No, I haven’t been bitten by any vampires lately. Just the Bella’s Mitten bug.
It would be an understatement to say that I am in love with this pattern; it’s beyond that–I’m absolutely SMITTEN with these mittens. I had forgotten that I wanted to make a pair of these when I first saw someone had written up a pattern for the mittens Bella Swan (actor Kristen Stewart) wears in the movie “Twilight.” After going to a special double-feature of “Twilight” and “New Moon” the night the second one opened, I came out of the theater as a woman on a mission to get herself a pair of these dang cute mittens. I mean, how could I survive this absolutely frigid Arizona winter coldspell we’ve been having without a pair of these (that would be a high of 57 and a low of 35…frigid, I tell you, frigid).

Alas, since I’ve started furiously knitting this pattern, I have yet to make a pair for myself. But I’m okay with that because the pairs I am making are going to worthy recipients. The first pair were a birthday gift, which I converted to fingerless gloves, since my friend works in an office and has been able to get much use out of them while still being able to perform her job. The second pair, which remained full mittens, are in the possession of my sister. I’ll have to wrangle them back from her in order to get a picture. And I have to make three more pairs before I make a pair for myself. Actually, make that two for myself because I’m doing a version of mittens and a version of fingerless.
I don’t know what it is about the horseshoe cable, but I’m just smitten over it, probably because it just makes me feel so clever. Most of the time working stitches out of order can be problematic, but in the case of cables, beautiful, and in the case of horseshoe cable, which has two mirrored cables back-to-back, brilliant.

Ah, I love when knitting makes me feel clever.