Marled Mania Leggings in Blue

The idea of knit leggings appealed to me from the start, but marled striped leggings? That’s just genius. This pattern is the Marled Mania Leggings by Westknits, and boy did Stephen ace this one!

Few things in life are more satisfying than knitting an entire project solely from stash. I don’t like keeping a large stash and have gotten much better at refraining from impulsive and frivolous yarn purchases–largely because my devotion to sweater making renders it financially infeasible.

When selecting colors I decided to stick with mostly one color–which came down to blue, with a little gray and black mixed in. Mixing in a lot of other colors would have made for fun knitting but would have also resulted in a challenge for outfit coordination. Most of the yarn in the leggings are leftovers from Old Rusted Chair, but there are also some bits from Lush Knit, Olann and Havirland Yarns. The waistband, drawstring and cuffs are Lush Knit Smooth Sock in the colorway “Space Oddity.”

So many ends! Whether to weave in the ends was an issue for me. Leaving them unwoven and tucked to the inside added a bit of bulkiness along the inner leg seams, but after weaving in roughly half of the ends and seeing that many were poking back out as I walked, I decided not to weave in any more except those near the cuffs. For the remainder I only trimmed the ends to about three inches and left them tucked to the inside. After all, the knitting is marled so there are no holes at the joins to worry about.

For me the drawstring was a necessity. If I make these again I will definitely go down a size. When starting I went with 29.5″, which I knew would be big on my waist but I was deathly afraid of making too small a size for my not-so-small hips and butt. Yet upon completion there is plenty of room for stretch in those areas, so perhaps when designing these leggings Stephen took hips and butts into consideration, unlike a lot of patterns and clothing I buy. In short, if you are wavering between sizes, I would recommend going with the smaller. (FYI I typically wear a US Women’s Size 6 or 28″ in pants.)

After knitting the waistband I changed colors and didn’t change again until completing the butt shaping and knitting an additional 5 or so rounds. Throughout the project I tried to keep my color intervals fairly random and added and subtracted colors every 8-12 rounds–i.e. 4 rounds marled with one color and 4 rounds marled with the next. I knit decreases every 5 rounds throughout and ended with 36 stitches per cuff.

These are the comfiest leggings ever! I absolutely adore them. They are warm but not hot, which is perfect.

Even better, by nature of the marled technique and constant color changes, the project is highly addictive. For me it is not easy finding projects that are both fun to knit and perfect for wear, so I am over the moon with my Marled Mania Leggings!

Marled Mania Leggings pattern can be purchased on Ravelry here.

ABOUT AUTHOR Jamie Hoffman

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