brainylady

Intarsia or Foucault?

What a question -- intarsia, of course! It's totally fun. No, really!

I was going to keep this project a secret until I could model the finished object for you, but... I'm too excited! I have to show somebody, and Beatrix isn't interested. So here's the deal: I'm knitting a dark-grey sweater with Patons Classic Wool based on Raspy from Rowan's Denim People book. On the front, there is a big red skull, for which I used the super-awesome chart by DomiKNITrix. Without further ado, I bring you a pop-up parade of progress:

1. Getting started. I did stranded knitting for the skull's teeth. You can see a photo of Jennifer's skull on the screen; her teeth looked much better than mine. I realized later that it might have been better to stick with intarsia and do the whole mouth in gray, and then go back later and add the teeth with duplicate stitch. But did I stop? Reconsider? No way! Full steam ahead...

2. The ends are nigh... I'm only using two colours -- how can there be so many loose ends? No problem. At this point I poured a glass of wine, put in a good mixed CD (Cat Power, Mirah, Throwing Muses, Emm Gryner, Neko Case), and started weaving them in.

3. Ends? What ends? Weaving in all those ends really wasn't a big deal -- it was actually quite satisfying. You can see that I also stranded across the nose (absence-of-nose? nose hole? nasal void?).

4. For the first time ever, I washed and blocked. So there it is: the front piece of what I expect to be my favourite sweater ever. Yep, that's the back piece next to it, too (on the beach towel I've had since about 1983). Just two sleeves to go. I feel like such a good knitter! I'm trying new things, I'm learning, and I'm blocking! Plus I'm imagining all kinds of fabulous intarsia sweaters in my future.

Today, however, Foucault wins. I must get reading. I'm certainly not going to start those sleeves today. No, that would be irresponsible. I have school work to do. Knitting today would be bad. Really bad. Bad.