There are certain times in a knitter’s life when they really get to know a particular yarn. I mean really get to know it. Usually when trying to fix something like a mistake or fit. Several weeks ago I showed you a photo of Tosh Merino Light in Cousteau.  A real beauty this color is…

And what it eventually became was the ultimate in baby dresses, Clara.

However, this dress did not come to be without learning some very important lessons. Number one being that if you’re going to bind off a baby dress it needs to be done loosely (raveled here with full project notes).

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about was how the yarn handled which was very well. It was a dream to knit with but it really showed its resilience after I knit with it, then blocked, then frogged, then reknit the top portion of the dress. Considering that this yarn is single-ply fingering weight I was very nervous about the whole frogging bit. I expected it to pill and break but my fears were unfounded. Seriously, this yarn went through the paces and still came out as beautiful and vivid as it was in hank form. I do recommend using wooden needles when working with this yarn. I say that because it’s so silky soft that having wooden needles to provide some resistance was helpful for the hands to not cramp up. The stitches came out even and uniform which is good to know since, again, with it being a single-ply yarn it could have biased when doing a lot of stockinette stitch.

Some dye ran while the dress soaked before I blocked it but it didn’t change the integrity of the color at all. Overall, this fingering-weight yarn is worth the money. There’s some very generous yardage per hank, about 420 yards per skein. It’s also 100% superwash merino wool which is nice and helpful when making a baby dress. I currently have over 30 skeins because it’s really hard to beat those gorgeous Madelinetosh colors (that’s where the junkie parts comes in). This was my first time going through the entire process with this yarn and I couldn’t be more in love. ♥