knitting rut

well, i feel like a schmuck, having decided that blogging was a cool thing to do and we should all participate...and then not posting in, err...months? 

i've hit a knitting rut, which was brought on by the second mitten syndrome.  i'm making convertible glove/mittens for my mother (promised to her a year ago)...i finished the first one and cannot bring myself to go beyond the cuff of the second one (fingers are terrible i've decided).  i don't have any other serious knitting projects (what?!)...but i finished the following: two hats (one ear flap! pattern found here, although i had to alter it because i was using a thinner yarn), a long skinny scarf, an almost completed mug cozy, and a christmas stocking.  i finished those projects in about a week (except the stocking), then started the mittens.  after completing that first one, i probably haven't knit in at least 1.5 weeks.  what?

now, i'm headed off to mexico on wednesday.  and as i do before each trip, i wonder what i'm going to take with me to knit on the plane and during layovers.  i will have two trips at least to california after that, so i need something for those, but they're far enough away i haven't given much thought to what to take.  so, since i have this beautiful yarn for a shawl and a pattern in mind for it (picked the pattern, then the yarn, like a good little knitter), i figured, why not just pick up the pattern and take that, since lace is light and not too warm in mexico.  of course, i only decided to do this yesterday, less than a week before i'm scheduled to leave.  and of course, my local knittery didn't have it in stock, fiddlesticks knitting is in canada and can't get the pattern her fast enough, and no other store (NONE) within about an hour of my house carry the pattern either!  so of course, after waiting for my frustrating to dissipate (many hours), i decided to look for new projects and decided on a blanket, made in pieces so i could carry only small portions at a time...i was looking at ravelry for patterns and found this.  i like the first picture, and not the second.  i like both the color combinations and the stripes.  i thought about manually creating stripes by using many different balls of yarn, but threw out that idea after realizing how many many many ends i'd (shreya'd?) have to crochet in.  so now i'm thinking about self striping or hand painted yarns.  anyone have any suggestions?  hopefully something i can purchase relatively inexpensively in the next few days before i head off.

hoping this will break me free of my rut.