The other sweater I’m working on (“Snow…Orange?” in my projects) is a Fall-weight sweater, so I decided to work on this one since it’s more spring-summer weight. I LOVE the pattern, but I’m nervous since it’ll be my first intarsia. And, well, first complete sweater, too.

I’m making the large size even though it’ll likely be slightly too big, plus I’ve been working on losing weight again. I would probably do best in a 38-40 instead, but I’m not good enough to start adjusting patterns myself just yet.

The Knit Picks Palette is knitting up nicely. I love the black-white-pink color scheme, and fell in love with the blossom heather. I hope it looks as good as I’m imagining. The color in the progress pic is off. Trust me, it’s more black than washed-out charcoal like the pic seems to want to show. Silly camera.

SO FAR!

April 23, 2012 - I’m working the sweater in the round because I know if I did the front and THEN had to face doing the back I’d probably never get it done. I’ll divide it and work on straights when I get to the point where I start working the intarsia.

I used the long tail tubular cast-on method for 1x1 ribbing from Ysolda Teague (I learned the 2x2 method for Snow White) to make the edge more stretchy. I tend to cast on too tight for a plain long-tail cast on, so this has been wonderful. I cast it onto straights, did the first few set up rows, and then joined them on my circular. So I’ll have to stitch up the first few rows, but I think the edge of the sweater looks amazing.

I’m also using #2 needles instead of 1.5’s because I couldn’t find any 1.5’s at the time. So the sweater may end up even MORE large than I’d like, but we shall see. There’s a lot of negative ease so it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle. (When in doubt, I may shrink out of it, and Jezzie, my bestie and roommate, might shrink into it, so I think it’ll still get plenty of wear!)

Right now I’m almost at 2” of ribbing completed, and I’m planning to add several more inches than the pattern calls for. Like a total of 9 inches instead of 6. I’m terrified of it being too short. It seems like slow going because I’m working the whole sweater as opposed to a front/back panel separately, but in the end I think I’ll be happier that I did it this way.

The trick seems to be finding something good on tv that I can half-pay-attention-to and just get into a good knitting pace. I noticed when I did that the other night I suddenly had a half inch (5 rows of 288 stitches) done!

June 18, 2012 - Finished the ribbing while on vacation. I added a few inches to it because I prefer slightly longer sweaters than this seemed to be. Even the designer and other people have mentioned they’d like it slightly longer. Right now I’m in the process of cutting lengths of yarn for the intarsia and winding them on bobby pins to keep them neat. It’s a long process! But it will be worth it and soon I can start my first intarsia! Nervous! XD

July 21, 2012 - I tried the intarsia a couple of times and ended up frogging it back to the ribbing. It’s my first intarsia, so I expected as much. To be honest, I’m a little scared of working on this sweater only because I don’t want to mess up the argyle. I’m not hibernating it, but will be working on it slowly since I know there’s no way I’ll be able to finish it before the summer is over.