Year of the Mitten
I guess most knitters have seen the site documenting the fantastic mittens produced by Latvian knitters and given to the NATO attendees in Latvia this past November. For some reason, this seemed something incredibly wonderful and hopeful to me - partially because of the significance of mittens in the Latvian wedding ceremony (does this make for a marriage of nations, or am I just wishing for some symbolism here?), and perhaps partially because it all surfaced as my Christmas knitting was searching for a collection of quickly finished gifts. So, yuppa, you guessed, this became the Year of the Mitten for me. (I'm still working on mittens for yours truly and hope to complete a few more sets before the novelty is completely gone.)

So far, only one set of these is stranded at all, but, again in the Latvian spirit, they're all different and all original. Pix follow, and I'll post patterns one by one as soon as I get them gussied up.