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Really just an excuse to post cute cat pictures.

Materials: Home decorating cotton, fake fur, thread. Pattern: Kitty Tunnel from Amy Butler's In Stitches.

Time: 2 hours

Cost: $20. I can't believe that I spent real cash money on fake fur, even with a 40%-off coupon.

Our cats love nothing better than snuggling up on our duvet during the day and doggedly nosing their way under the bed covers to curl up with us at night. So, even though spending money on cat toys is never, ever a good investment (favorite toy of our cats: the empty spool from a tape dispenser), the Kitty Tunnel in Amy Butler's In Stitches looked like it would be right up our cats' alley. Why not give it a shot?

After choosing a charming dinosaur-patterned cotton for the outside from the home decorating section, we went to get a matching stretch of fake fur cut. The lady doing the cutting treated the stuff with kid gloves, and warned us against the mounts of fake fur fluff that would immediately fly off the freshly-cut ends when we worked with it. Consider yourselves warned.

The picture in the book makes the tunnel look more, well, tunnel-y than our floppy final result (see above), but it's not like that matters to our cats. The Kitty Tunnel can serve many purposes:

I sewed something wearable?!

Materials: 1-something yard of clearanced embrodered dark red twill, 7" zipper, thread. Pattern: A-line skirt from Sew What? Skirts.

Time: 4-ish hours, including lining addition

Cost: $15

This was my first real attempt to sew something wearable, so I'm understandably relieved that I succeeded. Post-quilt, I had the stunning revelation: if I can sew a quilt, I can probably sew something simple to wear. And, despite the high cost of most crafts, I know that it'll be cheaper than something equivalent from a store (owing to the simplicity of the ingredients). Stunned by this revelation and armed with a copy of the free-spirited (yet instructional) Sew What? Skirts, I raided the JoAnn fabrics near my mom's house for this remnant of embroidered red twill.

Because Sew What? teaches you to draft your own pattern using your measurements, I learned a lot from this project. A whole, whole lot. Most important among these lessons was to always make a muslin, or, in this case, a "draft" skirt using another cheap piece of fabric that I'd also snagged from the clearance section. Putting in a zipper isn't nearly as hard as everyone makes it out to be (SW's method involves glue sticks and scotch tape! It's awesome!), but my first effort still looked like unmitigated crap. Like, laughably bad. Similarly, I had to experiment with darts to get the top to fit correctly, so it really helped to have a cheap version to pin up and tear apart as I experimented.

The other thing I learned from my draft is that there's a reason why most skirts fit around your natural waist -- I first planned on having the skirt sit comfortably below my navel, but it bunched and billowed in a really unflattering way around my stomach. So, the final product fits higher. The darts aren't completely perfect, but I figure that it'd be difficult to make that happen without a dressmaker's dummy to work with, and since it's cotton I figure that it's destined to wrinkle anyway.

Then came the tragedy of the lack of slip, when I finally, finally learned the point of a lining.

So, armed with a fresh yard of Hang-Loose, I set about attaching a lining to the inside of the waistband facing. Shockingly, the end result was very functional and, as usual, not nearly as half-assed as I'd feared (though I didn't bother to sew the lining around the zipper; maybe if I get bored). Working with lining is really tricky, though, because it's designed not to stick to anything, including itself. Sliding around during the cutting-out process resulted in a wonky approximation of the skirt shape, but if it stops the skirt from sticking to my tights, I'll be a happy camper. Plus, it's made me appreciate working with plain ol' cotton even more.

While looking through the new Knitty today, I realized that I hadn't seen the last issue's surprise patterns. I don't actually knit stuff from Knitty much -- it's my favorite online magazine, but I'm very picky, and very slow at finishing patterns. Imagine my surprise, then, to see that one of them was a very warm-looking (but not bulky) thermal sweater with a total whopping yarn cost of $28! I'm so there. Eventually. (Except for the tiny buttons on the front. I hate tiny buttons.)

... totally awesome.

Materials: 8 skeins Blue Sky Alpaca & Silk in I34, Iron. Sizes 2 & 3 circs & DPNs. Pattern: the Somewhat Cowl.

Time: Eight months of very, very intermittent knitting. (See needle size, above.)

Cost: None! Because there is seriously no better way of spending your birthday money than on some great yarn.

I'd been eyeing Knit & Tonic's Somewhat Cowl for some time after I started seeing them pop up on various blogs online. No matter how great a pattern might seem to be, I wait for the true test: photos from field knitters submitted to the knitting forums on Craftster. I liked the Somewhat Cowls that I saw -- it seemed like a good pattern for someone like me, who visually gains 10 pounds in sweaters without waist shaping. I'm also a sucker for a cowl neck. All signs looked good, except for my search for a cheaper yarn.

I knew that the yarn for this sweater -- for me, anyway -- ought to be something other than standard-issue utilitarian wool, as it a) needs to drape nicely and b) feel soft soft soft against the skin (again: close-fitting!). Enter some birthday money from my parents. After some deliberation, I figured that expensive yarn was just the thing to spend it on -- after all, it's a gift that I'd likely be enjoying during the next full year, since it takes me forever to get through a sweater while I'm in school. The Alpaca & Silk that I bought from Webs was worth every penny -- soft, has a great sheen to it, and a dream to work with. Plus, after the volume discount, it didn't cost as much as I'd feared. The only thing that caught me off-guard is that, since I'm apparently such a loosey-goosey knitter, I had to go down three whole needle sizes to get gauge. But it turns out that Alpaca & Silk can practically be knit on any damn size needle you please, and look pretty great all the same. Crisis averted.

Because I was working on such teeny-tiny needles, it took me a really long time to complete. The torso went quickly, but the sleeves and particularly the neck took some time. However, it made for perfect TiVo/movie knitting: around and around and around in straight stockinette or 2x2 rib. No complaints here.

The end result fits like a glove around my torso, which I'd like to credit to careful swatching but is just as much good luck. (I haven't blocked it yet, either, which could change things eventually.) Preliminary online research revealed complaints about extra room under the arms, so I used these two mods (one, two) with great success. I also added some extra decreases along the upper arms, because they seemed unusually baggy. The result is nicely loose, but not too much so. I was initially going to make the sweater with long sleeves, but decided that 3/4-length would work just as well considering that I always have my sleeves pushed above my elbows when at all possible. (This saved me yarn, too; I was concerned that the super-small needle size would mean that I'd run lower than expected.) I lengthened the collar to make it a little more cowl-y, which I think resulted in extra wrinkling around the shoulder. I don't care, though, because I think that the sweater's awesome.