The Rainbow Blindingly-Bright Wallaby

Now that I'm focussing on some of my works in progress that have been languishing in my yarn stash, I'm actually making some headway. I finished Mom's Eleonora Shrug last week and have moved right along to M's Wallaby.

I was checking out yarn on KnitPicks a long, long time ago. I came across a rainbow self-striping yarn called Chroma Worsted in the colourway Lollipop. They have the same colour in a fingering weight as well but I had already picked out a few skeins of Felici Fingering weight yarn in Rainbow, so I didn't want two different sock yarns in similar colourways - apparently I have a slight addiction to self-striping yarn. I came across the Wonderful Wallaby pattern on Ravelry and decided that the yarn would be a great match for the pattern. I wanted to break up the stripes a bit so I decided to pair the Chroma with KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in Bare. Several helpful people on Ravelry said that it would pair well together because the weight was similar. I also liked that it was about a third the price of the Chroma, making my Wallaby a lot less expensive.

I ordered the yarn and waited. And waited, and waited, and waited. It turns out that it can take a long time to get a yarn shipment from the US into Canada. I think that it was almost a month before I received my box in the mail. My poor husband had to put up with me racing to the door everyday for a month. He had some good eye rolls going by the end of that month.

I originally cast on for a size 2 but decided to frog it and cast on again for a size 4. I wanted to my daughter to be able to wear the sweater for a while, and given my track record, I knew it could take a while for me to finish it. So, besides some minor mistakes I made from knitting when I was too tired, the project sped right along. I finished knitting a few nights ago, used the kitchener stitch to finish the hood and one of the underarms and held it up to admire my handiwork.

That was when I noticed that the opening for the neck (called the placket) and the pocket on the front of the sweater weren't lined up right. In fact, it was really off, by about an inch. The sweater is small and there isn't a lot of distance between the placket and the pocket, so it was really noticeable (at least to me). My husband could tell when I pointed it out, but said that I was a crazy person and should just leave it alone. The problem is that I had spent so much time and energy on the sweater that I knew that it would drive me nuts every time I saw it. I thought about how to fix it and couldn't think of a way besides ripping out the whole sweater. 

I posted on Ravelry, asking for help. Within two hours I had many different, very creative responses. Some people said it probably wasn't as noticeable as I thought and that I should just leave it. Some suggested that I embellish the sweater so that it looked intentional (this is when I realized I should post a picture - the sweater is already a little eye-searing). A few others suggested ways that I could rip out the pocket while saving the sweater, and reattach the pocket. I was not looking forward to another long slog of work on the sweater, especially when I had already thought it was finished. 

Last night I set the sweater out and looked at it. Frustrating. I tried to be creative to see if there was a way around fixing the pocket. I even looked at the placket, thinking that if it was moved a little, then the middle of both would line up. Obviously, though, you can't move the placket.

Except, I realized that I could. The placket is split in two and gapes open quite a bit. I figured out that I could take a button and attach it to the placket, so that it held the two edges together. I tried to place it a little higher up from the original split so that the front doesn't pucker so much. Not a perfect fix, but definitely better and now it's something I can live with.

The best part? She actually wants to wear the sweater. I'm still in shock.