My skully cardigan (And how to make your own intarsia pattern)

As I was trying to find an intarsia pattern for the back of my planned cardigan, I wanted to find something that would be unexpected - not something sweet and wholesome that someone's grandmother would make.  I combed through the internet looking for something, then I realized I could create my own pattern!

So I found an image that was from a color-in page for a kid's pirate-themed party of a skull and crossbones.  I increased the size of the image and set it as the background on an Excel spreadsheet.  I then re-sized the cells so that they would resemble that of knit stitches (while now I realize my error, I should have aimed to make them square, but mine were a bit more narrow than that).  Then I carefully formatted all the cells that would be the contrast color for the pattern by selecting them and using the "Check Cell" pre-fab formatting.  This meant that the contrast cells were all dark grey and had an extra border.  Then I took the full field (enough to enclose the full height and width of the pattern) and set the cell border to showing all borders, and marked out each 10 rows and columns with extra dark sides to help me count.  I definitely simplified some of the pattern - made the teeth regular, removed some of the lines that weren't necessary in what I was doing - but it still retained the bad-assery that I was aiming for.

After I finished generating the pattern, I was already pretty darn pleased with myself, since it looked awesome.  And here it is for all to share!  I happened to have a lot of this wool-linen blend that's roughly the color of burlap bags, but it's lovely and soft, and I had amassed enough of it from a Salvation Army run back in college, so that was my material.  I had actually already done the arms and torso once, and realized that the shoulders on the torso were WAY too big (would have looked better if I was wearing football pads), but the arms were fine.  I frogged the torso and kept the arms around, and decided I would re-do the torso as a cardigan.  So that's why I was looking for something more interesting to add to the back - otherwise it would have been a long time of knitting and knitting, and knitting.  This pattern definitely livened it up. The full pattern for the overall cardigan is here. The buttons were from a Michaels - I brought the sweater with me to make sure the buttons would fit through the holes.

The worst was keeping track of all of the balls of yarn, at least until I got up to the nose.  That was the hardest bit, since there were more sections to deal with.  Eventually it was finished, and it's the first hand-knit thing I've ever made that I thought looked like it could be sold in a store.  I blocked it, found buttons at a big box craft store, and now I can wear it with pride!