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The Wallaby Revisited

A couple of weeks ago my older daughter told me that she needed a new sweater and that I should knit her one. Well, okay - I can do that! She was pretty certain that it should have a hood and just to make sure I caught that, this is a picture of her playing outside pretending her too-small sweater has a hood. Crazy girl...

After giving her a few choices about what she wanted the sweater to look like (cardigan vs. pull-over, pocket styles, cables/patterning, etc) it was clear that she wanted a sweater just like the Wallaby that I just finished. I was kind of pushing for some cables or some interesting pockets or something, but she's hard to convince. It's good that I like the Wonderful Wallaby pattern because I'm doing it again now.
I'm combining two yarns to get the proper guage. The Cascade Quatro is from stash (thanks again to my MIL!) and the other is an acrylic yarn that I found at Zeller's. I have to admit that I am a yarn snob and I rarely knit with acrylic yarn. Natural fibers are much nicer to handle and the finished product looks better. And I would much rather support my LYS (local yarn shop) than Zeller's. But, my LYS here isn't all that great. Anyway, the acrylic yarn is a sport-weight and together I'm getting the right guage.
This will turn out to be a pretty warm sweater. When I showed my daughter my progress so far she said she liked it, but she didn't really like it. She's a tough critic. I wasn't surprised - it isn't pink.
Do you know about this trick? If you have a self-wound ball of yarn (not a center-pull) put it in a recloseable bag, cut one of the bottom corners off and pull the yarn out through the hole. This will keep the ball from rolling all over while you are knitting. And when knitting with two yarns, it keeps them from getting twisted up with each other. Maybe this is one of those things that every knitter knows, but it was a really big deal when I first learned about it. :)
No more progress on the jacket. Maybe tonight...
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Comments

  1. 2BSewing:April 28, 2009 at 8:08 AM

    I like the yarn combination you are using. Great tip about using a recloseable bag to keep the yarns from tangling. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. MILApril 29, 2009 at 11:23 PM

    thanks for the tip

    ReplyDelete

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