Mutts

Today, I found the website of my favoritest comic strip in the whole world, Mutts by Patrick McDonnell. This sweet and whimsical strip manages to bring a smile to the lips of even a pessimistic cynic like me. Yesh, it does.

Thanks for all the kind comments about Mosaic. I'm particularly proud of it and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to have make it. Just to clear up any confusion: I finished it back in 2001 and I do wear it even though I never put any buttons on it. By now I don't think the buttons are necessary?I would probably never wear it buttoned anyway. However, it does have a lovely set of button holes which match up along the outside and inside facing of the front band.

pubah asked, "do you find that you are able to achieve any rhythm in your knitting when doing intarsia?" Good question.

As I've mentioned, I am strongly attracted to geometric patterns and currently seem to be in a square and rectangle phase. Patterns like these translate very well into intarsia and really don't end up being much less "rhythmic" than plain stockinette. In a stripey pattern like CPS, colors tend to change all on the same row (this was also true for Checkers). The breaks in rhythm really only come when new colors are added on a row, the twisting of colors along a row isn't distracting at all (for instance, not any more than a cable would be). So, with CPS, once I've set all the color changes I can knit for six to eight rows before I have to stop and change colors again. To me, this seems pretty similar to the experience of knitting a Fair Isle where colors change every so many rows, the major difference being the lack of purl rows in stranded knitting.

Changing or adding colors is even less disruptive when I precut all the lengths for several stripes. I can then just pick up the segments I need as I come to them. One advantage of knitting patterns composed of quadrangles is that it certainly makes it easy to predetermine the lengths of yarn needed for each color block.

When I first started knitting the back, I figured out approximately how much yarn I was using for a predetermined number of stitches (e.g., about 7" of yarn for every ten stitches). I then looked at the chart and calculated how many stitches were in each block. [And you thought geometry would never be useful!] A 4 by 8 block would contain 32 stitches (4*8=32). Since there are 7 inches for every 10 stitches (7/10), how many inches will I need for 32 stitches (X/32)? The length of yarn required is (32*7)/10, or X=22.4 inches. [Ha! Algebra too!] I add 4 inches to allow for tails to weave and round up for the fudge factor; and so, for a 32 stitch block I will need a 27" length of yarn. [Now, if I could just get calculus in there somehow, I would be truly happy]. I haven't bothered to do this calculation for all the blocks, for the large blocks I just leave the ball attached. I don't bother with bobbins and even try to avoid using butterflies when I can. I just let the short lengths dangle; it makes detangling easier.

I could expound more on this topic and may do so in a day or two, but that's enough for one evening.