I recently finished knitting this:

This was my first attempt at intarsia!  I wish I had a little human on which to model it, but I couldn’t quite squeeze it over Davey’s head!  It’s a 12- month size, and it’s really a great sweater pattern.  I’d highly recommend it for both a first sweater and a first intarsia project.  The pattern is from Roo Designs.  She has lots of really cute patterns.  Puppies, peace signs, penguins – all intarsia.

Here’s the puppy one.

I really like this striped sweater with the skull and crossbones too!

I can thank my LYS, Yarn Folk, for inspiring me to finally try intarsia. I’ve been kind of scared of it. I was afraid that I would have big unsightly holes where I had to join the colors.  It wasn’t too hard though.  It was not unlike what I do when I switch colors in fair isle – when I catch the old color under the new so that there is a smooth transition.

Ann at Yarn Folk was leading a knit-along for this sweater, and she helped me lots.  She taught me to make my little butterflies that I needed to switch back and forth between the colors.

It was a little tricky – the butterflies took me a little while to get used to.  I am very skilled at tangling yarn as well.  It seems to happen quite naturally for me.  So there was a few breaks for untangling along the way.

I am pretty happy with it though!  I knitted it with Plymouth Encore which is a great inexpensive wool/acrylic blend.  I like working with it.

Here’s the back:

I’d like to try this again sometime, and I’d like to do another Roo Design pattern.  Maybe Davey would like the skull and crossbones sweater!  It would be a lot of fun to make.

Knitting intarsia is one of those “makes me feel like a real knitter moments”.  I definitely want to try it again sometime.