Sunday, September 20, 2009

Intarsia. Insane or Brave?

I decided that I wanted to make myself a small UCONN blanket for football games when it gets colder. I decided that it needed to have a C in the middle - something akin to the UCONN football logo if I could manage it. So, I graphed out a C. It's close. It's not perfect. The logo has more rounded top and bottom than I can do in stitches, given the space I've allotted for my C. The C will be blue on a white background. Next, I tried to decide what would go around the C. Bring out the colored pencils and the graph paper. Do I do a bunch of blocks? I could do mitered blocks - never done them, but something I've been wanting to try. I could do striped mitered blocks even. I could do a log cabin blanket. I could do the courthouse steps version of a log cabin blanket. I could do just plain old stripes. I could do a blue section around the C block, then a bigger white section around that. Really - tons of possibilities. I decided that some of them would be just too busy. The courthouse steps blanket I sketched had blue horizontal stripes going out from center and white strips going out vertically - the winner. But, hmmm, aren't those best done in garter stitch? Truthfully, I suppose you could do it in stockinette, but I wanted to do it in garter. Can you do intarsia in garter stitch? Yes, the wonders of the web assured me, it could be done. So here I am, the C is half done. It's not so hard as I would have imagined. The garter stitch is squishing my C a bit, so I'm not following my little graph exactly - going to go more by proportions and I think I will have to do a little embroidery in some areas to help form the angles/curves of the C. It won't be a blanket that will win a blue ribbon, but for a first attempt at designing something in intarsia - I'm pretty dang proud! I'm using yarn that was purchased based on washability - I am, after all, planning to bring this blanket to tailgates and football games. I think it will be quite cool - and hopefully quite warm!

2 comments:

annie said...

I think you are brave! It sounds really awesome - I hope it keeps you nice and warm!

Nice job on the win over Baylor too!

MLO said...

I haven't braved intarsia yet. Though, have you seen the purses in the new KnitPicks catalog? That kit has me way tempted...