Techderp: My Journey With Knitting #1: The Legend of Zelda Triforce Eagle Blanket

Hay guiz! Pun Intended here again. It's been far too long since I've poked my head in, hasn't it?

Let's all have a group hug!

Some of you may have seen floating around tumblr a knitted blanket with the Triforce Eagle on it from The Legend of Zelda. If you haven't, well now you have.
It took me around roughly 5 months to create with a lot of blood, sweat, and television.

WATCH ALL THE JOSS WHEDON SHOWS EVAR

Before I started it, I had learned about stranded knitting (basically a method of knitting with more than one color in a row. Stranded knitting looks a lot like this) and wanted to make something cool and nerdy with it. What better way to start than with The Legend of Zelda?

I initially was going to create it as a small throw pillow for my boyfriend, but he was hesitant on the idea of a knitted pillow (he thought it'd be too small or whatever reason it was that he gave that I can't exactly remember).

Then. Something beautiful happened in my mind.

I had finished a blanket not too long ago and realized that instead of a pillow, I could create the Triforce Eagle on a large scale. As a throw blanket.

It was love at first thought

Right away I started on the pattern (I will write another post at a later date on my process on creating knitting patterns using Photoshop and Excel).

Once the pattern was created, I started knitting it using the stranded knitting method.

As a tip. That's an awful idea when using huge blocks of color. Bad. Bad. Bad. Idea. *waggles index finger at past self*

I had to pull out 40+ rows of work (the first 40 rows were all one color) and I was back to the drawing board.

I learned the hard way when using huge blocks of color with a lot of separation between the two...use intarsia knitting (basically using multiple things of yarn rather than carrying the same ball of yarn along the back of the work. Every time you change color, you need another thing of yarn. Yes. "thing" is my official term. It falls alongside doohicky and whatchamacallit. Knitting is very technical, duncha know?)

Now that I finally had the right method of knitting for my blanket, everything should have gone swimmingly now? Right?

~Just keep knitting, just keep knitting~!

Wrong.

Admittedly, it was WAY easier working on it with the intarsia method of knitting. It still didn't prevent my own idiocy from interfering. When working on an intarsia pattern on such a large scale (or any pattern in general that's complicated), it's important that you always pay attention to the pattern. Especially so when starting on a new row.

There were a few times that I had to pull things out and start over (thankfully not from the beginning) on account of me not noticing until it was too late that I was supposed to change colors a row or two back!

One time, in the triforce part of it, I somehow went off a stitch with yellow so the side wasn't completely lined up perfectly. Rather than pull it all out completely (the mistake was about 10 rows back). I took some spare green yarn, crocheted a chain of it, and sewed it in over where it should be over that one small part I unwound. It was a fast fix, and it actually came out rather nice. I even forget now where I did it!

However, one of my worst (and my most easily preventable..) mistakes happened near the end. I was too busy to be able to go out and buy yarn for a few hours, but I was so excited that I was almost done, rather than just put my knitting away and wait till I had more yarn....I did a small section with the stranded method. I thought I was at a part of the pattern where it was close enough together for it to look right...yeah...no. Just no. It puckered a bit and and all around just didn't look as nice as the rest of the blanket. I had to pull out the 15 rows I did, and redo it. It set me back a few weeks just because I avoided pulling it out for a while because I was so mad at myself.

Accurate portrayal of my emotions at the time

Any time you're too excited to be able to finish to wait to buy yarn. WAIT. WAIT. WAIT. WAIT. If you doubt your judgement and do a trick to make your yarn last longer...it's not worth it in the long run.You'd still need to buy more yarn anyway Just wait for more yarn and it'll come out beautifully and you'll save more time and save yourself from heartache in the end.

Though with all of my mistakes and trials and all that jazz, it came out well. Once I sat my ass down and forced myself to be patient, I was able to finish it with no more self-inflicted mistakes.

The finished product: