I finished knitting those big mittens this evening. It started going very quickly, partly because I’m getting more effective at continental style knitting.
While I like the idea of two tubes (socks, sleeves, or mittens) on two circular needles, I think I’m faster with double-pointed needles, at least for fair isle stuff. With four strands of yarn coming off the needles, it takes me lots more time to get set up for the next half a round on circs. There’s just too much to untangle and there are two many ways to get the yarn stuck between needles in an inefficient place. With DPs I can keep the yarn on my fingertips while passing the freed needle over to the other hand for the next segment of the round. Even though there are lots more needle changes, each one takes less than half as long as with two circs.
Here’s where I was on November 20 — 
— and here are the all-knit mittens — 
You’ll notice some differences in the pattern between the thumbs and the palms, and between the palms and cuffs. I’m keeping ’em anyway. Also, notice that I’m following Anna Zilboorg’s approach to pairs of mittens — don’t worry about making the mittens of a pair identical mirror images, just tell the world they’re a pair, and they’ll be a pair.
Also from Zilboorg (the mittens are from, sort of, Magnificent Mittens; this is from Knitting for Anarchists) comes the idea for continental style purling carrying the yarn around the needle in the opposite direction from usual (because it’s really hard to purl with the yarn coming in the normal direction) and undoing the twisted stitches by purling the next row into the back loop. It’s easy and quick and seems to work fine.