Mini-Clap Cowl

Toby says, "Yarn?!?"

(Actually, Toby says "Ball?!?" but this isn't about my fetching kitty)

I'm finding myself in a bit of a knitting slump these days. I have plenty to knit (do not get me wrong. I have a-plenty to knit), I just don't know what. Nothing has really been really catching my attention. I have a pair of Garden Gate socks that needs finishing, but the colorwork is keeping me from casting on the second sock and I believe when I counted the other day, I had enough sock yarn (i.e. whole, complete skeins -- forget about all the scraps a moment) to knit seven or eight pairs of socks!

So the question is, "What to knit?" or "What to knit until my motivation for colorwork comes back?"

A mini-Clapotis!
(And yes, a mini Clapotis is the length of a regular sized ironing board)

If anyone has followed and/or read this blog for long enough, you will note that the Clapotis was my first "big" project back when I re-started knitting. It took me a lot of time and a crap-ton of yarn. But I was so proud of it and I've worn it every bitterly cold day since I knit it back in 2006.

My mini-version, however, was just something for me to knit in order to use up a couple of (absolutely beautiful) skeins of Manos Silk blend. I bought the yarn a couple years ago at City Knitting during a sale of some sort. Since I only had 2 skeins, it really wasn't enough for anything super substantial and the variegated colorway made it difficult for me to decide on a decent pattern.
(As a side-note, I hate using variegated yarns with weird color patterns and a tendency to pool unless it's plain, patternless socks)
In the end, there was only one thing I wanted to use this yarn for, and that was the Clapotis. Except, problem, the Clapotis inhales yarn. One second you have a skein of yarn, the next you look down and there's just a little tail left (and no, it's not from Toby running off with the rest of it).

Searching Ravelry, I came upon the Rule of Fifths. Essentially, you weigh your yarn and you put aside 2/5 for each end (1/5 per end) and 3/5 for the middle. Foolproof!
Afraid of running out of yarn, I didn't make the middle section quite as long as I could have. In the end, I was left with more leftover yarn than I thought I would have but no big deal. I'm happy with it and unlike my first Clapotis, this one only took me about three days.

Of course, once again I'm stuck without anything to knit...