Barack Obama

So I found this really amazing pattern, and really wanted to make it. I totally went to the LYS and bought some yarn and everything. Then I got back to my room and I realized that I had bought bright blue yarn instead of the navy blue required. At first I was really upset. Then I realized I had done exactly one (1) intarsia project before--a vertically striped scarf--and that doing a portrait of the man who I believe will be the next president of the United States (if you haven't clicked through that link, you really ought to), no matter how stylized it may be, was quite possibly clinically insane. So I decided to do some generic sweater or other, but Obama-ified--specifically, I'm doing Nothin' but a T-shirt. So far, I've knit the bottom of the back (several times):



I learned many valuable lessons, including that it is better to cut the lengths of yarn long than short (I did not, by the way, use bobbins; that would truly have been clinically insane), and that if you notice a mistake in your intarsia you need to either use your powers of Zen to let the mistake slide or rip all the way back to the mistake--dropping down sets of stitches will just cause you grief later on. I used the Obama-rama chart for the word hope--the piece in progress is the back; the reason the word is so low is so I could practice my intarsia right away, and also because my hair is really long. Like, really long. At this point it would probably obscure the "HOPE", but I really need a haircut.

My plan for the front is to knit the piece in white, with the Obama logo as charted by C Jane Knit as the center chest logo. The sleeves will possibly be all bright blue, unless I need to buy more skeins of light blue. Because I don't really have a good yardage instinct.

If you want to see the back, by the way:



Don't worry, I don't mind weaving in ends. For intarsia, it's kind of like a puzzle. I do plan to do them a few at a time, though, in order to not go insane.

That's what I've been knitting on most recently, although of course there are scads of things to Ravel and/or blog about. Trine, sorry I didn't get to Urchin--I did do some updating of the Ravelry page, but mostly I just added photos, I didn't do a complete update. I was totally going to put that in this post too, but I really need to do my homework.