05-10-2016

I’m giving up for now. I tried all kinds of techniques for wrangling the live yarn and ended up with crossed eyes and a grumpy mood. This wrap is absolutely gorgeous and I will definitely knit it one day, but today is not that day. Mom will get something else for her birthday this year.

07-25-2016

Copy of OWL proposal to be re-used in fall term; some photos may need to be added to prove that this is not a continuation of spring OWL and that no work has been done before approval:

OWL: Herbology, Option 2: Botanical: Use knitting or crochet to capture a field of flowers or other plants within your crafted items to display their beauty to others. These may be motifs or design elements however they must be clearly visible to others and must be a prominent design feature rather than an accent within the object(s).
Description of Work:

For this O.W.L., I propose to knit Sweetspire by Carol Levander. This wrap consists of approximately fifty intarsia leaves and uses two separate colors of Blue Moon Fiber Arts BFL Sport. The project calls for the Firecracker and Saffron Jungle colorways, and I like the combo so much that I’m using them:

(insert picture of full skeins here; use pic from project page)

I got gauge on the recommended size 5 needles:

(gauge swatch picture here)

Sequence and Points of Consideration (edit this section for accuracy):

I have never tried intarsia. Never. And when I think about the fact that this project will start with 19 - 19! - separate balls of yarn, one for each leaf at the wide end of the wrap, my eyes cross a little bit and I feel a little faint. How will I keep this thing from becoming a tangled disaster? This is why this project is O.W.L. level for me. I’m certain that the knitting itself is well-within my abilities (the leaves aren’t hard to knit), but all those balls of yarn…oy vey. But I’ve wanted to knit this pattern ever since the moment I saw it back in 2013. My current plan is to give it to my mom for her birthday in August, which fits nicely with the term deadline and will keep me moving forward. So I respectfully submit this proposal in the hopes that you’ll approve it, thus lighting a fire under my behind and making it that much more likely that my mom will get a great birthday present!

ETA 50% Mark:
To make this simple, I’m going to say the 50% mark will be reached when 25 leaves have been completed. This is slightly past the 50% mark since the three setup rows consist of 375 stitches in a K1 P1 rib, but in terms of work (which includes tucking threads and blocking) it’s close to 50%.

08-12-2016

Moving this back to WIP status, just to start prepping for my fall OWL. No work has been done; the yarn is still balled up.

09-20-2016

I’m 13 rows into the pattern as of last night and I’m loving this knit! It’s complicated, yes (row 11 took me close to an hour to complete!) but it’s incredibly rewarding. I have some overall thoughts about the pattern and project, but I’ll share those later. Meanwhile, I’m just so glad that I re-attempted this project!

11-29-2016

Done! Done, done, done…and I love it! The pattern is actually really easy to follow, and it’s so satisfying to see the number of stitches decrease as the project progresses.

I didn’t use bobbins for my yarn colors; instead, I just let the yarn dangle and I spit-spliced new pieces to my working yarn. It gave me some slightly thicker spots, but nothing noticeable, and it left me with fewer ends to weave in.

The BFL Sport is lovely to work with, and the colors are vibrant and beautiful. The pictures of my project are a fairly true depiction of the actual shades.

All in all, I wish I’d given this a real shot before now. It was a satisfying knit, just challenging enough that I feel like I’ve accomplished something, but not so difficult that I didn’t enjoy the challenge.