I forsee warm sweaters in my future.

Somehow my father has the magical ability to know about yarn store sales before I do. He clips the ads out of newspapers and leaves them on the keyboard of my computer where I will see them. He does the same for computer sales or anything else he thinks I am interested in purchasing at any given time. It's his way of being helpful.

So we arrived at the rock and gem club show only to find that it wasn't open yet. I had prepared for this inevitability by having $45 in my pocket - more than enough to buy some yarn for a pair of socks. I suggested that we could kill the twenty minutes petting yarn a couple blocks away.

Once there he was thoroughly impressed by the selection and gained some attention for being the only male in the store. I heard the following from his mouth, among others:

"Yarn doesn't go bad. You may as well stock up because the prices are good."

"Look at this! Isn't it soft?"

"It's made out of lama. Lama!"

"Are you sure that's enough for a project?"

"No sense in wasting your time on crappy materials. Why use acrylic when you can use alpaca?"

"What about your next project? You should be thinking three projects ahead!"

These statements are not conducive to being frugal. The end result was the picture above. Two sweater's worth and a skein of Malabrigo Lace.

"You have a card," he said, but as I made it to the till, mom slipped me his.