Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Discovering My Intarsia Carriage

It's been sitting in a box in my craft room for years calling me.  I didn't really know what intarsia was until I hand knitted a hat as a Christmas present for my daughter.  I was having trouble getting the pattern to work and sent a picture to an experienced hand knitter friend.  She sent back "Oh you're doing intarsia you need to twist the yarns."  I looked up videos on what the heck I was supposed to do and it was simpler than I thought.

When I had a bag to do out of the same book as the above hat I thought why couldn't I do it on my knitting machine.  OH!  I have that intarsia carriage let's get it out and see how to use it.  Meanwhile, looking online at a YouTube video of a machine knitting pattern done by a Russian gal I came across a video of her using the intarsia carriage to knit my arch nemesis yarn Sashay.  I was quite excited that I recognized that it was an intarsia carriage and I gave myself a V-8 forehead slap, because why didn't I think of using it myself.  It made making a Filly Scarf on the knitting machine that much easier.  I had gotten it down to 2 hours.  Greatly faster and greatly less frustrating than doing it by hand.  If I could do it faster that would be even better as I had 3 skeins of that stuff left that I was very tempted to throw it in the trash.  Yes, it's aggravated me that much.  So much so that one skein was on my craft room floor.  Every time I saw it there I didn't think "Oh I should pick that up."  I thought, "Oh that's right where you belong."

Today with the intarsia carriage I made peace with Sashay.  In one hour I had knitted a Filly scarf easy.

 I found out the weight I used was too much.  Took it off when scarf was about 12 inches long and the weight of the scarf was plenty.  The needle set up was from the video.  I could easily hang the Sashay skipping every other hole with the needles that far a part.
 Can I refind the video on YouTube?  No!  It's in Russian, so I can't even search for it.  When I come across it again I'll post it.  It gave me such a wonderful idea.

Big thank you to my commenter Misha Moon for giving me the link to the youtube video:  Video Lesson "Curly" scarf.

5 comments:

  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfgQKvdsNOA&list=PLS7Vm8KB7iCS1GrQsSfKzGFGTDYzbdTXf
    This might be it.

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  2. Hi Lynne, your email address was bouncing so I'm trying this instead... Your happy orange is so awesome! Thanks for sharing the story. Sorry it's taken me a while to respond. I'm right in the middle of mayhem with some commissions and a wedding this Sat. Did you do it at night? I don't think you need to do that at all! I did my first at night and have done them in the day ever since. People love it and I've never heard of someone getting in trouble.SUCH a great use of the reflective. You should let Red Heart know about it! They donated the yarn for our superheroes and would love to know how people are inspired to use it. BTW thanks for your blog post about your intarsia carriage. I haven't tried it yet on the machine and am nervous!

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  3. Thans so much. Guess I'll pick that yarn up off the floor now.

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    Replies
    1. Haha Sashay can be frustrating. It now deserves a spot OFF the floor.

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