UGA Intarsia hat, attempt #1

Blake is obsessed with UGA. So I took on the challenge of knitting him a UGA hat. Here's the process for hat attempt #1:

1. buy some snazzy red, black and silver yarn (Wool-Ease "Ranch Red" and "Black" and Paton's Brilliant "White Twinkle")
2. knit a swatch to figure out the guage (19sts x 22rows = 4")
3. create a chart based on the guage
4. create a pattern based on a UGA logo and my new custom-chart
5. use the same simple hat pattern I've used before
6. knit

Here's the results:

The original UGA logo

The pattern I created using Macromedia Fireworks

The resulting hat. The 'G' is HUGE and the colors are a bit bunchy (I need to work on my tension).

I've only done intarsia knitting a couple times, so I knew this would be a challenge. Its hard to lock your stitches together when you switch colors without messing up the tension. More than that... I should have probably had 3 balls of silver hanging off the back instead of two (making each side of the silver ring a seperate strand of yarn and the middle its own piece) instead I used 2 balls -- carrying the silver across the back of one side of the G -- so one side of the G gets really bunchy (bad tension on my part).

Next steps:

1. knit something for myself (sorry Blake)
2. find some red and black yarn with a smaller guage (maybe Paton's Grace in cardinal and night?). Right now I'm using two strands of silver held together... so if I can find a red and black about the same guage as the single strand of silver, I can shrink the size of the G without changing the pattern itself.
3. Knit it again... being careful when I switch colors and not getting impatient with the intarsia.
4. blog

Responses[2]

Posted by Jessica on June 20, 2006 4:39:13 PM EDT #