Yarnalong: Button-tab Mittens & Simplicity

Joining Ginny today at Small Things blog for Yarnalong:

Knitting: I finished these sweet button-tab mittens this week and posted them in my Etsy shop this morning. I used Paton's Classic Wool Worsted in Aran on 4mm needles.

The button is the result of me saying to my husband "Do you think you could make me a couple of buttons for some mittens I'd like to knit?" He dug out an olive-wood pen blank he had laying around and quick as a wink it was cut to size, made round and coated in carnauba wax. They are perfect and I love them.

While I was outside taking photos of mittens I took these two pictures of the untouched snow in our backyard and my frozen sage.

Reading: Still working my way through Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne. It inspired me to do some major purging of toys, kids books and The Em-ster's room. Her room looks and feels so much more peaceful and inviting now and so does our family room with all that STUFF gone. We don't buy much during the year for our kids but somehow the house fills up with books, bits of paper, pencil crayons and markers and clothes. It's overwhelming for me to look at, I can only imagine what goes on in my kids' brains when confronted with all these choices and the clean-up afterwards. I'm onto the chapter entitled "Rhythms". We're pretty good at keeping a consistent routine but I'm interested to see what he has to say on that subject.
What are you knitting and reading?