Almost finishing and a little more finishing!

This is just the coolest mitten! Long ago I started the mittens made of Northern Lights Roving in Interweave Felt magazine. I finished one of them tonight (minus the fulling) and it is just the neatest thing! I love the way the unspun fiber worked up.
As I was knitting I thought how nice it would be to have a whole sweater made this way! The un-fun part is predrafting the fiber and rolling it into a usable ball. But once you start knitting, remembering to pull out a good length of fiber to prevent yanking on it and ending up with a fluffy end in your hand, it is really not much different than knitting with regular yarn. I am really excited about my mitten--hopefully this will carry over into getting the 2nd one knit soon.

Also, along the lines of finishing UFO's of 2007, I finished the knitting part of a Moebius basket that I started in June at TNNA in a workshop with Cat Bordhi. The workshop was great and mind blowing and learning from Cat Bordhi was delightful. But I learned the fun stuff that day and only had the regular old circular knitting left to finish the base of the basket. So it had been living in my entrelac bag since June awaiting a burst of motivation. Drawing the year to a close with less unfinished business was just the ticket. I transferred the stitches to a 16" circular instead of the 47" needle that was necessary for the moebius part of the basket. I have determined that I really am not crazy about Magic Loop (or Herniated Loop, ala Cat Bordhi). It felt ungainly to me. Once on the shorter needle it was just a matter of going around and around. Now I just need to get myself to a top loader--I don't trust my front loader with this one. I don't want it to end up permanently creased. It's going to be a very cool basket--I want to make sure the felting works right.


AND the Gianna Bag is officially done!
Sewing in a lining reminded me why I don't sew often. But I do think the bag is much more useful with a lining and with practice I suppose I could improve my sewing skills too. The crochet part was really easy, even for me, and I really don't know much about crochet at all. I completed the whole thing in one evening. Everything needed to crochet the bag, including the pattern and handles, comes in the kit. The lining was my idea and I loosely used the ideas at Hello Knitty to help me with it.