I honestly can’t say I enjoyed knitting this piece but I also can’t say I didn’t. It was challenging but not difficult. It’s all just knitting and purling after all.

What got me were the uneven stitches that come with intarsia. I think that creatives are often prone to perfectionism. So all these oversized stitches drove me a bit bonkers.

I also need to mention the zillion yarn tails that needed to be woven in. I swear I spent more time trying to tidy up the back of the work than I did knitting the damn jacket.

Then, like a big dummy, I decided I would sew in a liner to hide all the grossness on the inside. I didn’t take into account that the liner would affect the elasticity of the overall garment. So when I tried it on, the sleeves didn’t sit right and there was no fixing it… unless I removed the lining.

So the 10+ hours I spent sewing in the linings by hand was partially a waste of time. I left it on the back and two fronts though. But if Sandy tries it on and it sits oddly, we’ll just remove the linings on all the pieces and he’ll just have to look at the mess when he wears it.

I’m not really sure why someone would choose to make more than one intarsia sweater! Haha. My friend Michelle and I were chatting about this on Tuesday. These Mary Maxim sweaters were huge when we were kids. We grew up laughing at how cheesy some of them were (naturally, we thought we were too cool for them). But they were everywhere in all there acrylic glory!!

I’m happy for Mary Maxim though. They must be laughing to the bank these days thanks to Ryan Gosling and the costume designers from Project Hail Mary.

If you’re on the Tube and you want to know a bit more about what I’ve been up to, here is my newest episode:

Cheers!

If you missed the first post, you can read it here.

The Learning Curve

After ripping and re-knitting a few times, (and finally sitting down with this Youtube tutorial), I think I’m starting to get the hang of this intarsia thing.

I think.

This photo is why I got so frustrated! How is this so hard??! I didn’t take a photo of my fist attempt because, like I mentioned in my first post, it was just too gross.

Improvements

Staying Motivated

I’m finding it challenging to stay motivated to work on this project. When you’re not in love what you’re working on, it’s easy to get distracted by new ideas or projects.

Will Blocking Fix My Uneven Stitches?

It’s got a lot of wonky-ness and I’m praying hard that they will even out in blocking.

At the end of the day, it’s far from perfect but it looks like a fox. I’m calling that a WIN.

Knitting and Audiobooks

Books on audio and handcrafts are like PB&J, aren’t they?

Have you read/listened to anything good lately? I’ll take recommendations in the comments.

Here are a few books I recently finished and loved:

Have a fantastic couple of weeks and I’ll see you back here with (I hope) a finished back and the start of some front panels!

I’m totally missing the red for the tongue.

So off I went with swatching. Do you swatch? I always do for garments. Plus, the biggest size is slightly smaller than I would like so I thought I might have to play around with needle size anyway.

I swatched first with the pattern needles – 6mm/US 10. The recommended gauge is 14/4″.

There wasn’t that much difference between the pre-block and the post-block gauge.

Clearly, the winner is the 5.5mm/US 8. But rather than a 48″ chest circumference, I’m going for 50″. AND the 6mm is a lot more flow-y.

So off I went! Ribbing was a piece of cake. First few plain rounds, no problem. Then this…

That’s when it stopped being fun. This is when my knitting confidence took a big hit.

But we got there in the end. Little paw prints done. They’re not great but not terrible either.

When I started the actual fox legs though, my intarsia was a MESS. I don’t understand how my stitches can be so uneven. Ugh!!!!

I’m very frustrated. I’m good at this knitting thing! Why am I so terrible at Intarsia? My friend Mary asked if I could duplicate stitch any of it. I initially said no because the B&L Atlantic is chunky and I don’t know that it’ll look right. But after my first attempt (which I didn’t photograph because it was too gross), I decided to try the “shadow” of the legs in black – it’s literally a line along the leg – using duplicate stitch.

Have you ever tried Intarsia? How did it go for you? I’ll take tips if you got ’em.

Stay tuned for progress…