I hate intarsia. But, I believe it’s like childbirth, though I’ve never embarked on that twice. But, people tell me that you forget…and you go back in to it with little or no fear of what is coming. Then it hits, and you go, oh…crap. And that sounds about right.
Six years ago I decided, in a moment of color frenzy, to make an intarsia sweater out of an Alafoss Lopi book. You complete the sweater in small sections, and then join them. So, as if the intarsia wasn’t bad enough, now I had to not only sew in all the little strands of yarn, but I also had to put the whole sweater together. I hate finishing sweaters. I hated this sweater. It took me two years to finish.
Time passed.
Last year I saw Nonna’s Garden Shawl from Knitpicks.com. And all I could think about was, color, I like color. And stupidly I purchased it. (That and an intarsia purse kit…more on that to come).
Let me be very frank…..
This shawl is the shawl from hell. It’s a present for my mother, and now I’m starting to resent my mother for it. She doesn’t know about the shawl….but I blame her all the same. I am on row 32 out of 160 something rows. It has taken me HOURS to get this far. I’ve timed it. On average it takes about 45 minutes to complete a row. So far, I’ve wasted 24 hours already. And that’s not counting the repeated (and I mean at least five) trips to the wool stores to get bobbins. I cleaned Ottawa out of bobbins. You need a lot of them. Trust me.
To make matters much much worse, they warn you ahead of time to be careful with the yarn as there is just enough to complete the shawl. For me, I can tell you, there is not enough to complete the shawl. I will be ordering more shortly. Or I will be giving up. Or at row 78 I shall just sit curled up in a corner crying. I don’t know.
I’m already dreading the finishing…all those little strands…they tell me to knot them, but that goes against every knitting bone in me.
The horror. The horror.