ON THE NEEDLES: In the absence of current knitting projects to show off (still slogging through that long list of 'finishing/tucking in ends' projects) I'll tell you a story about my 'beach blanket'. Almost two years ago, I got an idea that I'd like to try intarsia knitting for the first time. I had a photo of a favorite beach (Tribune Bay on Hornby Island, to be precise) that I had been hoping to somehow 'reproduce' and it would require knowing how to change colors across the row. Around the same time I found an online site that will instantly change your uploaded photo into a knitting graph. Here's the photo:
And then you upload the photo at Microrevolt.org to have it magically changed to a graph.
And here, with a little creative embellishment, is the queen-sized blanket I knit as a result...
But here's the thing ... after, let's see, 320 stitches per row (which took about 7 minutes to knit) and 6 rows to the inch, and the completed blanket is 84" long ... after about 70 hours of work ... I don't like this blanket. It's not just because it took so long, either. It's because it doesn't work in the bedroom at all, it's much too busy; and because even the tiny bit of acrylic I used (for those dark 'mountains in the distance' at the midpoint) has already pilled; and because I spilled some coffee on it while it was a WIP and the cleaners couldn't get it out. In short, I don't like this blanket. It's a work of art, I guess, but .... I have to decide what to do with it now.
