Quick Mittens in Summer

I'm chipping away more and more on Christmas knitting early this year, so it's not a crazy rush-induced panic come November when I look at my queue and realize I forgot to knit something for three different people.  One of my projects is the Chrysanthemum Mittens- a pair of fair isle mittens for a family member.  Normally I wouldn't knit fair isle mittens in the middle of the summer (it just feels wrong...) but the last pair of fair isle mittens I knit took way more time than I thought, so I wanted to start these early.
Turns out I really didn't have much to worry about.  I was here on Friday morning:

I was here after my shift on Sunday:

and then last night, Scott and I popped in National Treasure, allowing me to get here:

These mittens are absolutely flying off the needles!  I attribute a large part of that to things being slow at my job on Saturday and Sunday, allowing me a lot of time to knit.  I'm working a couple of other shifts this week that will (hopefully) let me get even further, but this bodes super well for me!
Actually, a very large part of me is pretty sure the reason I'm going so fast on these mittens is because the other Christmas knit I'm working on is exceeeeeeedingly monotonous.  Monotonous to the point that I almost want to pull it out and do something else with the yarn.  Monotonous that I only look at the project bag out of the corner of my eyes and give it looks that I normally save for misbehaving tap dancers.  Granted, I chose the project because I needed an "easy" knit going, so I have no one to answer to but myself.
Perhaps I'll knit a little more on the mitten before reevaluating the other situation...