Intarsia One AND Two

I am now the proud owner of two Intarsia DVDs. How did this happen? Well, I sent off for Intarsia One, but I only got around to watching it last week. (The only time I get to watch knitting DVDs is the mornings I have time and am awake enough to feel like it at breakfast time, which isn't very often!) I slotted it in, sat back with my bowl of cereal with a happy sigh, and the first think Lucy said was: 'As I showed you on the last DVD.' HUH?? I'd been sent number two instead. After some thought I decided it was probably fate and rang the shop. Rather than mess around with returns, they gave me a small discount and I bought the first one as well. I'm going to be so clued up on intarsia!!

I've watched number one now, and like all Lucy's DVDs it is excellent. It began, of course, with Lucy holding up horrid samples of what not to do. All the mistakes looked familiar. I could get a job knitting what-not-to-do samples for Lucy. Then she shows you how to do it properly. I can't wait to have a go! There's a beautiful Argyle slip over in the new book of men's patterns I got last week (and haven't blogged about yet). I'll know how to do it now.

But not until I've a) finished my rib warmer and worked out how to use the armscye calculator from Exercise Before Knitting so that I can finish the Debbie Bliss shrug. Aren't people generous, by the way? There's loads of cool stuff on the Internet that people have spent hours working on and then made free for everyone. It gives me hope for the future!

I also think I might be getting a glimmer re the armscye calculator. I fed in the actual decreases and rows and the sleeve and body measurements didn't match. It suddenly dawned on me that well, no, of course they didn't! The pattern is wrong, that's why they don't match. What I have to do next is to tinker with the number of decreases until the measurements match. Easy. All I need now is time.