Onward to intarsia

Ohio State Block O Dishcloth

Yarn: Lily The Original Sugar'n Cream (100% cotton; worsted weight)
Colorways: Black and Red
Needles: US 7s
Stitches: 41

The main reason I've avoided colorwork is because it seems confusing. Managing multiple strands sounds like a headache. Mistakes seem inevitable and an enormous mess to fix. To that I say, no thanks.

Yet there I was, glued to the chair, knitting this dishcloth in two extended sessions using intarsia, a term that makes the technique sound like a foreign land. To complicate matters, the pattern isn't written for two colors, although it's a measure of my ability to read it that adapting it for my purposes was pretty easy. Well, that and the fact that it is a straightforward pattern.

Assuming that I did the intarsia correctly, all I needed was pages 248 & 249 of The Knitting Answer Book to set me on the path. I jumped in not exactly certain of what I was about to do, but it was of supreme help that this method made logical sense to me when plotting the project.

The bobbins were a hassle, perhaps in part because I had no clue how much to cut and sometimes was dealing with far too much loose-hanging and unwinding yarn and too-long ends. Keeping five bobbins from tangling was a chore, although I most assuredly did myself no favors by having the yarn dangling in an unorganized manner.

Adding yarn was fairly easy, but I wasn't sure what to do when I needed to get rid of bobbins. Correctly or not, I decided to knot the bobbin yarn with the working yarn when the latter reached the last knit bobbin yarn. It worked, as far as I can tell.

I only had one significant hole in the knitting. Unsurprisingly, that was produced at the spot where I did my first color change. I quickly learned to pull the discarded color's yarn tight after knitting the first stitch of the new color. That took care of gaps. Weaving in the end at the hole filled it in satisfactorily.

I did most of the colorwork in one sitting because I just wanted to get it done. I don't know that I'd say I enjoyed that knitting, but the three or so hours I spent working on 75% of the block O saw my speed increase because I got the hang of it better than if I'd done a little from time to time. The primary improvement came in managing those darn bobbins, which I tucked between my legs and the armrests.

The wrong side, pictured at the top of this entry, is what I prefer as the right side. The stockinette O is my preferred right side because the sewed-in end are less noticeable. I don't think there's any way of eliminating the line of black purls between the red stitches--they're on both sides--but I suppose I could claim it is a creative way of conveying depth.

If I knew anything about blocking, I'd try to stretch this so the block O isn't quite as square. Still, I think it's a respectable looking FO, especially for my first time trying my hand at intarsia. Whether it's my last remains to be seen.