Finished: Brett's Flaming Lucha Libre Mask

Yay!! It's finally done!! After 3 months and a bit this bad boy is done, done, DONE!! I don't know who's happier, Brett cause he finally gets to play wear his mask, or me cause I don't have to work on it any more!! I honestly thought that this would be an easy knit for me, and in some spots, it was. Half of this project though, was definitely not easy. I think this is solely due to the fact that I completely and totally suck at intarsia. Now I know why all my projects don't involve colorwork of any kind. I get weirdly stressed out from having way too many strands of yarn floating around, and I really hate how messy and how much it looks like a bird's nest in the back of the work. Ugh, colorwork and me just do not mix!

I had ended up knitting and then ripping up the colorwork at the mouth area at least 3 times before realizing what I was doing wrong...the yellow yarn was a sport weight while the red yarn was a worsted and so the yellow just couldn't hold up against the red. Duh! Out of frustration I tried again with the yellow held doubled. Situation, fixed. Love for the mask, zero. Brett should be happy that I love him enough to go through all this frustration and yucky acrylic to knit him this mask. I had actually worked on it pretty hard core and then it sat on the back burner in favor of other (more fun) projects...until Brett started to pester me about it, and was taking the mask out and was leaving it on top of the computer keyboard and on top of other knitting projects. Yeah, hints duly noted.

I think the knitting on the mask would have gone by much faster had I actually paid attention to the chart rather than just doing what I thought it was suppose to be. A lot of ripping back was the result of my lack of reading skills. I was almost done the colorwork when the Knit Picks yarn bobbins that I had ordered finally arrived. Even though it was almost too late in the game to use them, I figured since I had them I should try them out...and maybe they would help out with the mess that is the million strands of yarn hanging out at the back. Wow...I love these things. Because of them, I think I'm tempted to try out more colorwork! They are that awesome! I used to do little butterflies for the colorwork yarn, but they would still get in the way and all tangled up, but with these babies? HUGE difference! And the stress levels were practically nil! I kid you not!

Anyways, once the colorwork in the face was (finally!) done the rest of the mask was smooth sailing and had knitted up lightning quick. Even the dreaded sewing up of the back of the head was super easy and fast! I'm thinking this probably due to the fact that I was a) using acrylic and not wool so the chances of the yarn breaking were eliminated, b) I was using a light colored yarn which made for seeing what I was doing pretty easy, and c) I just wanted to get the blasted thing done! And yet, after all of that it still took me forever to get all the ends woven in and completely and totally finished. After the knitting and the sewing I was even more emotionally finished with this project than I ever was. Poor Brett had to wait even longer to have his beloved mask totally completed. Not that the mass of yarn strands inside the mask prevented him from sporting it around the house and taking several goofy photos of himself with it on in Photobooth.

The other day I finally sucked it up and wove in all the ends, just so that I could cross this project off my project list AND off my 101 goals list too! Ahhh...it feels good...really good. For those of you who want to venture out and try your hand at making a mask of your very own, here are the project deets:

Pattern: Lucha Libre by Kelli Ladwig, which is in the Son of Stitch 'n Bitch book.
Yarns: Red Heart Super Saver Solids and Patons Astra
Colors: Red and white in the Red Heart, yellow in the Astra
Needles: Knit Picks Harmony Wood Interchangeables in US 7 (for the ribbing) and US 9

And just because the Munchkin wants to be just like Daddy:

** Forgive the craptastic quality of the photos...I think my camera is dying on me.