Wallabee Woe

So, here is the long promised tale of Wallabee woe. Let's go back to Maryland Sheep and Wool. I wasn't all about a Wallabee, I was all about the Clapotis. So, I purchased this pretty Brooks Farm Four Play for a Clappy - 3 skeins, at 270 yds a skein. A few hours after I bought this, I found what would eventually become the Clappy, a merino/silk blend resembling Josephs' coat of many colors. And, I don't know how I got it in my head, but I just felt the Brooks Farm needed to be a Wallabee.

Ummm . . . but I only had 810 yards -- the pattern calls for somewhere around 1400 for the medium. I spoke to a few people who had already made the Wonderful Wallabee, and they assured me they didn't use nearly as much yarn as what the pattern called for, and that it might work out if I did the pocket and the hood in a solid. I mulled it over. I thought about doing a provisional cast-on, and doing the 3 inch rib in another color if I ran out of yarn. I thought about stripes. In the end, I thought, I'm going to buy more Four Play.

And so I did - at Rhinebeck - 1300 yards - of this pretty green:
Problem 1 - Looks a little small, doesn't it? But, Courtney checked my gauge, I'm on gauge - and the pocket is allegedly the center of the front - so hopefully, everything is just bunched up on the needle. This problem is easily rectified - in an inch or so, I'll fuse the pocket to the body of the sweater, and then I'll take it off the needles and try it on. Of course, if it's too small, I don't have enough yarn for a large, and it'll be back to the provisional cast-on drawing board.

Problem 2 - if you look at the picture again, you'll notice that the body of the sweater is much darker than the pocket - the skeins, while marked that they were from the same dyelot are clearly different - of course, I didn't notice this on the darkened trainride from hell. The solution would probably have been to work with a two balls of yarn at a time, and mixed in the darker skein -- way too much work for a Wallabee, and even if I had noticed in time, I probably wouldn't have done it. I think the pocket is making it ok, but we'll see as I go along -

But, the true potential disaster is this skein -
No, that's not a blurry shot - the yarn is all f-d up. I went to wind it, and it got stuck. It turns out that the skein was wrapped up before the dye dried, and while it's not quite felted, it's all stuck together, and the areas that are fused, are a bit rough. This skein will have to be wound by hand, uch, and disaster will really only strike if I have to use this yarn for anything other than the hood. I mean, who's going to inspect the hood anyway.

Ah the suspense - will it be too small? will it look like two different sweaters sewed together once the color differentiation between the 2 skeins becomes more distinct? will the f-d up skein sort itself out and become usable? Will I buy a solid green of something worsted, and cast on the large? Will I ditch putting the hood on if I can't get the f-d up skein to work out? It's almost as good as a Friday cliffhanger, and it's only Wednesday.