Progress on Botticelli

I posted a few weeks ago about finding out from a fellow Raveler that I was using an erroneous chart for the Botticelli sweater from the latest Rowan magazine. I have to reiterate that for the money they charge - both for the yarn and for the patterns - they really should get their books right on the first go. It took a lot of the fun out of the project to have to rip out all the intarsia work I'd done up to that point, and I was close to just scrapping the thing altogether. It's a lovely sweater, though, so I have persisted a row or two at a time while watching TV. I'm finally back to where I was, in fact I might be a bit further along than I was, when I had to rip out. So here's a shot of the thing's progress so far. This is the back.



Also of interest to intarsia knitters may be the simple tool I broke down and made out of half of a 3x5 index card (cut lengthways) with holes punched along one side and labeled A-H (and the corresponding symbols in the chart) with lengths of each yarn drawn through the holes. I got tired of juggling the balls of yarn, which I wrote the letters on, to figure out what a square with a small dot in it was as opposed to a square with a large dot in it, etc. This has already proven quite helpful and I recommend it if you have more than a few colors to keep track of.



You can also see that I use a post-it note and cover up rows as I go along. Honestly, I really find intarsia to be much more work than I enjoy in my knitting. You have to pay too much attention for it to be especially meditative or soothing.