Still Intarsia!

So I've been consistently working on my Knit Picks Road Trip Kit Harbor Light tote bag. I'm not finished with the intarsia panel, but I am way ahead of schedule on it. I was hoping to be half done with both the sides and back, and the intarsia panel, by the middle of June, instead I'm more than ¾ of the way done at the beginning of June! I think the finishing-blocking, seaming the pieces together, lining using both fabric and interfacing, the handles; all of that is going to take quite a while. I'm weaving in the ends as I go along so that will save me some time at the end. I'm hoping to get it all done by the end of July, and I don't think that will be a problem, but I'm glad I will have plenty of time because seaming the pieces together is probably going to take a lot longer than I thought. The edge stitches of the intarsia panel are pretty wonky, so it's going to be very difficult to seam them together with the back/side piece. Can't wait to see the finished bag!

Intarsia is Fun!

As usual, I have several projects on the knitting needles, but by far the largest one I'm working on is the Road Trip Tote Harbor Light Kit by Knit Picks. It's beautiful, or at least I hope it will be. I've gotten up to row 10 of the front intarsia panel. Intarsia is a knitting technique that uses lots of little pieces of color. In this case, the intarsia makes a picture, so it's called picture knitting. Every time there is a new section of color, you add a new piece of yarn. At first I was using 4-5 yards of color, but as you can imagine, it got tangled up very quickly, so I've found that using 2-3 yard pieces of yarn works much better, since it's a lot easier to untangle. And there is a lot of untangling. Here is a picture of my progress so far, and believe it or not, this is after untangling. I'm a little bit surprised, but it's actually kind of fun! I like following the chart and watching the picture appear.