The Day I Met Tosh Merino

So luscious you could eat it...that is Madelinetosh's Tosh Merino. (Doesn't "Tosh Merino" sound like a name for a cad in a romance novel or a soap opera?) I tried knitting Tea Leaves Cardigan by Melissa LeBarre with ordinary worsted in a color called denim. I had bought this wool on sale to make a knock-about sweater for my husband. It was the only wool in my stash and so I repurposed it for Tea Leaves.

The Master Plan: This would be a trial run with the blue wool. If I liked the sweater, I would buy Tosh Merino to make the Real One. Who was I kidding? Blue isn't even my color! A quarter of the way down the yoke, I put the thing down and looked online for a source for Tosh Merino since my LYS does not carry it. After reading rave reviews about Tosh, I just couldn't stop thinking about it. Tosh's popularity is evidenced by it being out of stock in many venues.

I found a great selection at Eat, Sleep, Knit. All of the original colors (all rather neutral) I had selected were sold out. Then my eye landed on Vermillion, which looked like a dark pink on my monitor. The name of the yarn implied it was red, so I took my chances, and am oh-so-happy I did!

Yes, I know the last sweater I made for myself is red, but can a girl have too many red wool sweaters? Not when one of them is in Tosh Merino. This is the softest merino wool I have ever encountered. I confess that I gasped when I first touched it. Then I beetled over to my skein winder! Are you familiar with Malabrigo worsted? Tosh seems even softer. From a distance it looks like a solid red, but upon close examination, subtle shadings are revealed. The day the package arrived was so warm that I was able to sit on the deck, happily knitting a swatch in the sunshine.
So far, the pattern and the Tosh are a delight. The package arrived on my doorstep in just 3 days with standard shipping. I was impressed! Plus I got a little present in the package AND sample cards of all the other lines that the shop carries.

Full Disclosure: If you go to Eat, Sleep, Knit, by clicking on a link in my blog, and place an order, I will get a $5 credit. I will get yardage in the yarnathon for every landing on the site from here. You can sign up too! (But I would be writing all this with or without a the store credit.) At the rate I am knitting with Tosh Merino, every itty bit helps. After going for quite a while without buying wool, I seem to be on a reckless path at the moment. I am totally wild about my fingering weight wool from The Woolen Rabbit and now Tosh Merino. Oh dear.

P.S. Can someone else using Blogger tell me why the Preview is no longer working? What I mean is that I do preview the post and it looks fine. Then when it is published, it looks nothing like the preview. I don't get it.