It was brought to my attention that I am a bad blogger, seeing as how I rarely blog. OK, I know I haven't been "with the words" lately. However there is no motivation like a boutique knitting shop, chock full of old ladies knitting and ridiculously over-priced yarns to get my ambitious knitting blood pump'n and words flow'n. So yesterday that is exactly where I went. Did I need yarn? No not necessarily, especially since I still have half a playtime top to finish, but there is nothing like access and convenience to convince me I need something. So I bought the yarn for a project I had promised to a friend last year. Two skeins of navy blue and one skein of medium gold/yellow.
Did I mention I constantly bite of more than I can chew? Sure scarfs are easy, I've done a ton of them - BUT this scarf is a figment of my imagination (ie: no pattern) and involves an Intarsia technique which I can't even pronounce much less do well enough to create something worthy of a gift. Yeah, that is a mouthful in more ways than one.
In any case here is a synopsis of the scarf since I can't provide a pattern or a picture. The friend that it is for went to UC Berkeley, commonly known as Cal. Cal has many logos but one is that of script letters that spell out Cal (seen here).
This friend is a die hard fan and we attend all the Cal football games together, so I essentially promised her a blue scarf with the yellow script "Cal" at one end of the scarf. I have since decided that the other end of the scarf would look nice with a yellow bear paw print (Cal mascot is of course the California Bear). I know I said I was going to finish this playtime top project then work on something for myself but I clearly lied. This scarf is so beyond my ability, if I don't start it now I will have no hope of finishing in time for the colder weather and start of football season.
For the sake of a visual here is an example, though this one only has something at one end and is for an entirely different school, but you get the idea. Instead of a "T" I will knit "Cal" and so forth.
(p.s. I obviously didn't make the scarf pictured here, I found it in a google image search).So here I am researching Intarsia and trying to find examples of the right font online and figure out how to make the letters in the right proportion. Once I do that I just need to figure out how to incorporate the second color of yarn and I'll be good to go. The ladies at the knitting shop as well as many online resources emphasize the importance of "twisting" the yarn to avoid holes between colors. That's all I got folks, any suggestions??
