My love/hate relationship with intarsia

So a few months ago, one of my husbands cousins announced she was pregnant, and asked me to knit her a baby blanket. Of course, I said yes. She then told me she didn't want any ordinary blanket, she wanted something worthy of hanging on the wall above the baby's crib. Apprehensively, I told her I was up to the challenge. A few weeks later, we agreed on a geometric pattern my husband and I designed. I decided to use it on the Big Bad Baby Blanket by Lisa Shobahna Mason, a pattern I came across in my first and only knitting book (yes I am planning on expanding my library in the near future). It is a simple blanket so it would  be easy to throw some intarsia in there, right?  When it came time to actually sit down and knit the dang thing, I thought to myself, what in the WORLD did I get myself into???

Getting my gauge, which I highly recommend, was really easy. Creating my intarsia graph, on the other hand, wasn't. After about four frustrating hours of trying to do it myself, I turned to the internet, and found the beautiful chart generator that is knitPro. Instant  headache relief! Today, I actually was able to start the intarsia part of this project...

I absolutely LURVE me some intarsia, post knitting. Getting it to that point, however, is not exactly my idea of a good time. Especially on a project of this size. I spent quite a bit of time separating yarn onto bobbins for each little section of color. I still ended up having to detangle everything at the end of each row. I suspect part of the reason I appreciate the end result so much is because of the hard work I put into it. There's just something about putting hard work into something and have it turn out beautiful. Like having a baby. That would explain why I feel a little separation anxiety whenever I send off a project I spent a lot of time and effort on.

It makes me a bit sad knowing that the recipients may appreciate the gift, but never fully understand it unless they are yarn crafters themselves. It feels good knowing that there are random strangers out there who can look at a picture of my FO, and instantly understand what I went through to get there. The internet is a wonderful place.