digress… no surprise.

Sunday morning I cast on the first mitten and made pretty good progress. Since I know you’re all wondering how to point out its ugliness in a tasteful fashion, yes, yes, the mitten should be much less ugly after it has been felted. The funky spiraling should smooth out a bit and be kind of interesting.

(The pattern is from a knitting class I took in 2001 – I learned how to knit on dpns in that class.) Anyway, by late afternoon I was tired of the mittens, so I started to make wine charms. These will be Christmas presents for my stepmom and for my brother and sister-in-law.

I’ve never done any beading before. Dang, those beaders are some patient people! I was cussing up a storm, and a tiny amount of blood was shed. (I’d like to claim that I’ve never shed blood while knitting, but alas… I have.) Blurry results of 2.5 hours hard labor below.

My crappy digital camera is driving me insane! Usually the only part of the photo that’s in focus is the upper left corner. Strangely, the upper left corner tends not to be where the auto focus was pointed. Any of you knit bloggers who have nice point-and-shoot digital cameras (with optical zoom) – I would love recommendations at this point.

Probably anyone reading this would love for me to get recommendations, too.

And here’s today’s gratuitous cat picture: