Intarsia

So last night was my first color class with Shirley Paden. As I mentioned earlier – she is DIVAlicious. I’m sure those that have met her would agree – she certainly is a commanding prescence. Add to that a healthy dose of self-confidence and you certainly near diva-status. But that’s okay because this woman knows her shit! When I took the finishing class last year, it was a bit overwhelming. It was a three-hour class and we covered EVERYTHING – seaming, weaving, button-holes – you name it. Given how intense that first class was, I was a little bit anxious about last night.

But it was great! It’s a two week class and last night we covered Intarsia only (next week is fair isle). We started off making butterflies – Shirley said she prefers butterflies (hand tied bobbins) to plastic bobbins because when you’ve got a lot of bobbins hanging down the plastic ones can get really heavy. So we made the bobbins we would need for our argyle piece. I forgot to mention – Shirley had brought some of her sweaters she had designed and knit – they were unbelievable. Very intimidating to say the least.

Okay, so once we had our bobbins, we did weaving. Basically, using two colors, we knit one with the main color, then carried the second color behind on the next stitch all the way through the row. We did about ten rows just carrying and weaving in the second color until we got the hang of it.

Then it was time to knit our argyle swatch! I’m not sure why, but somehow I just got it – you carry the yarn when you expand the pattern, twist when the bobbin is right there. It all seemed very intuitive once I was actually doing it. I did almost half while we were there. When I got home I finished:

The picture is awful – ugh – still not getting the flash working. But I’m pretty happy with the results! (I messed up a couple of stitches, all you eagle eyes out there, but only because I should’ve done a MC when I did color B or A or vice versa.)

We have homework too. She gave us a chart for a flower we’re supposed to do (using four colors) and the big assignment is to knit a ball of yarn in our opposite style – Continental if you knit English, English if you knit Continental, etc. I’m guessing when we do fair isle she’ll be teaching it two handed. I feel I have mittens on trying to knit with my left hand – it doesn’t work, but I’m willing to give it a go.

In the end, I was very pleased with the class. We laughed, we worked, we ate chocolate. Very, very good!

Picot-Boo

Picot-Boo is blocking. Someone please tell me it’s okay that the arms look bigger than the body. Or, if that’s wrong, don’t tell me. Just let me fuck up in peace.

I may start seaming tonight – depends on how much “real” work I get done. It’s not looking too good right now.

Bloglines isn’t updating for me again. I blogged this morning before I went to get my hair done – at around 10:30. It still hasn’t updated for me and it’s now 4:30. I don’t know how this shit works, but it’s annoying me. We’ll see how long it takes to update now.

ETA: I almost forgot! I picked up the NEW Interweave Knits last night at the LYS. It’s nice. I find that I have to really sit on these magazines sometimes. You never know when new skills will all of a sudden make you look differently at a pattern. For now, the one I keep coming back to is the bear claw blanket. Maybe if I stock up on the yarn slowly, I might get this done in a decade or so. I’m thinking Aurora 8 might be nice for this. What do you think? I think I might change out the colors though. Or does that mess up the whole Amish quilt thing? Quilters – opinions?