Madelinetosh – My Muddlings

Wow! We’re two days out from Christmas! Can you believe it?!! I hope everyone’s Christmas knitting is done or very close to.

I’m really only smashing my way through one final WIP, the Snowflake pullover by tincanknits. This is a Christmas present for my little niece. She’s about 20 months old now, so I’ve knit the 2-4 year size.

It’s a pattern I’ve been crushing on for ages, so I thought I’d knit it up for little A, ready for when the weather starts cooling down next year. And for a good practice run for knitting my own in the future. 😉

The pattern starts off with the yoke knit flat with the snowflake pattern. Then it is joined in the round to knit the body down, then the sleeves.

Snowflake patterned yoke

I’m knitting it in some Madelinetosh Tosh DK in Butter that I’ve had in my stash for about a year and a half. The yarn sat there so long because I purchased it in a MadTosh grab-bag from Eat.Sleep.Knit. As it was a grab-bag, I didn’t have any choice over colours but on the flipside, I got 5 skeins of MadTosh Tosh DK for a very reasonable price. I got 2 x skeins of Grove (forest green), 1 x skein Cape Town Rainbow (multicoloured) and 2 x skeins of Butter. And, as you’ve probably noticed if you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, yellow really isn’t one of my colours. But I have to say, I’m loving this colour in this knit!

The yarn appears to be kettle dyed so there’s stitches that are slightly paler and slightly darker all through the fabric. I love this look. It gives such depth and texture to plain stockinette fabric.

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Ready for sleeves!

The pattern calls for about 500 yards of yarn to complete the long-sleeved version of the sweater. I only had two skeins of the Tosh DK, at 225 yards each so I’m just short on yardage. However, I had 60g of yarn left after finishing the body and the button placket for the yoke so I’ve pretty much knit the first sleeve up to 30g of yarn and using the remainder on the second sleeve.

I’ve found that A usually needs her tincanknits cardigans rolled up on the cuff so I’m hoping the slightly shorter sleeves will be okay. The pattern calls for 9.5″ before the cuff on the size I’m knitting and I got to about 8.5″ before the cuff on the first sleeve. So they’re only 1″ short + the shorter cuff. Oh well. If they turn out too short, I’ll just have an excuse to knit her some mittens! My project page can be found here.

So there’s my last soon-to-be FO before Christmas. How have your knitting plans gone for this Christmas?

And before I go, I’d like to wish a Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to my readers, and here’s to a happy and safe New Year. Thank you for sticking with me through this year, and I hope to be with you more often in the New Year.

Julieanne xx

So I missed WIP Wednesday and as I don’t have an FO for Friday, please see below for a WIP. 😉

This is the Forest Foliage pattern by Alana Dakos from Botanical Knits 2. Ravelry notes here.

Photo credit: Never Not Knitting

I started this last week and I’m going great guns! Here’s a pic from a couple of days ago:

It looks nothing like it does on the model hey? 😉 The wonders of blocking lace! I’m a bit worried that it’s turning out small but again, blocking should fix that. The leaf size seems comparable IRL to the pictures on the model so it should be fine. I’ve completed up to chart E out of G. Actually, I’ve started chart F so not too far to go. The rows are getting fairly long at this point though. The leaves are turning out really lovely:

I’m using the yarn the pattern calls for, Madelinetosh Merino Light. I have also used the colourway that was used for the book. It’s called Fig and it’s a lovely tonal brown.