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This is not the post I was intending to make this weekend. I had planned to ramble a little about my new bus project (which I'm very much enjoying) or maybe, just maybe, to be feeling triumphal about finishing Winterthorn 3. As it turns out, the poor hat hasn't moved in over a week.

My weekend began with below-zero DIY with my parents. Recommended dress code for below-zero DIY is: Socks, slippers (knitted), walking boots, jeans, long sleeved top, roll-neck jumper, multi-purpose cowl-thing, hoodie, hats × 2, gloves (fingers), gloves (fingerless) and big jacket with built-in fleece. Not exactly attractive but very warm.

After my parents rescued me from bits of my house getting detached by coastal winds, they popped into the local garden centre where they found a new bird feeder and an unexpected wool shop. By this point it was not only snowing but the snow was beginning to settle on the ground but there was no way I was going to miss out on a new source of yarn only three minutes from my house!

There are a lot of things I like about where I live and I can't really complain about a town that has four different shops that sell wool, at least not justifiably. Unfortunately they all cater to a certain type of knitter. Perhaps because Burnham is pretty much a retirement community, Rico CanCan is about as ground-breaking as you're likely to get.

Well, things have changed now! Once I got to the garden centre (through crunchy snow!) I found Manos del Uruguay, Debbie Bliss, Lousia Harding, Rowan, Rico (more than CanCan!) and many other brands that I've long wished I didn't have to drive to Bristol for. The shop is being run from December to March by http://www.andeeknits.co.uk/ and, if there's a suitable space, they may move out of the glorified tent they're in now and move into the larger (and warmer) main building.

I tried to keep in mind my recent splurges on http://www.nimuyarns.co.uk/ and at Get Knitted so I was very restrained and bought a single skein of Manos Wool Clasica in a fabulous riot of rich colours and some interesting super-fine mohair from Italy that I've never come across before.  I'm planning to keep the mohair for my Chiminea pattern and try knitting it with two strands together. If that works then it should also work with Rowan kidsilk haze.

So. The mohair was sorted but what to do with the Manos clasica? I'd dithered a lot about exactly which Manos to buy and I almost fell for some stunning cranberry-coloured laceweight but I've been doing so much 4 ply lately that something in my brain snapped and demanded some substantial big, fat wool.

Although it's listed on Ravelry as aran I'm certain it must be chunky. It's single ply, rather thick-and-thin, 100% wool and utterly lovely.

There's something about Manos del Uruguay - probably seeing the hand-written name of the woman that dyed this beautiful masterpiece - that demands you do something special with this yarn. You owe it to them to make something worthy of it, something that you're really proud of.

So. Something beautiful. Something I'll actually wear/use. Something a bit different. And something I can make with one skein. I'll be honest, I truly expected this to sit in my spare room for several months until I found something on Ravelry that felt right.

My normal knitting process goes something like:

1. Buy beautiful yarn
2. Come up with a plan
3. Test to see if plan works
4. Knit it

Normally there's an extremely long gap between one and two. Steps two and three get repeated a LOT. But for some reason the Wool Clasica hotwired my brain and I went from one to four, via two and three, in about half an hour.

By the time I got home I was pretty sure it was going to be a little scarf. It's been cold in the office a lot lately and I feel like an idiot wandering round in a full-size scarf. Plus, being nearly chunky, it would knit up quickly. But that means nothing complex so how could I make it interesting? Edgings have been in my brain a lot lately and there's something I want to try that has involved stripping out the tiny mini pom-poms out of some Sirdar Snowdrop but that's another story.

I was thinking about fringes for a while but I only had the one skein and fringes can go a bit rubbish, especially if there's any risk of them felting a little with body heat.

Five minutes after I got home I was struck by an idea but I assumed it wouldn't possibly work in real life so I tested it. And it worked. It worked so very well.

It's a sort of spiral-y cast-off that I figured would go well along the cast-off edge. Though working it on every stitch looked a bit busy so I tested it on alternate stitches and I liked it even more.

All that was left was to trawl my stitch dictionaries for something that was pretty but simple enough for me to work out the repeats along with rapid increases. Plus it had to not use a huge amount of yarn as I only had 126m to work with. I tried a rather boring rib variation then something described as "Knotted Openwork". The effect is very similar to an open, latticey star stitch, something I didn't really notice until I started on the Manos.

Within half an hour I had started on the scarf and, though I had to rip it back once and accidentally stayed up to midnight, it was about 60% done by the time I went to bed. This morning I slept in late but still had it finished by midday.

I'm not sure I've ever gone from buying a random skein, to having something planned, knitting it and getting it all pinned out for blocking within 24 hours. As much as I would've liked to get a little further with my hat, I think this might have been more rewarding. I'm pretty proud of both the result and my half hour of high-velocity inspiration.