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More vacation knitting.

Materials: 1 skein Artful Yarns Fable (85% pima cotton, 15% silk) in Little Red Riding Hood (#93) from Lakeside Fibers; circular Denise needles sizes #7 and #5. One-skein wonder pattern purchaseable online.

Time: 2 days.

Cost: $10.95

p>While buying the yarn for One-Skein Wonder #1, I was struck by a pretty skein of Artful Yarns Fable. It's the kind of yarn that I could never see myself using for a larger project, but it seemed perfect for something like the OSW: affordable in small quantities, and if it sucked, I'd only be spending a couple of days on it.

This yarn looks its best at a gauge smaller than that recommended on the label, so after a bunch of furious calculations I ended up making a larger size. Because it's such a simply-designed piece, the adjustments worked.

The only thing different about this project from the first one-skein wonder was that I had to keep a not-too-attentive eye on the yarn's tendency to split. You can see in the above photo how it's constructed from four plies of different colors, and while they combine into a fairly harmonious whole they also tend to separate. I know, it's endemic to working with cotton -- but still, I've been so pleased with these two pieces that I'd consider larger cotton projects in my future.

Finally: a use for fuzzy, chunky-weight alpaca.

Materials: 7.5 balls Baby Alpaca Brush (80% baby alpaca, 20% acrylic) in #402 (grey) from Discount Yarn Sale; circular Denise needles. Trumpet sweater pattern free online.

Time: 1 month, excluding protracted finishing time.

Cost: $45 for a bag of 10 balls.

I'd had my eye on the clean lines of the trumpet sweater pattern here for some time, but my last experiment with a bulky-weight sweater ended catastrophically. I'd also had my eye on Baby Alpaca Brush for some time, but couldn't figure out a good use for it -- until I made a mental connection between the two. Bingo.

The knitting process for this sweater was entirely uneventful, as the size of the yarn meant that it knit up really, really fast. Also, the yarn is so, so soft, warm, and lightweight; especially with the collar up, there's no way that I'm going to freeze next winter. I like the drapeyness that alpaca gives to the pattern, and I presume that it's going to stretch out a bit with some wear. I didn't bother adjusting the pattern for my size, although it's larger than what's called for -- re-blocking should do the trick.

Despite the close fit of the body (I was playing MST3K's "Tubular Boobular" as I went through these photos), the sleeves are a little loose through the upper arms. Most knit sweaters seem designed for the opposite sausage-casing look, so I'm quite fond of the extra room.

In short, it's an extremely warm winter sweater that doesn't look like most extremely warm winter sweaters.

Last-minute dress-up gear.

Last-minute dress-up gear.

Materials: 2 balls GGH Samoa (50% cotton, 50% acrylic) in blue (#56) from Lakeside Fibers; circular Denise needles (don’t remember the size). One-skein wonder pattern purchaseable online.

Time: 3 days.

Cost: $14

Approximately a day and a half before I was scheduled to leave for Fatty and Erika's wedding, I realized the pressing need for some kind of shoulder-cover. Such things are nice to have when 1) attending a wedding in a sanctuary where bare shoulders are frowned upon, or 2) attending anything in a heavily air-conditioned building while wearing a summer-weight dress. Option #2 was the case here, and because I am too cheap to buy a dress cardigan that I'd only wear once or twice a year and am also too lazy to knit one, the genius (and appropriateness) of the one-skein wonder pattern hit me full force.

With no time to waste (and another few hours before I could take a shower, thanks to a surprise lack of hot water), I jumped back on my bike and made an expedition over to Lakeside Fibers, the only yarn store in the Madison area that I'd yet to visit and by far my favorite. (Not only do they have punch cards, but they also have a $0.25-per-cup tea stash open for customer use!) What's nice about this pattern is that because it takes such a small amount of yarn, you can pretty much buy anything that'll meet gauge. As it turned out, the GGH Samoa that I chose on a whim was awesome -- I've never been a big fan of cotton, but this might turn me into a convert (relatively high price per ball notwithstanding). It's soft, bouncy, completely non-splitty, machine washable, and shows stitch definition like a mofo.

The pattern is ingeniously designed -- it's really straightforward and simple, and you completely forget what you're doing until you stitch two tiny seams and suddenly it's a wearable thing. I was able to do the bulk of the knitting during the drive to Minnesota, finish it off during one of the many reruns of CSI on in the hotel room, and wear it to the wedding. Moreover, Fatty gets mad props for taking time away from his groom-iness during the reception to ask if I'd made it myself.

I plan on wearing this around campus in early fall, as climate control in University buildings leaves much to be desired and it's hella cute. Plus, it really entertains everybody around you when you contort your arms around to try and take it off.