Laceweight update day ? and designing thoughts

I updated my Ravelry page today with some new project photos. Among them, are Steph's mitts, which I cast on for last night. I hope she likes the design, bc it's a really cool construction and I don't often get the chance to do something different on DPNs besides boring stockinette and stuff.

The pattern is the Nautilus Mitts. They are worked by casting on 6 stitches and increasing. Then, doing the same for the palm of the mitten, stitching them together, and working a garter edging for the top and bottom. Cool.
This is also my first time using a linen blend yarn. It's 50/50 cotton and it feels really cool. I expected it to be stiffer, but its quite smooth. I think it'll feel nice on her hands. Also, the yarn is totally cool (in the literal sense) so it won't be awkward to wear them during the summer. Hopefully, I can finish these puppies up today or so. Shouldn't take long. Speaking of which though, Zindrizzle, email me your address so I can get them out to you.

Laceweight Progress:

I've been working off and on between this, Devin's socks (one of which is blocking and appears to have grown to a normal human size), Steph's mitts, and the scarf design of Andrew and I.

As you can see, the laceweight is huge for laceweight. I mean, we're talking about someone who has never got past 4 rows of laceweight previously. For the life of me I can't get a camera to accurately represent the color of this yarn. Suffice it to say it's greener than it looks above. I'd call it mint or something, but Water Green works I guess. I'm almost done with the increase, then I'll probably do the sleeves (on 9" circulars!!!) as per some ravelers' suggestions, because then I can make the body as long as I feel like without worrying about the sleeves being too short. (Also, I'm semi opposed to knitting sleeves with a full sweater on the needles--too heavy.)

Finally, here's my designing so far:
It basically looks like a sloppy, sloppy mess. Way too many stitches for the thickness of the yarn. However, I just got to the decrease section of the pattern, so I'm hoping this means that I can still see whether or not my planned decreases will give me the desired effect. The chart appears to be working well with the mirrored instructions I gave for it. However, once I finish this swatch, I can tell that seaming up the bottom is going to make it way too thick. Therefore, assuming I get the decreases/increases to work, if I actually submit this pattern as a design, I'm definitely going to consider doing it in fingering or sport yarn. That should be interesting, because I rarely see fair-isle patterns at that small of a gauge, especially for scarves. I've already discovered some problems with the stitch count, so if either of you want to swatch along with me, let me know and I'll tell you what needs changed.