Wonderful Wallaby Woes: part II

Yesterday I told you the very long tale of the wee Wallaby and my inability to count; today I shall tell you the tale of the giant Wallaby that ate all my yarn. In all fairness, we should probably blame me and my inability to count, this time yardage, and not the wallaby pattern.


So my sweetie and I have been together for about 5 ½ years now. When we first met and he learned of my knitting skills he asked for a sweater. And like all good girls I quoted the boyfriend sweater curse to him. What is this? You have never heard of the boyfriend sweater curse before?

It was whispered to me in hushed tones when I first learned to cast on. It goes something like this: never knit a man you are dating a sweater because, inevitably, you will break up before it is finished and you will never meet another man with the same measurements. I kid you not, this was said a lot to me and to a lot of other young knitters.

So I wouldn’t make him a sweater. At some point because of his pleas I wrote to the holy grail of knitters (my old Vermont knitting group, those ladies would steek anything) and asked what they thought of the boyfriend sweater curse. Their ruling seemed fair and unbiased. They decreed that the sweater curse applied to the beginner knitter and not pros. Because I was a fast proficient knitter who could make a sweater in a month or two I would be fine. But I couldn’t make it for a holiday or take on some insane pattern I would come to hate AND my guy had to promise not to break up with me for 6 months after receiving the sweater.

Despite this sound decision I managed to avoid starting a sweater for him. That is until two weeks after we were married when we happened to be upstate for the sheep and wool festival. When he took my hand sweetly in his and said “NOW can I have my sweater?” What could I do but make him one?

I bought yarn on the spot. Lovely yarn from Maine that is hand dyed and set in salt water from the coast. Do you see where this is going? Yup, somewhere around those lovely big shoulders I realized I was going to run out of yarn. Thank goodness this weekend is NY Sheep and Wool and with a little luck there will be more yarn. Of course the dye lot won’t match so I fear it will have to have stripes and of course I may have to rip back so that the stripes don’t all start at the top and scream “someone didn’t buy enough yarn!”

So please cross fingers, toes and nose for me that I find some yarn to ease the pain.