golden wheat... pebbled beach

   Thanks for the input on my next CO!  I've decided to go with the Golden Wheat Cardigan by Veera Välimäki using tosh vintage that I've had laying around for just over a year.  I actually bought the yarn on January 1, 2012 and have been feeling a bit guilty that I have a sweaters worth of madelinetosh that has not been knit into something beautiful.  The resulting sweater should have been worn obsessively and loved for an entire year!  

     Its not that I didn't attempt to knit up something using the yarn, it just didn't work out.  

   I usually break up with a pattern after my second fail/frogging.  Calais was just not meant to be.  Using this madtosh anyway.  I'd still like to make the pattern someday, but using a less fussy yarn.  Something wool, superwash maybe, in a solid color.  A dark azure or navy blue maybe.  (Of course this dream yarn is something not in my stash and I'm still cold sheeping.  So I'll file this thought away for some other time way down the road).    

   Anyway, Golden Wheat, or more accurately Pebbled Beach as I should call it is moving along.  Cove, is a colorway that on first look is a bit of a drab brown, but the more you look at it, the more depth you can pick out.  Everything from warm browns, taupe-y browns, mossy greens, dark ambers, and gorgeous bright blues.  So, Pebbled Beach is an appropriate name for this simple cardigan design don't you think?

   So far, I've committed several knitting sins in the initial execution of this pattern including:

• Not washing or blocking my swatch
• I haven't really picked what size I'm knitting or have any idea of how much ease I want when its finished. 
• I don't have the recommended needle size to knit the body, so I went a size down... (what could possibly go wrong?) 
• In fact, I'm not really sure what my gauge is on this.  I just sort of picked up some needles and went with it.

   Good news is that the pattern is a top down raglan, so there's really no way to mess the sizing up.  One thing I am doing right is alternating skeins.  So that's a win for me!  I guess we'll see what happens when its finished...