Finally Some Knitting ~ EZ's Tomten

A few weeks ago I mentioned I was going to begin a Tomten for my cousin's daughter. My cous is expecting her fourth child sometime in late August or early September.

Here is the beginning effort and the yarn in a basket:

The first three or four rows looked very much like cake icing, the too sweet kind used on wedding cakes or sheet cakes for events like baby showers or birthdays. I'm not much of a knitter of baby stuff since all my siblings' children are at least 10 years old.

Once, a very long time ago, when my now 16 year old niece was a toddler, I began to knit her a very cute jumper (not the British jumper, but the American jumper, a sleeveless dress) from one of the MinnowKnits books (I think the second one). I bought some fancy-pants pink and white cotton boucle that was too expensive and some very thin pink cotton thread and held them together and knit the damn thing up. I think I only had to finish seaming the thing together when she decided she would no longer wear pink but was into red and raspberry. WHAT?!?!?!?! How does a two year old make these decisions?

So it sat and sat, unfinished, waiting for a more appreciative niece to come along. Several nieces later, it still sits, as the three most recent refuse to wear dresses or skirts ~ tomboys all except the second oldest niece, who is a very girly-girl, but suddenly not into pink. The cute little jumper sits neglected and basically forgotten somewhere in my giant tub of stash yarn that is pushed way in the back of one of the closets.

After that debacle, the very same niece asked for a sweater when she got a little bit older. I obliged, letting her select the yarn palette. I broke out the exceptional Knitting Ganseys by Beth Brown-Reinsel and made the one with the heart on it, except, rather than making a traditional gansey with one color and k - p to show the pattern, I did colorwork, which is my favorite thing to do, and banged the thing out pretty quickly for my lack of speed. It was so cute, shades of raspberry, light dusty rose pink, sea green, and a bit darker green, very girly-girl. But, again the wench changed her mind about the colors and was then into purple. AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!

Her sister wouldn't wear it because she was never into the pinks/reds/raspberries, but only blues. The other niece wore it once, for a photo shoot, and that was that. So I pretty much decided it wasn't worth my time to knit for these rapscallions.

Why I am now knitting this Tomten is beyond me, especially since my cous is one who washes blacks with whites, but there you go.