Litterball to the Rescue? (The Curse of the Colorwork Sweater)

Do you remember the brown colorwork sweater I started last year? The sweater that was delayed as I waited for more brown yarn to come in? Seasons of Darkness, etc. If you remember that sweater you may remember that I finished the colorwork segment and that I finished the sleeve cuff segment before summer rolled around. I even merrily began the body edging, but I had problems, then heat rolled in and so I stopped. I quietly resumed this project when K was in Boston. I frogged the edging that I had done, recast on, knit, frogged, cast on again, frogged, then started one last time. Shear number of times frogged made me start to fear that I would never finish this project.

Then, a few more problems arose. First a partial ball of yarn rolled off my table and directly into Isis's litter box (hereinafter "litterball"). I thought about throwing litterball away, but it still had a significant amount of yarn in it, so I placed litterball in a plastic bag and set it aside for emergencies. Then, Isis threw up on the edging and on the pattern. Clearly this edging was cursed. Nevertheless, I kept on knitting (after washing my edging, of course).

This weekend I finished the bottom portion of the edging and started to move up the front side when my ball of yarn ended. No big deal, I thought. I set it aside and picked up something else since I wasn't really in the mood to wind another ball at that moment. Last night I was ready to wind. I reached into my bag to pull out another skein, there wasn't one. OK, I thought, I must not have pulled out all of the yarn (I have a pine trunk that I keep yarn in). I went to my trunk and searched my non-stash stash for additional yarn. THERE WASN'T ANY. Now I was starting to get nervous, I really don't want to go to litterball. After some search I discovered that I have bits of yarn left. There is a ball, smaller than litterball, and failed attempts at the edging that didn't frog well, and, of course, there is litterball. As much as I want to avoid litterball, I think I will have to resort to using it. The question becomes then, how does one clean litterball?

With my sweater design, I haven't settled on the diamond cable choice yet. Thanks for your input, the votes seem to be about even, though there are a couple of non-blog votes for moss, and one for twisty. Joanna, yes there will definitely be more space around moss if I go that way, I just didn't cast on enough stitches for my swatch, and had increased 4 stitches as it was. I have started the left front though. I am on the rib pattern, which will go for 5+ inches, don't know exactly how long the ribbing will be. I have a photo of just the rib for you and of the rib and cables placed next to each other. I don't know if seeing the rib with the cable will effect any one's opinion, but just in case...