mickey mouse...

Not! Did I mention intarsia? Gosh, it’s been a while since I did intarsia on the standard gauge! In fact, seems like a thousand years! I still have this top that is from, as near as I can figure, ’92! I remember knitting it. I had been on a trip to Scotland and brought back a T-shirt with this on the front – bought it for me but when my then teenage son saw it, he wanted it. Mickey Mouse with his hand around your throat! Being the softee I was, I gave it to him but before I let him have it, I photocopied the picture – back then, I had this big ole copier that would reduce and print so I set it to 50%, copied it in sections, pasted them together to get the picture in half-scale and then traced it on my KR7 paper, knit-from-screen the old-fashioned way! It was made with a white and a black 3 ply cotton, the red was Bramwell’s Artistic, over 300 rows at T5 – no wonder I remember it!

Over the last 30 years, I’ve reserved intarsia for the mid gauge machine – much easier to see, larger gauge, less work, you know what I mean.

‘Natural Fibres Princess!’ from Knitwords No.3, Winter ’97, was a raglan tunic made on the LK150 using 8 colours to form the interlocking dogtooth pattern – that one cured me for a while too! A couple of other small bits, in the links below if you’re interested!

https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2020/04/one-stitch-out-not.html

https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2012/03/n8.html

Did some practise swatches, testing out colour choices, stitch size and angles. The first swatch is at T7 with the gray (tweed WCD called marble), ivory/winter white, and black. Actually, made swatches because the intarsia carriage is a slightly different gauge from the main knit carriage and figured I better try it out small before committing to a big project like this. Normally with WCD for a top, I would use T6 stockinette with the  main carriage but I wanted to try T7 to see where it was in relation to the main carriage knitting and, because I want this to be sort of drapey and soft, went with T7. Also, the lazy person that I am, thinking that a larger stitch size equals less rows, less work? Measured it (30 sts and 39 rows), washed and dried it, ending up with 32 sts and 42 rows. Left it and tossed it around the room, looking at it and it seemed to be a little wonky every time I moved it, like it was biasing. Hmmmm…too loose, probably. Made another on at T6, added in the red (don’t really like, but good to know), tried some different angles (on the arrow, the bottom side, I moved the colours one stitch every row, then on the top side, knit two rows for each).

Feeling good about this, drew out my shapes on full width, half scale paper and penciled in a few lines, similar to that photo from last post. Nothing is written in stone, but I think the MAO plan of making a sleeve or two first is a smart way to go. Keep watching this space for results!

Here's a link to the pdf of my intarsia article from KW#3

https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:46178df5-2349-31db-bc99-72f01b4606b7

https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:46178df5-2349-31db-bc99-72f01b4606b7