Intarsia

Wow, two days of blogging in a row - I am on a roll! Last night I started the instarsia portion of Nathan's sweater...I had intended to knit the sweater in the round to the arm holes, but as soon as I started the intarsia I knew that was going to be impossible. You can't do instarsia in the round unless you snip each end and start over at the beginning of each round. For those of you who don't know the difference between intarsia and fair-isle, instarsia is when you use a different ball (or bobbin) of yarn for each block of color. (You can see in the above photo how I have five balls of yarn in my basket, all connected to my work in progress.) You pick up and drop each strand as you work and twist the two meeting strands before starting a new color block so your finished piece doesn't fall apart. If you are knitting in the round, when you come back around to the color block, your yarn for that block will be on the wrong end of the block. If you were to snip and re-join like I mentioned earlier, you would end up with a LOT of ends to weave in and the project itself would not be as stable as it would be worked back and forth with the two colors wound together. Fair-isle on the other hand, is when you carry the yarn you are not using behind your work, twisting with the yarn you are using occasionally - creating a series of not-too-tight, not-too-loose loops on the inside of your piece. This technique is used when you have little bits of the same color going across your entire piece - the back looks a bit messy, but it also creates more warmth - say, in a sweater or hat. When you are knitting fair-isle, you usually only have two strands of yarn going at a time. Remember this? Anyway, I had thought I was going to avoid any side-seaming on this project - instead the sweater splits into front and back where the "H" starts so I'll have a little bit to sew up under the arm holes. C'est la vie.

Evelyn will be 4 months old on Sunday! She's just started to actually play with toys when I hand them to her, and she's very vocal - "talking" in her little baby babble all the time. Speaking of being vocal... Jamie is finally starting to string sentences together. It's very exciting to know we are very close to having two-sided conversations with him. That one's for you, Great Grandma. :)