Progress.... and new toys!

I've been sticking to my New Year's resolutions so far.  Continental knitting is not too difficult, but the gauge is an issue.  It's going to take quite a bit of practice before I get it right, I think.  Once I got comfortable with holding the yarn in my left hand, I moved on to my first stranded colorwork project, the Winter Twilight Mitts (free download from Interweave here.)

There were a couple of issues with the chart for this pattern, though.  One of the trees appeared to be floating, so I filled in the bottom of it.  Once I got to the thumb gusset of the first mitt, I realized that the charting is a bit wonky there, too.  It's charted as if the new stitches are added at the far left of the chart, rather than at the beginning of the gusset, so the pattern isn't lining up as it should.  I'm not the first person to notice this and found another chart for the gusset here.  It's too late for this pair because I was stubborn and didn't want to frog back and redo the gusset, but I will definitely be making another pair soon. 
I'm using Mini Mochi in Purple Dawn on this pair combined with KnitPicks Stroll.  I am in LOVE with the color gradation of the Mini Mochi in combination with the mitts pattern, but I'm not loving the yarn itself.  It's just a single so there isn't a whole lot of strength to it, and it's a bit fuzzier than I would like, plus it's splitty. 

KnitPicks to the rescue!  They just came out with a new line of yarn, Chroma.  I couldn't resist, so I got these:

I think the purple/blue/gray one will look really nice with this pattern.  Whether I like the yarn remains to be seen. 

Since I couldn't possibly order from KnitPicks without buying enough for the free shipping, I also got some new toys:

I won't be bored anytime soon!  :)