Whew! That was a close one. The Baby Surprise Jacket I started a few days ago is finished, and I can't believe it ended so successfully.
My intention was to use only yarn I have in my stash. I knew I would need to combine yarns to get the color combos I wanted and have enough to get me through the entire sweater. I didn't swatch (who needs to swatch for a baby sweater, really?!? This pattern is so stretchy, I knew it would be forgiving)... I dove in and started with my favorite green. I mentioned here that when I switched from green to white that I had only 12 inches of green left over - so I somehow made the switch perfectly.
I had thought the ball of white yarn looked to be enough for the rest of the sweater, but I was mistaken... and needed to find another yarn to finish the sweater with. I picked up what was left over from my bandana cowl, a nice golden wheat color, and started with that, which miraculously got me through to almost the very end. As I was binding off and rounding the last corner of the bottom of the jacket for the end stretch along the front placket by the buttonholes, I ran out ... luckily I had some of the white left over and it was a similar enough color to my variegated golden wheat that I felted it onto the end and finished off. It is barely noticeable.
That left me to sewing the arm seams... whoops - with no green left over!!! Well, luckily, the tail ends of the green from casting on, and that 12 inches of extra, were put to good use. I used practically all of them, along with some white, to sew the seams... you can see in the picture how much yarn I had left over from the project.
I then had to pick buttons. I have a ton of green buttons and thought for sure that is what I was going to pick. But had my middle child not been there to help, and had she not made the amazingly inspired suggestion of using some red buttons she saw, I wouldn't have found the perfect buttons for this sweater!
If I had it to do again... and knew it would end up taking these three colors of yarn to finish the project, I would have started with the yellow and ended with the green... there is something about having a dark, heavy color at the bottom of a work rather than the top. But hey, I still think it looks great.
