Prepping For Flight

July 28th, 2011

The following ramble is brought to you by 4 hours of sleep, and the Heat Wave of 2011.

I have an assortment of milestones associated with my Phoenix Jacket. The first one was just getting cast on, since that required figuring out how many stitches I needed. The rest kind of shift as things go, and I learn something is easier or harder than it had seemed. The intarsia is one of those things. I had hoped to finish the intarsia before I went on vacation. In fact, I wanted to have the whole body done, except the borders, by the time I left. I now see that is not going to happen. Although changing bobbins has definitely helped, it’s still roughly 30-45 minutes per intarsia row, depending on the difficulty. Well, I’ve reached a milestone: the tail section is complete. I haven’t even colored the graph in for the body of the phoenix, so that is something I’ll have to do tonight or tomorrow. In order to finish this jacket by the end of August, as is required by Nerd Wars, I will have to take the phoenix with me on my vacation. Until then, I’m attempting as many rows as possible every day. Today I spent nearly 6 hours, and completed the last 9 rows of the tail. I’ve got roughly another inch of only 3 intarsia stitches — a wonderful break from the more complicated intarsia — before the bird’s feet. When I start the feet, I will also be binding off the underarm stitches, and then decreasing for the armhole. Since intarsia in the round requires working back and forth anyway, I won’t be steeking the armholes. This is going to make the body of the phoenix much quicker. If I didn’t have other things to do and jobs to work, I’d be knitting non-stop in order to get to the armholes! Well… here’s the picture of the current progress:

Actually, I think I might forgo sleep tonight and get some work done… both on the phoenix, and otherwise. If I can get to the armholes, I think I just might be able to get the phoenix done before my trip, and only have to finish the front while on my vacation. Leaving bobbins and four extra colors at home sounds like a very good idea!