Projects
The Problem with Madeline Tosh
What’s the problem with Madeline Tosh? It’s certainly not the yarn itself. Nobody has a problem with the colors, the bases, any of it. The problem is what happens when that delectable yarn is used in the wrong way.
Right yarn, wrong pattern. Wrong yarn, right pattern. One of those.
A bit of swatching will illustrate the hazards.
I’m on the hunt for the right stash yarn to use for Véronik Avery’s gorgeous Spinnaker pullover. It’s cool. It’s got some cluster stitch action, which I keep calling cluster&*#@ stitch by accident which isn’t really very polite. And it’s sort of minimalist, which I’m in the mood for, and it calls for worsted weight yarn.
Swatch No. 1: Berroco Ultra Alpaca, shade I’m going to call Celadon.
The cluster stitches actually look like little Screams. AAAAAAACK!
This 50/50 wool/alpaca yarn is a classic, but it really limps up once you give it a soak and a blocking. I love this yarn, but the halo and the drape and the general mintyness are not working for me. One nice thing: I did hit gauge on my second knitting try. Size 8! Cold comfort, I tell you.
Swatch No. 2: MadTosh DK, shade Mare (which, given the murky oceanic color, I’m taking to be Latin for “sea” and not mare, “horse who is a girl.”)
You see the problem here, right? It’s so so so so so so tempting to believe that a subtly shifting color is going to be so subtle that it doesn’t grok up a stitch pattern. I believed. I wanted this to be the yarn for this sweater more than I coveted my son’s Krispy Kreme donuts this morning.
And yet, and yet. This ain’t it. And the donuts all went to school with the boy.
What to do, what to do? I don’t have any other possible yarns in the house. What on earth can I possibly do?
Plymouth Encore? Kidding! Kidding! But seriously, I don’t know what you’ve got in your stash but a pattern like that needs what I call Sears Yarn. The actual worsted wool they used to sell at Sears in the 1960’s. Close approximations are Brown Sheep Nature Spun Worsted and Knit Picks Wool of the Andes (a little itchy, but there’s a superwash version that might not be) and WEBS has a Valley Yarns Worsted that also fits the bill. Those all come in a gazillion colors, too. LOVE your swatches.
Knitpicks superwash “Swish” is soft, but watch out: it gets bigger when you wash it. A lot bigger. Measure your gauge swatch, wash it, and measure again before you decide how many stitches to cast on.
I had a similar thing happen with Madtosh. I made my swatch but didn’t wash it. Made my 1st vest which fit beautifully, soaked it, didn’t rub or agitate it, scooped it up gently and laid it on the counter. It stretched to almost double in length. I panicked and threw it in the dryer…nothing. Then I thought of the hundreds of $ I spent at the store opening. Haven’t touched it since. It pretty well scared me off superwash yarn.
What you may need is a worsted weight yarn that has a “hard ” finish. A crisp yarn that will make your pattern stand up and salute! Lark from Quince and Co. comes to mind.
I agree with the first comment. I’d use Ella Rae worsted, one of their heathers even, or any other ” Sears wool “, to bad they don’t make Germantown worsted anymore.
I would have called for Woolworth wool instead. We did not have a Sears to shop at. Woolworth sold Red Heart wool (not acrylic), which was decent. I miss Woolworth, and Brunswick Germantown, and Bernat Lana, which was really nice stuff. I still have some in stash.
Hello MDK, are we really saying “Sears Yarn” and MadelineTosh in the same sentence?!?!?!?!? Look on the Tosh website. There are a couple of worsteds other than vintage, DK and DK merino. See what you think. I know that everything has a place and there’s a place for everything but MadelineTosh sets the bar in both base and color, wouldn’t you say?
Yep
I’m late to the party on this one, so you’ve probably already chosen your yarn, but if you haven’t, I vote for Juniper Moons Farms’ Moonshine, in any of the gorgeous colors it comes in.
Forest is one of my favorites, if you’re in the mood for a deep, rich, leafy-piney green.
Or Brooklyn Tweed…but a workhorse type DK or Worsted is not going to glow like Madtosh, there will not be as much color saturation (I am calling it this, but I guess I mean evenness of color and then glow of the yarn together) I don’t necessarily want shine, but I want some depth and richness that is not all same/same.
Can you overdye? With more dark blue?
I think you are using the wrong yarns for this sweater. You have selected lovely drapey yarns but your pattern calls out for a toothsome tweed. If you’re itching to start a sweater right away, I suggest you look for a pattern that will use a drapey yarn to it’s best advantage. When I have a problem matching yarn and pattern, I like to look up the yarn on Ravelry and search through the projects it’s been used in. Even if I don’t find exactly what I want there, it will give me an idea of which way I want to go