Matsubayashi (松林) Part 2

The holiday season is right around the corner and every year, Hubs comes up with a new and ingenious way to make me a Christmas tree (we have since given up on killing live tress to have/enjoy an actual Christmas tree).🎄This year, Hubs brilliant idea is that I knit one.😳 He thinks that if I knit another bigger Winter Fir like tree really loosely, he could try using one of our fairy lights in it for our "tree" this year.

 

So, with my Denise 12.0 & 15.0mm needles and my Lion Brand Fettuccini & the remnant of my Reynolds Icelandic Lopi yarns, I based my tree on the Booble Fir pattern, by casting on 48 sts and doing the following:  

Rounds 1-4 knit (4 rows)
Round 6 *k2tog, k12, ssk, rep from * around: 42 sts
Rounds 7-10 knit (4 rows) (switched to Denise 15.0mm needles on Row 9)
Round 11 *k2tog, k10, ssk, rep from * around: 36 sts
Rounds 12-17 knit (5 rows)
Round 18 *k2tog, k8, ssk, rep from * around: 30 sts
Rounds 19-23  knit (5 rows)
Round 24 *k2tog, k6, ssk, rep  from * around: 24 sts
Rounds 25-27 knit (3 rows)
Round 28 *k2tog, k4, ssk, rep from * around: 18 sts
Rounds 29-30 knit (2 rows)
Round 31 *k2tog, k2, ssk, rep from * around: 12 sts
Rounds 32 knit
Round 33 *k2tog, ssk, rep from * around: 6 sts
Bind off.

Here's how it turned out:

I must say, I really struggled with this tree. 😖😳😱😭😔 Using the Fettuccini yarn was really hard on my hands and it took me several cast ons to finally get the right size.  I was definitely having a goldilocks moment with it: it was too big, then still too big, then maybe a bit too small before I finally got it just right.🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ I had just enough Fettuccini to get about halfway through the tree; then I finally switched to the Lopi yarn and it got much easier to knit. I had to modify the top portion because it was starting to look a bit wonky and wasn't matching the bottom portion.  Overall, I think it came out ... ok ... it looks more like a mountain than a tree (or more accurately, a funny looking hat than even a mountain or tree!😳😱🤦‍♀️) and I'm not sure if I really like it ...🤔😳😔

 

Upon sleeping on it, I decided that I really, really didn't like it and wanted to frog it so I could redo the base of the tree by having a smaller base (of 42 sts), and to use only my Denise 15.0mm needles as well start with a seed stitch pattern (instead of just knit) (to prevent all that curling so it stops looking more like a funky hat and more like a tree/mountain).

 

However, we decided to deck out the house first and found that we didn't need another tree.😳😱🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️ (I  had a ceramic tree that the light finally died and Hubs managed to repurpose that tree where he made it even better than the original!😳😱😁🎉🥳👍🙌🎄) So, with that, I simply frogged everything and gave up on this version of a tree (at least for this year).🤷‍♀️😔☃️