Meh, some stuff.

Just talking to the Yarnist (who is changing her address, I'll update my sidebar) about intarsia. She asked if I had any ideas about keeping intarsia tension even. Since I typed it all out, I'm control v'ing it here. She's working on a baby blanket, which is sort of perfect for intarsia because it's small(ish), flat, usually in fun colors and with fun designs to keep you interested.

"Getting intarsia to be even, that takes a bit of practice. Unhelpful as this will be on a baby blanket, wool would be your best friend, as it's most forgiving and will lock itself up, assisting your efforts. You need to be sure to twist the stitches every time, and keeping your tails short (at first at least) will help you manage the tension. If the tails are too long, they'll get pulled and then things will get wonky. Try to keep your work just a hair looser than you'd be comfortable with on a "normal" piece, but very even. I don't know if you weave in ends as you go, or do them all at once when your work is complete, but I'd advise method two when starting out, it gives you a way back in to fiddle with tension after the fact - whether you have problems with your work being too tight or too loose. Once done, if the work is a bit loose, wet blocking can solve most minor issues. You can also supplement a complicated, multi-color piece by using Swiss darning after the main knitting is done, fewer colors makes intarsia easier."

What else . . . I've started on Matrix 2, haven't yet made it to the beads, so no snaps yet. Maybe I'll call this one Iron Man. :) Yes, originally I was thinking of the Ozzy Osbourne song, but once I did some reading, I think I like the cartoon character better. And yes, there is no real relationship to knitting at all with that name, it's not a clever reference, I just think the beads look like hematite. Come to think of it, maybe I just have a fascination with cartoons as an adult because I only had 2.5 television stations growing up and one of them was PBS.

Oh, and I have 13 balls of Comfy in Cypress. I want to make a sweater knit from front hem up, increase out for the sleeves, up over the head, down and over. But Comfy is so soft, I fear horrible stretchiness, so I'm on a quest for a nice simple, dense stitch pattern for it.
Prepare for swatches, I guess.