I'm now comin' up for air from working on "London Calling".
I finished the sleeves on Saturday. I didn't get as much knitting done as I wanted, since I had to accompany my relatives to the Montclair Municipal Works compound to dump out some bulky waste that has accumulated from all the construction work they are doing downstairs. Also, my father and cousin wired the house on Saturday, allowing the cable modem to exist downstairs and thus connect the entire house to the Internet. I did manage to buy ten intarsia bobbins in between dump trips. I calculated that working with ten bobbins and three balls of yarn would be appropriate for the project.
Once I finished both sleeves, I cast on for the front of "London Calling", using US15 needles and going down to my US11 circular needle for gauge. I quickly developed the appropriate technique for dealing with the feathery Soft-Kid yarn and thirteen strands:
I would lay out the yarn in a fan-like spread around me. I would always keep the bobbins/balls of yarn in the same position in the spread. When I needed to switch yarns, I would pick up the appropriate bobbin/ball and twist it either over or under the next piece of yarn, returning the bobbin to the same position. This way, I would only be dealing with two pieces of yarn at any one time and the yarn threads wouldn't get tangled. Also, when "turning" my work, I would move myself more than the work, again keeping the threads from tangling. This made the work go relatively quickly.
By this morning, I was already to bust-height (about 2/3 into the design). The pattern called for nine rows of solid red, but after knitting to that point, I realized that it looked too tall and I contacted Deb for clarification. After emailed pictures and phone calls, we reduced the rows to eight and I did a bit of frogging to fix it. I was done by this evening, around 9:30pm, so I'll be going into the city tomorrow to give it to her.
Absolutely fabulous intarsia!
Since the weave is quite open, I couldn't carry any of the yarns behind the work. Thirteen separate pieces of yarn. Fun fun fun!
Weaving in the ends will be a nightmare.
I'm not sure if I'm going to get any more work, but I'm so pleased and happy with what I managed to accomplish. It was challenging, but not too hard that I became frustrated. I would like to knit myself one of these sweaters, except without sleeves, so it would be a cool sleeveless shell that I could wear over a tank top. I bet it would be quite sexy.
